Blog Humor

You know a new trend has really, really caught on when it starts showing up in jokes and casual humor. Case in point: The Onion, a national newspaper devoted to political satire, had a frontpage headline today titled:  "Poll: More Americans Getting Their News From Bev."  The lead went like this:  "MARSHFIELD, MA--With an increasing variety of news media options, including 24-hour cable channels, websites, and blogs, more Americans have been tuning to laocal resident Beverly Tollefsen for their news, a poll released Monday shows."

Needless to say, Bev has a blog!

Earlier this year The Onion ran another article with excerpts from "George Bush's Blog."  Everybody's bloggin' it, bloggin' it!  Even W has one.

Comments

[Cheryl Sundheim]

[5 points. Yes, that whole question of hoaxes is something I should build into my teaching more carefully--great new critical thinking tool (Hemingway called it a gold-plated bullshit detector)]

Wk 8 discusstion topic

When I saw the title of this post, “Blog Humor” I was intrigued and thought I would be reading about blog-jokes or funny blog-stories. I guess this is a good example of a “Terrific Title” because it definitely attracted my attention. The actual text is light but leads me to think of more serious issues.

The fact that a lot of folks are “getting their news from Bev” could be pretty funny, depending on whom Beverly Tolefsen is. Because now that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can create a blog and say absolutely anything they choose, it makes it important to know something about the blogger in order to decide whether or not to rely on the information that they post.

Many blogs are clear about what they are: entertainment, opinion, rants, or personal journals. Where it gets a little more confusing is when people post things as fact that isn’t really true. In both this class, and my on-line psychology class, we have been addressing how to evaluate websites to determine how credible they are for information and research purposes. The same critical evaluation is necessary when reading blogs as. There are entire websites devoted to hoaxes. One that has many examples is http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/ . Some of the sites are quite convincing. It isn’t always easy to figure out what is the real deal and what isn’t. My psychology professor listed ten sites that we students had to review and then give our opinion on whether it was a real site or a hoax. Not one student in a class of over 40 was 100 percent correct in their evaluations. I was only 70% correct with my guesses, and I spent quite a bit of time in my review.

Reading blogs can be done for entertainment, or to read about other that have similar interests and hobbies that you do. But if it is true that “more and more Americans [are] getting their new from Bev” and other blogs like hers, are they getting real news or real fiction? If blogs are going to be a source that people will use to base their own opinions on, it is important to know about the validity and credentials of the blog that you are reading

[Fozia]

I am very glad to see these useful piece of information.

[Qaisera]

Awesome post! I love stuff like this.