Does Wikipedia Work With Sports Media?

http://comm200fa11.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/is-wikipedia-worthy/

The process of Wikipedia is complex! Anyone with a computer and internet connection who can logically follow instructions is capable of adding contentto this ever-popular means of information gathering called Wikipedia. Jensen (2012) stated in his article, “one of the main complaints heard about Wikipedia is its lack of authority, because “anyone can edit”.” This proves to everyone that the information found on the website isn’t always reliable. A classmate of mine, Koudsi (2013) said in his post “it makes me wonder how come people recognize the fact that Wikipedia is not credible source of information and yet it is ranked one of the top ten sites in the world.” When looking at Wikipedia in relation to media in sports I notice that it is not always a reliable source of information. Even though the information is not always consistent, I have been using it as one of my sources of research for years.

Luciano (2013) stated, “The only use I had for Wikipedia was for answers to quick questions to prove facts on people, bands and TV shows.” This is very true for individuals in the sports media business. Wikipedia can be used to find out personal information about players in a league from life history to career statistics. Is Wikipedia my first option when I want to look at yearly and career stats for Points Per Game (PPG)? No, I would look at NBA.com to find out that information. Why? Because I prefer looking at the direct source that is constantly being updated and has been keeping track players history in the league for years, and update daily.

Often times to enhance the credibility of tidbits of information, I use the handy footnotes that are hopefully attached! Then I do an investigation! I click on the source that the information came from and voila, I have proof that what’s being said is probably valid. For example, the other day I was going through my basketball cards and noticed a card from a former NBA prospect named Eddie Griffin. I remember he passed away as a player, but I didn’t remember how. So I went to the handy Wikipedia for some information. The Wikipedia page said he died from a car accident. I wanted to know more so I clicked on the footnote attached. In my opinion, a footnote adds so much more credibility to what you see on Wikipedia.

Vince Carter (Toronto Raptors)
Hurt on the bench.
Courtesy of: 
http://hungryleafsfan.blogspot.ca/2009_11_01_archive.html

So, I randomly chose to pick an NBA player to search up and that player was ex Toronto Raptors star Vince Carter. He is the Toronto Raptors best player in franchise history and was a player know for his crazy dunks. Many people may say that he got Canadians more interested in become professional basketball players, and NBA superstar Kevin Durant has said that he grew up wanting to be like Vince Carter (Its good that he didn't because he is now the NBA's best young athlete). I looked on the “Talk” page on Wikipedia and found lots of bias, with very little credentials to credit the writing. For example, posters were discussing how Vince Carter played almost the whole season with an ankle injury, which caused him to play a whole season in pain. There is no proof to this, because there is no article stating that Vince Carter played a whole season in pain. No direct quotes from management, players, coaches or Vince Carter himself. So why would this be relevant to his Wikipedia page? As Royal & Kapila (2009) said “accuracy of information is important.” This is not accuracy and should not be posted onto Wikipedia! There requires a deep amount of knowledge about a subject in order to prove that information is valid.

Unlike social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you cannot get up-to-the minute information on Wikipedia. “The public opinion is always expanding and changing,” Ruffolo (2013) and With social media sites (such as those above) they update consistently with accurate information. Wikipedia takes time for these updates to happen because they don’t want to take a chance of it not being official. Although, Wikipedia is useful in getting this information it takes a them a couple of days to compute this into their system. As a Sport Management student, I would rather look at Twitter and Facebook for these updates because in sports you always want to be the first to know when you're favourite player is traded, signed, or even retires!!!

Overall, Wikipedia is a convenient and extremely handy research tool that individuals from High School students to sport management professors and media personnel can and should use as a starting point to further investigation into a phenomenon.

References:

C Ruffolo (2013, May 31). Wikipedia… Can it be trusted? [blog post]. Retrieved from http://newmediumnewmessage.wordpress.com

J Luciano. (2013, May 31). “You must use at least five sources, and Wikipedia connot be one of them …” [blog post]. Retrieved from http://jlucianoo.wordpress.com

Jensen, R. (2012). Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812. Journal of Military History. 76, 1. pp 1165-1182.

M Koudsi. (2013, May 31). The Source Wikipedia [blog post]. Retrieved from http://mediasuperpower.blogspot.ca/

Royal, C. & Kapila, D. (2009). What's on Wikipedia, and What's Not . . . ?: Assessing Completeness of Information. Social Science Computer Review. 27, 1. pp 138-148.

Wikipedia Every Students Dream Source

While doing this weeks readings I learned many new things about crowdsourcing and Wikipedia. There were many things I didn't know about it such as it being a crowdsourcing tool. I never would have thought of this because I was just using the site as a source of information that would take lots of time of researching.  All I knew was that professors told students that they could not use it for assignments. When people ask me if (insert person's name) was born in 1986 I usually tell them "one second let me go look on Wikipedia to see if that information is true." Wikipedia has been my go to site for information about sports players careers and what teams they have played on before or what team drafted them into the league. Also using wikipedia I would look up my favourite music artist to see when he/she was going to have an album out and who is suppose to be on that album. 

There were lots of great comments  I got from fellow classmates. There were some parts of these comments that really stood out to me. @cour882 brought up "the fact that they do not welcome the common certified writer to post their views of the subject is disturbing." I would agree with her on this comment because like @DigitalAdBlog said in his comments it would be nice to use wikipedia as sources and without having certified writers this is not possible. This would make Wikipedia every students dream source for making assignment for school. Although this is not in place as of now, Wikipedia does give other solutions to this by having footnotes from where there information is from. 

Wikipedia and the Use of Crowdsourcing

When using sites like Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia, I use them for different things. For instance, using Yahoo, I would look at there website to find out the news. For Google it would be for there search engine. Wikipedia is used differently for me because of the information it brings. If I were to search “2013” in Wikipedia it takes me to a part of there site which would allow me to look at, films, music, television, and events for 2013. It is a great way to find out information that normal could take a site like Google a couple minutes of reading different websites to find out. Wikipedia gives users the information with a link attached to it. This shows that the Internet has evolved into a great way to accomplish different aspects to obtain information through different databases and a great way to get ideas. This can also be known as crowdsourcing. With this, there are many benefits and drawbacks and for this weeks blog I will talk about if the pros and cons change on the kind knowledge given from crowdsourcing.

For now I will start with talking about the benefits of crowdsourcing knowledge. The benefit of having a crowdsourcing website for example Wikipedia is that it provides a great way of finding things that we may not know. “Wikipedia is now the Web’s third most popular news and information source, with more unique visitors than Yahoo News, MSNBC, AOL News, and CNN (ComScore, 2006). Wikipedia’s English-language version doubled in size in 2006 and now has more than 1 million articles. By this measure, it is almost 12 times larger than the print version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It has more than 100,000 contributors writing in 200 languages (“Wiki Principle,” 2006)(Royal. C and Kapila. D, 2009).” The reason that Wikipedia is very useful is because it provides different outlooks into how they get the information. Wikipedia provides users with personal information, achievements, and other news depending on the person/thing you look up.

With sites like Wikipedia there are many drawbacks. Jensen. R (2012) writes in his article about Wikipedia fights the war of 1812 that “our main concern here, however, is not with who uses Wikipedia, but with how its articles on military history get written, using the “war of 1812” article as a case study. Wikipedia represents a radical new way to write history: “crowdsourcing””. With that any person that is interested in writing a column on someone’s Wikipedia page can edit and put false information into it. This shows that “There are several unwarranted premises underlying this claim. First, the authors of Wikinomics and ‘We-Think’ assume that all users who contribute content are (equally) creative and that their motivations for contributing articulate the same expressive desire (Dijck. J, and Nieborg. D, 2009).” Also with these websites even though they might be very useful, you cannot use for academic sources!! Sorry students :(.  

References

Van Dijk, J. & Nieborg, D. (2009). Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos. New Media & Society. 11, 5. pp 855-874.
Royal, C. & Kapila, D. (2009). What's on Wikipedia, and What's Not . . . ?: Assessing Completeness of Information. Social Science Computer Review. 27, 1. pp 138-148.

Note: don't worry about the statistics and methodology in Royal & Kapila (skim it, this isn't a stats course).  Focus on the introduction, discussion, and conclusion.

Jensen, R. (2012). Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812. Journal of Military History. 76, 1. pp 1165-1182

Picture above courtesy of: http://thesocialkraken.wordpress.com/2013/02/page/2/

Picture below courtesy of:http://www.businessesgrow.com/2011/08/31/the-top-five-crowdsourcing-mega-trends/

Surveillance and Privacy in Social Networking

Hello and welcome to week two of my blog!!!

Today I will be talking about the surveillance and privacy involved in sports VIA social networking and other technologies such as phones.

 “At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates Turkle, S (2012).” Technology has brought in a new way of communicating and processing things that we would never have been able to do 10 years ago. In sports reporters are using social networking and phone applications to communicate, “breaking new” about player, and teams.

A great way for people to allow others to know this type of news is Social Networking. There are many different types of social networks on the internet/phones, which includes Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, etc. Boyd, D. and Ellison, N. (2008) explains to their readers “what makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks.” For example Twitter is a great social network site, which allows people to connect with each other by following one another and being able to communicate with all different types of people by using a simple hashtag (#). Although social networks may be a great way to socialize with others it could also be very negative.

“Online social networking can have a touch of private communication to it due to its situational and mundane character, but mediated publics are obviously not private. This dilemma is, of course, a central part of the discussion concerning surveillance and privacy issues, and it is especially evident in connection with secondary uses of available information at social networking sites Albrechtslund, A (2008).” These sites allow people all over to see messages that have been sent to others. Often sports reporters want to be the first to have news about players being signed or traded. When reporters initially write something on twitter or other social networking sites and they are reporting false information about a player or coach it could ruin a players reputation, or make them feel unwanted on the team they are playing for. For example in the past 2 years in the NBA there have been rumors that Dwight Howard would be traded to Brooklyn Nets but eventually he ended up getting traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. As a fan you love to hear these rumors but in the long run you want to hear the right rumor because it can affect a whole team and every player that is so called “involved”. 

References

Albrechtslund, A. (2008, March 3). Online Social Networking at Participatory Surveillance. Http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949#p3. Retrieved May 15, 2013, from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949#p3

Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x

Turkle, S. (2012, April 21). The Flight From Conversation. The New York Times. Retrieved May 15, 2013, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Picture courtesy from:

http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&sa=N&hl=en&biw=2539&bih=1211&tbm=isch&tbnid=Po1RrXZnzIDUxM:&imgrefurl=http://kevin.lexblog.com/2012/02/15/twitter-retains-your-contacts-for-18-months-ethical-dilemma-for-attorneys/&docid=rsh61sVCfjluZM&imgurl=http://kevin.lexblog.com/uploads/image/twitter-privacy-scan-contacts.jpg&w=597&h=300&ei=x3CXUfGGL4jtqwG1h4CgDA&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:2,s:0,i:87&iact=rc&dur=381&page=1&tbnh=159&tbnw=317&start=0&ndsp=55&tx=214&ty=85

New Beginnings

Good Morning or Good Afternoon!!

To all readers! I am very new to blogging but in the past I have been to many blogging websites so hopefully everyone will enjoy my blogs!

My name is Brandon Israelson, and I am currently doing my third year of school at Brock University. I am studying Sport Management, which requires some knowledge of sports. Being a Canadian many people would think that my favorite sport would be hockey, but that is not the case for me (sorry fellow Canadians!!). I am a huge basketball fanatic and could pretty much tell someone which players are on what team. My favorite teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA) are the Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Lakers, and Los Angeles Clippers. I have been to many games throughout the years but one of my main goals is to visit every team’s stadium. So far I have been to only 4 NBA stadiums, 26 more to go!! I am also a fan of baseball it has been the sport that my family has followed for years. Although baseball is very interesting for me, I can say that I do not follow it as much as I do for basketball however I have been to more baseball stadiums than I have for basketball including the old Yankee Stadium.

For this blog I choose the topic of Media, but my main focus will be media in sports. Media is everywhere in sports! They follow teams from city to city, broadcasting games and write columns about each sports team. With media rumors are spread, players are scrutinized, and egos are tested. One day a writer could be writing that one teams front office is about to trade a player and the next day fans find out that it was only a quick conversation between teams front office that never meant much. With this blog I will look at different perspectives of how media in sports is good and bad. With the NBA free agency coming up there are many rumours of players getting traded or signing with a new team. There are many big names in the NBA that are being talked about in rumors and in the blog I will bring some of these topics up.

I look forward to keeping you all updated!

Brandon

Blogs that deal with the same topic:

http://sportgendermedia.blogspot.ca

http://sportsmediaamerica.blogspot.ca

http://optimum-sports.blogspot.ca/2012/12/clippers-jazz-16th-straight-win.html

http://sport-newspaper.blogspot.ca

http://twofistedslopper.blogspot.ca

Websites that deal with the same topic

http://realgm.com

http://hoopshype.com

http://www.hoopsrumors.com

http://www.hoopsworld.com

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/nba/rumors/

Twitter Hash tags (#) that have to do with Basketball Rumors:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NBARumors&src=hash

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FreeAgency&src=hash

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23traderumors&src=hash

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SportsRumors&src=hash

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MLBTradeRumors&src=hash

Picture above courtesy of: http://www.sportsspecifictraining.com/category/testimonials/other-sports/