Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Mergers and Acquisitions

Hi all!

Okay so after researching more information about my article I decided to do this blogpost all about mergers and acquisitions. Upon researching my topic I found that media de-convergence is difficult to find information about it because there are limited sources available about it, in fact, when googling media de-convergence many of the sources were for Jin's article itself. So I decided to dedicate this blog post to mergers and acquisitions, which is what Jin based his research off.

To begin, Investopedia defines mergers and acquisitions (M&As) as "transactions that bring separate companies together to form larger ones." For those of you who are not familiar with M&As the companies who partake in them are often divided and broken up in this process. M&As often make the news because it the process of companies becoming more and more powerful. This is often looked at by the general public because companies they often use are bought out and so by force, they must change companies no matter what.

For the article, Jin specifically looked at M&As that were part of the mega-deals. Many of the M&As that occurred in the media and communication industries are worth millions, if not billions of dollars according to Investopedia.

Two specific M&As that Jin focused on in his article was the merger between AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal and the merger between Viacom and CBS. Jin focused on the AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal because it was largest M&A of its time, worth $164.7 billion. Viacom and CBS was no laughing matter however, that M&A went for $13.6 billion. Both of those M&As failied and resulted in the spin off the converged companies.

Well, there is some support for Jin's idea.

See you all later,

Kyle

Media convergence, within globalization

Hi everyone!

Long time no update since my last blog post. But I thought I'd let you all in on what I've been up to in my Mass Communication course at Hamline University. As of right now we are working on our second critique of a scholarly article. The article I chose to critique was titled Neoliberal restructuring of the global communication system: mergers and acquisitions written by Dal Yon Jin. I chose to chose this article because I am also in a Global Studies class here at Hamline and I found that this article incorporated aspects of each class and connected them, which is really cool!

I will give you all a brief summary to the article I read. The article discusses the communication industry after the creation of both the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Both the legislation and this organization were created to open up the markets. After this the media and communication industries saw consolidation, meaning that the more powerful companies bought out the smaller ones so a small group of a few companies owned all the media and communication companies. Jin looked at these mergers and acquisitions of companies and watched their success from 1998 to 2007 and found that 68% percent of the companies he observed failed or de-converged, or split up.

Jin then predicted that now we will see a trend of de-convergence in the media industry, rather than convergence which is still the common trend within media industry. Jin's conclusion is very interesting and different, and I don't know whether or not I agree but he does a wonderful job at presenting his conclusion! I'm going to give you guys some more information on this topic soon!

-Kyle

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Reddit Controversies

Well while Reddit can be a good source of information, sometime this immediate access from the "average citizen" can cause for some mistakes. All of us remember the tragic Boston Bombing that occurred this past april. Well after the bombing occurred a Reddit group came together to attempt to catch who the bomber was and warn the public. A very good idea, right?! Well the idea that came from good intentions turned in a negative direction when the reddit group took a photo released from the FBI and concluded that a man in the photo looked like Sunii Tripathi, a Brown University student who had been reported missing a month earlier. Tripathi's, who had no connection with the bombing, body was found after the bombing.

After the incident with the Boston bombing reddit group targeting Tripathi, Reddit general manager apologized for the "dangerous speculation that spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties." He also apologized for the pain his family had to endure because of this mix up.

I found this story interesting because it shows some of the dangers that can exist with our instant access to information on the web. Minutes after the Boston bombing a group of people can come together on the web to hunt for the man responsible is crazy to think about. It really has to resonate with people that they need to check their facts before they say anything because they could be changing someone's life.

Source: USA Today

Monday, September 30, 2013

Photos and other Reddit info! :)

Hi everyone!

I just realized that I haven't posted too many pictures about what reddit look like, the layout can sometimes cause confusion. I found this really cool image of the homepage of reddit with little post about what each feature is. This photo comes from udemy, a site that offers online courses. The photo comes from their blog where they promote reddit as a learning tool, VERY COOL!

Also: for my last blog post my source for all my info was Wikipedia and Reddit itself :)

Keep it classy

Sunday, September 29, 2013

History of Reddit!

Hi everyone!

Alright so last post I explained to you guys why I chose to create a blog about reddit. But today I though I would share history about the site as well as some other really cool info.

So to get started reddit was created in 2005 by two graduates of the University of Virginia and was created in Medford, Massachusetts. The original founders of reddit were Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian however many people joined their team after that! On October 31st, 2006 Condè Nast Publications acquired reddit and moved the team to San Francisco. In July 2010 reddit had a large traffic growth and after that the creators created an option called Reddit Gold, a membership where you paid for more access to different items.

And on September 6th, 2011 reddit became operationally independent of Condè Nast Publications.

Well there you go kids! Now go enjoy reddit :)

Monday, September 23, 2013

My first blog post!

Hi everyone,

My name is Kyle Kvamme and I am a sophomore at Hamline University! As of right now I am majoring in Communication Studies and minoring in Political Science but I can assure you that will most likely change pretty quickly. I have created this blog for my Mass Communication course. I am very excited to begin this blogging experience and hopefully can show you guys some cool new information that you didn't know before.

That brings me to the topic of my blog: reddit. For those of you who aren't familiar with reddit I'll attempt to explain it to you however, I am relatively new to the world of reddit myself, so I apologize if my explanation is lacking. At the end of my blogging experience I will redefine reddit once we have all become "reddit experts". Reddit is a social networking site where users can summit content and other users vote on that content which moves it up or down on the site's page. So to better explain that when members of reddit post content the rest of the viewers can vote that content as important in which they would hit the up button for it to move up on the site's page. If a user doesn't like a piece of content they can vote it down which bring it down on the site's page, signifying that it is less important.

I said earlier I was new to the world of reddit. I first heard of reddit last year when I first began my studies at Hamline University. I had friends that were avid reddit users, they visited the site multiple times a day. I wanted to see what reddit was like and at first I was very confused by it. There seemed to be so many "inside jokes" and articles on the site I wasn't interested it so I stopped using it. However I then began to hear about how reddit was in the news for trying to find the Boston bombers during the Boston Marathon bombings and I was intrigued. Even though users of reddit ended up believing a young man committed the bombings who was innocent I saw the beginning of what could be the next era in journalism, "cell phone journalists". Journalism that is created by ordinary citizens for the common goal of human good. Now the community of reddit fascinates me and I can't wait to find out more about this community and share it with all of you!