Media Companies: AOL Time Warner April 22, 2008

Time Warner and AOL merged in 2001 and made AOL Time Warner the world’s biggest media company, now the second largest.

Major operations in film, television, publishing, Internet service, and telecommunications.

Some major assets owned by AOL Time Warner: AOL, New Line Cinema, Time Inc., Road Runner, Time Warner Cable, HBO, Cinemax, Turner Broadcasting System, The CW Television Network, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Cartoon Network, CNN, DC Comics.

Competition: CBS Corporation, Walt Disney Company, News Corporation, Viacom

                Fewer AOL  subscribers

Film and TV companies (Warner Bros)

CNN, Time Warner Cable- 13 million customers in the US

24 book brands

Magazines- Time, Fortune, 33 others (120 million readers)

Theme Parks- Warner Bros Studio stores in 30 countries and merchandise

52 Record Labels

4 Sports Teams

AOL US and AOL International- 14 countries (CompuServe and Netscape)

Has 27 million subscribers on AOL

 

Research Ethics Case#1 April 15, 2008

“I am a research assistant for a project that involves studying participants in a website for a particular deviant sexuality. The only way to study this group is to join as a member. We made up several fake email accounts in order to make several fake membership profiles, and we sign in under these profiles to examine the profiles of the real members. Members have begun to contact my persona. I have found out that they get a notification if i look at their profile..”

My first thought is whether or not this is any different that an old man posing as a younger boy to reach girls that are younger. Personally I would say that it is very different but I am curious as to if it is techniqually any different. It reminds me of the show on TV where the news people pose as a young girl, get the guy to come to the house, and then dramatically tackle him- which is my favorite part.

I would ask the research assistant if material was being used for observance or for data collection. I would feel that data collection may be violating research ethics if you are talking to someone without their knowledge. However I think that perhaps if you are just observing and not participating the data might be ethical. I would like to know if there is something ethically wrong to create fake accounts for the purpose of research, or if you have to be honest.

After the lecture on research ethics I realized that posing as another person and gathering information from a site where the people believe they are in a private atmosphere is against research ethics. Their website is a member only setup and the the participants believe that their space is private. By posing as someone in the community and using personal conversation with them, the researchers would be unethical.

This makes me a little worried as to how I’m going to compare websites. Since I am not focusing so much on the context of conversations, as much as the societal roles the members are taking, I feel that I might not be in violation of research ethics. Some of the websites I am considering are not member only to view, but in order to post. In this regard I do not feel like I would be unethical to use information gathered in the public realm.

cafepress April 7, 2008

Cafepress is a website where one can create and buy, create and sell, or shop a marketplace for personalized materials ranging from T-shirts to baby bibs to buttons. The website allows for individual shopkeepers to create an online “store front” where they can sell items with a logo they have designed. Cafepress additionally has over 50 major accounts, including wiki and startrek.com, as well as strategic agreements with licensors that include more than 90 properties. The website represents every aspect of online business by offering storefront development, site hosting, order management, secure payment processing, etc. They feel that as a company they stand out because they offer a free online shop, shipping world wide, customer service, and the freedom from a minimum order. Cafepress can create and sell a variety of customizable products, for a large cut of the price. The base price of a T-shirt is $16.99 and is marked up on average about $5.00. This price covers the product creation, customer service, transaction management, returns/exchanges, and online shop maintenance. If you were to create you own custom T-shirt it would be about $14 dollars. I thought that this might be a little high, so I checked other sites and found that it is the lowest. The double edged sword to cafepress is that there is no minimum order requirement. So that’s great if you want to buy one shirt. However, customink.com has prices that significantly decrease when you order more shirts.

Cafepress is a great example of user generated content. You can put essentially anything on a variety of products and sell it to anyone in the world. This openness is what I love about Cafepress. If you want to find a product for almost anything you can find it there. In this sense it appeals to all people of all generations, races, sexes, genders, etc. There is something for everyone. I personally have bought shirts from cafepress because I find things there that I wont find anywhere else. The concept behind cafepress is fascinating to me, and I feel it coincides with the ideas of creative commons. Cafepress is essentially sharing their ability to produce with the creative minds of others. In collaboration they create a product that people can own and make their own.