Degrees in Social Media: Useful or useless?

Social Media Class

A look into Social Media Majors and how they work.

by Lory Martinez

So you want to major in “Communications”, huh?

Well, you should know,  it’s more than just newspapers and blogs these days.

Several universities across the US are beginning to include “Social Media” in their approved course-load for students interested in communications.

I’m not sure how to feel about this.

I mean, it’s one thing to say you’re “proficient in social media platforms” on your resume; it’s another thing to actually have a degree in it.  It brings to mind an important question:

How do you even measure proficiency in “Social Media?” I always assumed that it consisted of  being active  on all major sites: Facebook, Twitter, Blogger,Tumblr, Yelp, Foursquare etc.

But there’s more to it. universities like Newberry College in North Carolina have taken “social media proficiency” to a whole new level. They’ve incorporated a variety of different programs into the BA in Social Media. According to Gizmodo.com, “The Social Media major [at Newberry] will be an original interdisciplinary program that will capitalize on the strengths of existing courses in Graphic Design, Communications, Business Administration, Psychology and Statistics. Four innovative courses, created specifically for the Social Media major, are also included in the curriculum.”

Considering the effect of social media on recent events in the mainstream media, it seems like the perfect time to revamp the journalism major. Ivy League universities already incorporate social media statistics in marketing courses for business majors. But those are summer courses, or six-week intensive seminars.

Creating a comprehensive major that includes all of the newest forms of communication seems logical.

However, how much can a student majoring in Social Media actually learn within a platform that is constantly changing? Because it’s so new, how many employers will take the major seriously? What do you guys think?

Related articles

• Newberry College Provides A Major In Social Media (drakej70.wordpress.com)
• News Brief: New Paper on Social Media for Scientists (scilogs.com)
• Social Media Frenzy (utadsportsdotcom.wordpress.com)

Cat=Kee-at : Notes on the Mid-Atlantic Vowel Shift

Areas of the U.S. where “dew” and “do” are pronounced differently. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A look into the Accents of the Southern Tier

by Alex Baer

Fourth of July, 1960. Columnist Norma Gauhn has dire words for Americans in the “jet age”: dialects are disappearing. So-called “speech experts” predict that “mass communications, compulsory education,” and the emergence of driver culture would soon homogenize American accents.

On the surface, it makes a good bit of sense; with distance made inconsequential, people aren’t as separated- one of the key factors that leads to the emergence of different dialects. Dialects, in layman’s terms, are variations of a language, different in their vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. For most American English dialects, the differences lie in their pronunciation.

While some accents do seem to be receding (how many New Englanders still sound like JFK?), what is becoming more and more apparent is that despite Skype, free long distance, and YouTube, dialects in the United States are changing more than ever.

As some of our listeners in the Southern Tier may know, one of these newfound dialects is in our own backyard. Coined in 1972 by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift refers to an emergent accent relatively new to linguistics; spoken by over 30 million people from Milwaukee to Syracuse, it has scientists scratching their heads.

The accent has some key features that distinguish it from other American dialects: the backing of ʌ, the short u sound (as in uh), the fronting of aw, and the diphthongization of ae. What the heck is a diphthong, you say? It’s two adjacent vowels that lie within the same syllable. I just used one; the ie in lie is a diphthong.

For example: whereas someone would say “my mom got a cat,” someone from Rochester might say “my mahm gawt a kee-at.”

Any avid YouTubers out there might be familiar with Jenna Marbles, a Rochester native.Fans of classic Saturday Night Live also might remember Bill Swerski’s Superfans, a famous and early example of the accent.

Vowels are the key to understanding this linguistic change. There are short vowels (like in bat, or bot), and long vowels (like in boat, or beet). Long vowels have stayed the same since around the 1400s, but short vowels haven’t changed since the time of Charlemagne… until now.

William Labov, who identified the accent with the help of fellow linguists, is one of the leading experts on the dialect. Labov has likened this shift to “something like a game of musical chairs.” With each vowel sound fighting for their own phonological turf, a chain shift has occurred.

Together with Sharon Ash, Charles Boberg, published The Atlas of North American English back in 2005. Over 750 subjects were interviewed, from almost 300 communities, over 11 years. Called a “snapshot of our rapidly changing language,” it documents everything from the modern Bawston accent to the North Country (or Inland North) accent, and many more.

At any rate, it does seem that fears that mass communication is pushing us into a single accent are quite unfounded. We learn language from personal interactions, talking face-to-face with our friends and family. Even as cables and fibers turn us into a globally interconnected culture, we still retain our almost tribal identity of the people we interact with on a regional level.

So the next time you find yourself at a Syracuse game, or talking to a hometown Brewers fan, really listen. You just might learn something!

Related articles

• Charleston Dialect (usdialects.wordpress.com)
• Raleigh has lost its drawl, y’all (charlotteobserver.com)
• Blinq: Phila. losing its vocal identity? (philly.com)

An Interview with tumblr poet Sam Riedel

 

An Interview with Cody Gohl on The Media Review on WHRW

 

The world of online publishing

by Lory Martinez

As a huge fan Tao Lin’s Muummu House along with his tangible literary works ( including the upcoming release of his novel,Taipei) I always wondered just how he got to make himself so famous online. To the purists his work and other alternative works published online are unworthy of being dubbed literature because there are no pages to pour over, things to underline… I, like many others, have always loved having a good book on hand.

But there is something to be said for those online auteurs who make a name for themselves and eventually go on to publish actual books. Is the blogosphere a critical part of the way we encounter literature today? Should aspiring authors take a note from people like Tao Lin and take to the internets and publish all willy- nilly?Could Hemingway have a blog?

All these questions and more will be answered when we interview online poets Cody Gohl and Sam Reidel next week.Tune in on WHRW 90.5 FM Binghamton or whrwfm.org next wednesday at 4 pm!