HCRHS Media Lit

"Although Samsung wasn't the most popular brand on any particular social network, it earned 16 million new followers across multiple platforms in the past 12 months - enough to get data aggregator Starcount's top spot. Walt Disney came in second place, largely due to a one-million-follower increase on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site. National Geographic grabbed the bronze after its top-rated YouTube channel got 160 million views this past year. Check out the other companies that made the list for this year's top 10 brands on social media, below."

"The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is the only research-based organization working behind-the scenes in the entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female portrayals for children's entertainment."

"MAYBE because I have seven nieces whose dreams matter to me, maybe because I have so many female friends whose talents dazzle me, or maybe just because I think it's madness not to encourage and recognize the full potential of half of the human race, I keep looking to the movies for something better. For something more equitable. For women saving the world or saving the president or at the very least saving themselves."

" What is the responsibility of powerful commercial media entities (including news outlets, music labels, movie studios, and fellow artists) that protect and profit off of sex offenders, and what will it take to hold the media accountable?"

Trailer for a new documentary on male gender roles

"The Internet is a gullible place. Before you know it, you buy into a YouTube video, and you're sharing Facebook posts and tweets with misinformation. If you haven't done so yourself, you likely know someone who has. Some of the most viral stories of the year have turned out to be fakes. Remember when Will and Monifa Sims captured our hearts in May while singing karaoke at a gas station? They were actors. And who could forget the hilarious twerking girl on fire? Simply a stunt orchestrated by Jimmy Kimmel. Not all hoaxes were videos, though. The Internet followed along with Elan Gale, a producer for The Bachelor, who live-tweeted a fake situation he claimed to experience on an airplane; an adorable kid's letter to Santa was actually the brainchild of a comedian. For a full look at the top social media hoaxes you fell for this year, check out the gallery above."

"The princess industry is lucrative: DVDs, dresses, crowns, theme parties. But the story of going to the ball and waiting for Prince Charming is outdated. So one Southern California mom has created a new princess series with modern sensibilities. Creator Setsu Shigematsu recasts princesses as environmentally conscious and not waiting around to be rescued."

Article demonstrates how to create a native ad from a popular news article.

"An Early Look at Super Bowl XLVIII's First Confirmed Buyers"

"What do you think were the biggest stories of the year? Were you horrified by the carnage in Syria but fascinated by its global implications? Shaking your head over a former Disney star's over-the-top performance at an awards show? Select up to 10 of your top stories of the year by clicking on the choices below. The final results will be revealed later this month on CNN.com and CNN TV. Voting closes on December 27."

"We saw, once again, how quickly Twitter can spread news, both accurate and damaging. We saw the power a tweet can exert when a brand uses it right (Oreo's "Dunk in the Dark" during the Super Bowl), and the anguish it can cause when a brand uses it wrong (we're looking at you, Epicurious). From the laudable to the laughable, here's a look at the tweets, story lines, and business decisions that made 2013 Twitter's biggest year yet."

"Initially there were only a few viral hoaxes. Now, with the immense popularity of social media, they are happening almost daily."

"With 20 years' experience as an investigative reporter, Brian Ross of ABC News knows a good story when he hears one. He is also not stupid. He knew the story he heard last spring might raise difficulties because it involved ABC's parent, the Walt Disney Company, but he thought he had enough solid information to pursue it. The story involved accounts of pedophilia and lax security at theme-park resorts, including Walt Disney World, and once Mr. Ross and his longtime producer-partner, Rhonda Schwartz, had finished their reporting, they thought they had a solid investigative piece for ''20/20,'' ABC's news magazine program. But the report was killed last week, or at least shelved. ABC News executives refuse to discuss the reasons in detail and have urged those involved not to discuss the matter publicly. Disney issued a statement saying that its executives had nothing to do with the decision. The saga of the Ross-Schwartz report -- and how ABC dealt with it -- illustrate the thorny problems reporters have in examining their own companies, especially in this age of conglomerates, when many parent companies of media outlets are also involved in many other businesses. Can reporters investigate them the way they would any other subject? If not, where must a line be drawn?"

"It happened last year for the first time: bot traffic eclipsed human traffic, according to the bot-trackers at Incapsula. This year, Incapsula says 61.5 percent of traffic on the web is non-human.  Now, you might think this portends the arrival of "The Internet of Things"-that ever-promised network that will connect your fridge and car to your smartphone. But it does not. This non-human traffic is search bots, scrapers, hacking tools, and other human impersonators, little pieces of code skittering across the web. You might describe this phenomenon as The Internet of Thingies. "

"How much of our local news is propaganda? Stations are slipping sponsored "video news releases" - promotional segments designed to look like objective news reports - into their regular programming. And increasingly they're using these VNRs without identifying them as such. This deception is illegal under federal law and Federal Communications Commission rules. Presenting VNRs as actual news breaches the trust between local stations and their communities. By disguising advertisements as news, stations violate both the spirit and the letter of their broadcast licenses, which obligate them to use the airwaves to serve the public."

"n Thursday, Twitter released a look back at 2013 and the news that hashtagged its way around the world. Gabriel Stricker, Twitter's vice president of marketing and communications, writes that this year, people used Twitter "to add an extra and distinctive element to global news stories." Here's a quick look at several moments from the last year."

"Ladies, Special K wants you to stop with the fat talk. According to the cereal company's new 2-minute spot, 93% of women engage in some form of social media self-shaming. To help put an end to the negativity, online and in real life, Special K created a nondescript clothing store and posted real, fat-talking tweets around the store and on price tags."

"Facebook proper is trying to make itself the home of the real-time Internet, seizing that mantle (implicitly) from Twitter. It's doing this partly by adjusting the algorithm which controls what content makes it to users's News Feeds, serving more "high-quality" news articles than it has in a long time. And news publishers, in turn, have seen a surge of traffic from Facebook. But can such a strategy work? I think it might. These two graphs helped me understand why. Both come from a report from the Pew Research Journalism Project on social networks and news."

"True fact: Almost 100% of the images you see of models and celebrities are altered."

"Instagram has announced a new private messaging feature called Instagram Direct, which will allow users to send a photo or video privately to up to fifteen followers."