FIRE Vs. Technorati Final Paper Version 1

Credit: Technorati.com

Feminist International Radio Endeavor
Our alternative media source is Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE), which is an Internet grassroots feminist radio based in Costa Rica.  This radio broadcast originally began in May 1991 as a short wave radio broadcast.  Then in May 1998 they converted their radio broadcasts to the Internet.  Despite their title, their main focus is not just about women’s rights, but also more about raising women’s voices and perspectives on current events.  This also gives women a stronger presence in the media.  FIRE is directed towards women but also focuses on minorities throughout the world.  As a result, FIRE can appeal to a global audience not just woman.  However while this can appeal to a global audience, the demographic can be fairly concentrated towards Spanish speakers since many of the articles/broadcasts are in that language.

FIRE is not owned by one person or company, as it is a grassroots radio.  In this particular case, grassroots means that their information and media does not conform to the norm or mainstream; rather, this type of news is more homegrown and not as organized.  Although FIRE does not have a sole ownership, it does have affiliates.  These affiliates include:  Women’s Radio Fund, Urgent Action Fund, Hivos People Unlimited, and Global Fund for Women.  FIRE works with these various organizations to help promote their causes together and also aid one another with their mission.

This alternative news broadcast relates to chapter 5 because this chapter discusses audio media.  One of the main features of FIRE is radio broadcasting where they express their opinions about current events and share their interviews.  Through this they are able to create a more personable news source because there it a voice to the words.

Technorati
Technorati first founded with the purpose to help bloggers by collecting information and distributing it. It was technically one of the first blog search engines.  It then expanded to a full service media company by helping blogs connect with advertisers and ultimately connect with their consumers. Technorati indexes over a million blogs and has fast easy sources for top stories, opinions, photos, politics, sports and etc. It was launched in 2008 and now has over 300 million viewers. To become a writer for Technorati one must fill out an application to join this blogging community. Technorati also owns many well known blogs such as,  I Can Has Cheezburger, BuisnessPundit, MakeUseOf, and WTFurls. They also branch off into Blogcritics.com and they have a Twitter account.

This article relates to chapter four through surveillance and correlation. It tries to keep the community involved and informed. It also has a strong correlation; this article emphasizes the role that the citizen can play to help make a difference in the immigration policy and in society itself.

Social Issue
The article we found was “Transnational Corporations Profit from Broken Immigration Policy in U.S: Protestors monthly vigil aims to combat inhumane conditions in detention center”. This article/radio broadcast was found on www.fire.or.cr. FIRE stands for Feminist International Radio Endeavor. This article talked about the protests against the immigrant’s harsh treatment during detainment. The protest itself also represents the greater dissatisfaction of the U.S. immigration policy. FIRE is an Internet alternative or grassroots operation based out of Costa Rica.

Legitimizing Each Source
FIRE is able to legitimize its position because the journalist interviews people who participated in the protest.  The article also included pictures from the event.  Both people who were interviewed were women.  One of the women was an immigration activist and the other was part of a committee called, American Friends Service Committee, and she also participated in the protest.  By interviewing women who actually played a role in the protest legitimizes the information in the article and radio clips because they were there to experience everything that happened.  The photos serve as proof to their claims and events.

The evidence that the Technorati article has, is much stronger and more convincing then the FIRE article. This article provides background information and proves that the author did more research than the other article. It listed important organizations and people that participated in the protest to show the weight of the situation and how it related to a broader audience. The author then went on to describe what some of these organizations do and how they interact with society. This source also gave more concrete facts about the facility that helped legitimize the article.  Most of these facts pertain to the private prison industry named GEO.  This industry has 350 private and governmental jails nationwide that cost $1.7 billion annually to maintain. Additionally the GEO detention center in Aurora, Colorado costs $1.8 million to operate per year.  The journalist also stated that politicians that support these laws are funded and sometimes paid by GEO.

The article included very moving and realistic photos that showed the detention center and the people protesting to help reinforce the realities of what is happening. A reason this source has more information and more photos is because it has a larger audience to reach.  FIRE is not very well advertised and consequently only attracts a certain type of audience who listens to their radio or reads their articles. This made the article much more helpful and gave a better description of the situation and why it was an issue in Colorado and the United States.

These two articles included some of the same legitimizing tactics; however, they were done in different manners that affected their argument.  Technorati interviewed both men and women from various groups.  In contrast, FIRE only interviewed women who had similar backgrounds.  This can skew the information given because there is no diversity.  Despite that fact, FIRE did offer a more emotional connection to the protest through live protest interviews and a compelling poem at the end.  While this did play onto the emotional side, it did not offer hard evidence.  Technorati was able to do so through background information and they had a diverse set of interviews.  Also this news source was able to include hyperlinks in their article that validates the organizations mentioned and their information.

Here is additional information about GEO and their detainment of illegal immigrants.

*Finding additional evidence on this topic was a very difficult hunt at times. We went to many different cites, even the local Aurora newspaper to try to get relevant information. But this information was hard to come by and even harder to legitimize. We did go to another website to get more information on the actual GEO corporation and the prison cite to see what it actually was.  Additionally, we could not find another article that had earlier or later coverage from the same news source.

By:  Leah Markman & ThuyAnh Astbury-Nguyen

Sources:

-Converging Media:  A New Introduction to Mass Communications
–http://www.fire.or.cr/index.php/en/english-home/304-broken-us-immigration-policy.html

–http://technorati.com/politics/article/denver-activists-protest-illegal-immigration-detention/

–http://communityradioaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/creative-radio-haiti-feminist.html

–http://www.genderit.org/content/feminist-international-radio-endeavour-fire

–http://www.eldis.org/assets/Orgs/6896.html