Social Media and Public Relations

The most recent noteworthy development in public relations applications is the use of social media channels which are offering access to mass communication tools. Along with the two Internet bubbles (dot.com and Web 2.0), the development of technological infrastructure has widened using social media channels as an ideal tool for companies. These channels can be used as a tool for advertisement, product development and customer relationship management. And especially for PR departments, these channels offer transparent, one to one and continuous relationships easily and effectively.

The web 2.0 and the dot.com are the bubbles of the internet that reveals the reflection of the change in the business industry. The two are seen as significant examples of bubbles for the new business industry that come up with a force and become more and more powerful. Since the technology is changing every day and Web 2.0 will be the most powerful tool until the start of something with more staying power.

The Dot.com bubble is an internet bubble speculation of the gradual progress of the stock market in the field of the internet. This bubble is also significant in the bust of the cycle in the market. The Dot.com bubble was an e-commerce with a specific feature and distinctive theme. This bubble was designed to mock the former bubble by the name web 2.0. The bubble in the dot.com website was a 1999 and also a 2000 bust in the media. The dot.com bubble was a cycle that emerged in form of nuttiness.

The chief reason for the upcoming of the dot.com was to offer an e- commerce service to the computer internet users. The bubble was basically for the marketing in the internet to the potential client. The dot.com bubble aimed at increasing the internet stock market for specific companies which were calling themselves the dot.com. The NASDAQ was at the highest level of its stock marketing records during the dot.com bubble. Subsequently, NASDAQ is the dominant and widely known for the market capitalization.

The web 2.0 bubble is the bubble that followed the Dot.com bubble. This bubble is a social media that allows the users to freely connect through the internet. Subsequently, the users are capable of interacting with friends across the globe. Furthermore, this bubble creates a channel for the internet surfers to chat freely, to upload pictures, and also the videos of individuals as well as music. For instance, there are social media like MySpace, Twitter that allows chatting, there is the Flickr, Facebook that is for users to tag and also share their pictures with friends. This web is thus put into comparison with the dot.com bubble.

The web 2.0 is a bubble and not a temporary fad that will finally burst. This web 2.0 is further seen as the beginning of something with a much staying power. The bubble is a fad that is fading away because it is simply revealing the way bubbles came up (Argenti & Barnes, 2009). Furthermore, for every upcoming bubble that succeeded the other, it has been worsening with time. Thus, it is extremely hard for any given individual to be capable of telling the way the bubble cycle was taking. This is because the cycle is seen as a continuous one for the recurring event. Therefore, the Dot.com bubble is seen as prelude by the world (Shuen, 2008).

As a result of these bubbles and technological development, social media, social networking and social bookmarking sites, phenomenon of the last few years, became the most important tool for global and national companies around the world.  These sites with millions of users are offering an invaluable opportunity to brands as a very important communication tool. Now companies have Facebook and Twitter accounts in addition to their web sites. Public relations, which regarded as a management tool to create beneficial relationship between organization and public, use social media to achieve public approval, trust and respectability. And with always accessible social media, everything known about the public relations has changed. Now companies have an environment offering continuous two-way communication with targeted groups; an environment providing one to one, fast and practical way to communicate with your targeted group and this service is used completely free of charge. Companies are sharing the common purpose of reaching the audience easier and faster to announce information about their company. And maybe just to get know the customers from their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts or FriendFeed accounts. Moreover, companies’ PR departments can interact to consumers directly by social media in a very short period of time so that the companies can announce their new products to their targeted audience easily and effectively. More importantly PR departments can gauge their reactions and depending on these measurements they can help updating company strategies.

There are also additional reasons for using social networking sites. One of them is advertising. Facebook and Twitter can be used as an effective advertising tool for companies.  Companies can send messages to their very wide audience instantly. In addition, the only thing that fans of the organization, company or the product should do is just following their account profiles to learn all the information they need. So the messages of companies are guaranteed to reach people.

Another reason is product development. Companies can use social platforms as an evaluation tool. They can learn the feedbacks about a new product very quickly. Also they can check the reactions of their customers or employees about upcoming products. Or they can only use social networks just to let customers get to know employees as Zappos does. However the most important reason of using social media is known as PR purposes. Since with using Social Media companies can reach larger audience and they can raise awareness or build company reputation for larger audiences.

Furthermore, as mentioned before, with this new era every other knowledge about PR departments is changed. Now we have different business industry with different business models. So the PR departments have lots of different duties as a result of big change in business industry. Now we have terms like crowdsourcing, crowdfunding for business industry. And PR departments’ new duties also include promoting and building these terms. To examine PR departments’ usage of social media accurately, we should have a look at the definitions of these new terms that recently included in the business industry.

Crowdsourcing term is first heard in article by Jeff Howe which published in 2006. Crowdsourcing is combination of terms “Crowd” and “Outsourcing”. Crowd for large group of people and outsourcing can be explained as for example you are in textile business and labor cost in your country is expensive, moving production to countries like China or Indonesia where labor cost is cheaper to reduce costs or call centers in India directed from America can explain the term “Outsourcing”. Crowdsourcing, as a combination of these two terms, is a term for them which is applied on Internet.  We can assume this as a worker network with millions of people with Internet. As we continue with how it becomes so popular for companies’ business strategies, we can easily say that we all started spending a significant part of our daily lives on social media platforms and one to one communications between brands and consumers are also quite common. Dialogs between PR departments and consumers replaced the old monolog environment that only companies were leading the way. Meanwhile some consumers were not satisfied by just having their favorite companies on their friend list, they were willing to involve in the brands marketing activities especially when there was a prize or promotion at the end. While consumers are trying to solve companies’ business related issues by innovative ideas and collective intelligence, companies are increasing productivity and efficiency while decreasing research and labor costs.

Especially with the spread of the concept of Web 2.0, companies consider crowdsourcing more importantly. Lot more work is done by help of consumers or volunteers. For instance, Dell is using a platform where users can share their ideas and make comments and suggestions about other users’ comments, and with voice of the crowd they created new solutions like installing Linux on Pc. In addition to technology based companies, textile companies are crowdsourcing for new designs. Moreover NASA worked with online group–all volunteer- who all interested in astronomy to measure the craters. They ended the project ten times sooner than it could do by itself. Moreover gold company called Goldcorp in Canada made a competition to find more efficient way for searching process of gold. Rewards were promised to the best recommender and with large amount of participants company became an organization with this approach. Also companies like Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Best Buy and Nike have all platforms that allow customers to help them create new products.

The fact Crowdfunding means, inspired by crowdsourcing, finding the financial sources needed for a project from the collective people group interested in the project. Crowdfunding brings people and their money together to support a project financially generally by using Internet. People can use crowdfunding to finance their various types of projects. It can be used to finance natural disaster victims, educational issues or maybe political campaigns. There are several social media platforms that people can find groups ready to support their projects. These platforms connect people and create new powerful funding ways for them. People can share their projects or their ideas by using these platforms. By this way, people can reach groups easily and have their comments about their business/social plans. Instead of having feedbacks from these groups, PR departments can increase the awareness of their project by using the support provided by these groups. The Kickstarter.com or Indiegogo.com can be examples for these platforms as they can count as the major players for crowdfunding.

At the first phase of crowd funding, people connect to these networks. Then those seeking for funding to their projects, prepare personal pages in these sites that give details about themselves and their projects. They explain the current state of the project and the point they want to reach after necessary funding provided. In addition, short biographies of the project owners and details about the projects they did before or jobs they had before are listed in their personal pages. They try to convince the visitors to finance their ideas/projects. So the more detail they give makes it easier for them to be successful at finding the funding and it makes the process quicker. On the other hand PR departments not only use their products and contents to convince the consumers, they also provide awards for contributors to make them feel privileged. Maybe this is the best part of being a member of crowdfunding processes.  Of course the awards differ in every project but the common approach at this point is making these groups feel special by showing that their help creates an amazing way for emergence of a product or service. This way both of the sides (PR departments as funding seekers and these supporter groups) feel appreciated about the crowdfunding process.

With all these additional purposes of PR departments, they are also responsible for checking ROI calculations of their efforts on social media. Calculating ROI of social networking cannot be done by just finding the number of people reached, PR departments should examine the feedbacks of their audience. They should specify the goals and objectives as the first step of calculating ROI. PR departments should be aware of the determined strategies through company’s goals. At this point defining success metrics makes specifying goals easier. These metrics for PR departments are not financial as loyalty, interaction, brand awareness, trust, reputation etc. All data should be clear to calculate the ROI correctly.

The next step is calculating costs such as people costs or technologic costs. Companies should calculate the work force they need for a social networking by calculating the effort they need to reach their goals. Companies should also calculate technologic costs such as monitoring costs, integration costs etc. Then the only thing companies should do is tracking the impacts they made on social networks maybe by checking the brand awareness or reputation. Or maybe loyalty or trust checks can be done. After figuring out the costs financially and qualitatively, PR departments can calculate their social media campaigns’ effects or ROIs in both ways.

As social networking is a very important source for PR departments, it also has security risks for companies that put their private data on social networking sites. Data and identity theft are the most important dangers that social platforms can cause. So many people have access to these sites and huge number of people has access to the enormous database of information. Tons of data can be exploited by identity thieves and can be used for illegal purposes. Companies can cause virus attacks unwillingly by using social networks sites. Or employees can cause company to loose reputation by involuntary information leakage from these sites. Also there are risks of spams, spy wares and mal wares. Companies should be aware of these dangers and maybe could prohibit some types of information sharing for their employees that can cause company to be unarmed.

ESPN’s limitation on employees’ social media activity which prohibits them to enter any kind of information unless it is for the benefit of ESPN is opposite to the aim of twitter which lets everyone to express themselves how they want to. I think choosing this way to express themselves will simply create their tweets look like ESPN homepage. Moreover, in my opinion there should be a guideline indicating some rules for using social media because of some security issues. Not like the one ESPN did, just to clarify some issues that the employees should know. They can also be some ethical issues.

Zappos’s twitter strategy includes more than 500 hundred workers using twitter. Zappos also uses separate subdomain for Twitter. Zappos employees mostly enter personal tweets just with general rules which don’t limit their individual tweets. All the workers answer the questions from the customers and communicate with their followers all the time which ultimately creates relationships through Twitter. In short they are free to tweet whatever they want opposite to ESPN. Moreover Zappos also uses Twitter as a tool to create better relationships between employees.

I think the strategy that Zappos follows is more applicable by giving their customer transparency in many ways. They let customers to know their employees and let direct communication between employees and customers which will create loyalty for their company.

In conclusion, social networking sites have become one of the most effective ways for public relations.  With these sites PR department can target the right audience to reach them effectively. Also transparency for consumers is more important than ever now. So the social platforms are used to provide transparency to consumers/employees by PR departments. Consumers and employees want to know all about the company’s finance, legal issues, their challenges and social interactions. Mutual trust can be built by providing real information about the company. And they can also create customer loyalty by this way.

The New Agenda Setter

Social media, mostly Twitter, these days seem to be influencing the current happenings in the society. To most people, the social media platform has turned out to be the preferred information centers since almost everybody tends to know what is taking place around them through the social media (I.T Plans 1). Social Media has now become the most important tool for us to be informed about the world.  We can even say that social media now has the influence power more than the traditional media. In fact, it clears the seriousness of the traditional media and creates different perceptions by offering a friendly atmosphere.

Traditional news outlets have been there for as long as one could recall. They are part of the people’s normal lives because people actively use them in getting daily news. The social media, in contrast, is different from the news outlets. Rather than just getting news from the entity, social media allow people to become news producers. Social media offers tools to people who can access the Internet to distribute their own news to any person who will read their posts, unlike the traditional news outlets (I.T Plans 1). The social media have altered the dynamic by doing away with many barriers to entry that is always dominant in news outlets. Nowadays, we wake up every day and take a look into Twitter to learn what is going on around us with a direct interaction with writers. We can check the most recent topics for that day. Twitter came up with its unique feature referred to as trending topics that incorporate anything unusual that is taking place during that day. The topics range from a wide variety of fields. They mostly incorporate something unusual that is taking place during that day. On Twitter, the trending topic is clarified by a hash symbol (#) just before the word. For instance, on mother’s day, the trending topic of the day was #Mother’s love and on father’s day, the trending topic was #Father’s love. Twitter trending topics were put into action by the twitter company to help keep Twitter users up to date about the newest breaking news or any other significant events. When an individual logs in into his or her Twitter handle, the trending topics are posted on the right side of the monitor on the sidebar. Immediately a user logs out an even bigger list of trending topics are posted, and a user can specify whether he or she desires to see weekly, daily, or even hourly results. Twitter users also have the choice of localizing the trends they view, so that the matters they see are topics that are linked to their local region. By this function of Twitter we can look into the local news and create our twits regarding to those news.

Moreover, with social media factor in our lives brings out the result of differentiation of conventional media tools. Now there is an available agenda that we cannot only be aware of by following internet news sites or news televisions. Moreover, the social media’s agenda is attracting attention by including the agenda of conventional media more rapidly with an interactive manner. At this point, forecasts concerning the end of social networks will be soon comes to mind. To assess these predictions, I think, we should consider the main concepts and functions of social media. If they were just tools for eliminating the need of socializing, it might be possible to make these negative predictions. However from day to day social media’s power on knowledge transfer and sharing functions are increasing. And the future of social network lies in the hands of the fact that these functions, this process are becoming systematized.

As we become a member of social media world, for instance the Twitter world, we can easily realize the different agenda from the news outlet’s agenda and how that world can shape the public consciousness. For example, while we were celebrating the mother’s day with our hash symbols on Twitter, people were dying in Syria. And while all the news outlets were highlighting those events nobody on Twitter was aware of problems in Syria since all the trending topics were about the Mother’s day. As an another example if we check out Turkey’s social media agenda for the last ten months we see the social media’s agenda full of sports news because of the chaos in Turkish football league. But in that time period newspapers’ highlights were totally different. The agenda on the social media helps keeping daily news fresh. However, we have to be aware of drawbacks of this systemized process. For instance for the football example, while public were busy with problem in football leagues, lots of important progresses, news had to rest in the shade as a result of the “public journalism”. As a result of this we can easily say that the most powerful element for the agenda setting is now social media. Politics becoming a part of social media is just one of the consequences of social media becoming the new agenda setter. Also, we shouldn’t forget the driving force of the social media agenda which is still the news outlets.

In conclusion, with all the consequences and drawbacks of this new situation the most important question comes to mind: Which is the real agenda? I am sure this question and answers will stay with us for a longer time. Even though, I believe the freely generated social media content reflects the real agenda more than the news outlet’s agenda. Since there is no dictating factor or an editor on social media to decide on what is the most important. Instead, people do it. People find a chance to keep the matters fresh when news outlets choose just summarizing them. And as a result, in my opinion, these different agendas tell people that the social media is more superior to traditional news outlets and with their growing publicity news outlets will only be liable to the small population that will not be using the social media. 

1984 by George Orwell

A world that contains no privacy is the main message brought by George Orwell in his famous book 1984. A different world is created, a world where love is prohibited, a world where one cannot do anything that can confront the government. However, it should be noted this is not the only message that the book intends to pass on, there is more, privacy is just but a tip of the iceberg. In this novel, the citizens have lost all their privacy to the powerful Government. The state runs everything from press to literature, books are revised and later re-revised by the state, and in this society autonomy is not an option. Social relations and also creation of comforts such as quality food and housing are things of the past. In summary, the country is at an extremely troubling time like in a war and each country is making propaganda about the imminent victory which they saw flows unendingly.

Winston Smith, the main character in the book, can be described as a rebel; this is because he is a free spirit and does what he wants despite the harsh environment, where Big Brother makes all the rules.  However, Winston harbors many fears; one of them being the fact that he might be caught doing a thing prohibited by this restrictive government. Smith lives in what seems to be a  gray life which has been created by Orwell, he can be seen to labor meekly as a revisionist in the Ministry of Truth, and when not at work he keeps to himself, he considers this as the best way to live in this extremely dangerous time. However, by the time his rebellious nature starts to manifest itself, he develops an intimate relationship with a woman in the office, Julia. This is rebellious, and it might get both Julia and Winston killed (Roddlen 84). However, they do not care, and they continue with their relationship and it can be said that it is this relationship which gives them another eye by which they see the deplorable conditions they are living in and the extremely oppressive power of the state. They push the edge of caution, and they cultivate a sympathetic relationship with a party member who is known to be engaged with a group of rebels who are against the oppressive power of the government (Roddlen 62). The group that they enter can be seen to reject the status quo and all they want is to be delivered from the extremely controlling super state. They decide to join hands and go shoulder by shoulder to fight for their freedom, however, Julia and Winston have a future which is damned, and they undergo torture and the worst punishments conceivable.

Throughout the book, it can be argued that Orwell creates a picture where the future is described as the boot and this boot is stamping the human face. The future Orwell predicts is extremely alarming and further still frightening. Orwell can be a member of the optimistic branch or the pessimistic one this is because of the fact that he presents these two aspects in his book. Orwell could have penned the novel with the conviction that indeed something that the book describes could happen. This is a society where Big Brother makes the rules and where he makes that all rules- rational and irrational alike- are implemented to the letter. This book had become a cornerstone and touchstone for the world, and, in many ways, it functions as a warning, the question being asked is whether we can prove the optimist part in Orwell correct or will the world proceed and take the books warning for certain tendencies in our society (Roddlen 37). Scholars have argued that the bloodiest century in human history has passed without annihilation of nuclear war and also without the society where big brother rules the world as envisioned by Orwell in his book. However, this is extremely debatable. However, a fresh re-reading of the book gives everyone a new insight and the new millennium might bring out things differently, and the prophecy that is contained in 1984 may come to pass.

            George Orwell brings into focus a society where there is no free expression, the media is controlled and the basic social amenities which keep the social fabric intact broken. In this society created by Orwell, there is no one who is completely free; all people are in bondage to the government. The government claims to make all decisions on the best interests of all citizens, however, this decisions appear to only benefit itself and give it more totalitarian power. The world, which Orwell had seen, may have passed in some countries such as Germany and Cuba where there was totalitarian governments. However, we cannot still rule out the possibility of Orwell’s prophecy coming to pass as the future cannot be predicted. There have been characters such as Winston who have struggled to fight totalitarian governments; these characters include Nelson Mandela, who fought the apartheid totalitarian government in South Africa. The difference between Winston and the likes of Mandela is the fact that Mandela succeeded but Winston did not. Orwell understands that the society is changing, and he reads the patterns early enough to predict the future he reads the signs and the way power is being treated and concludes that this power will come to be obsessive and the villains will be the governments themselves.

The story gets predictable as it enters the second section where Winston gets tortured. It is hard to imagine that Winston can indeed defeat the Government alone the Big Brother structure can be argued to be fool proof. This is because the government has put in methods and institutions to contain rebellious characters such as Winston. Winston discovers the reasons to why Big Brother forever remains in power and why there is the existence of a totalitarian government. He consults his O’Brien and is told frankly that the main reason as to why there is the existence of totalitarian governments is because of the fact that people want power for the sake of power. This can be described as a vicious cycle this is because when one gets power he or she craves for more, and this leads to him or her doing anything to get the extra power. The analogy of a person being given a finger and wanting the hand applies here perfectly. The Totalitarian governments are in power because of the sake of power, they do not have particular reasons, but they have power just for the sake of it. The society that is presented in 1984 seems to be oppressed and the moral and social fabric by which we define the society seems to be broken. In this society, everything that Big Brother does not like is deemed illegal. The social amenities that describe a society are all eroded, and Orwell describes this scene as the future to which the human race is struggling to reach to. This society is devoid of love, care and hospitality there is fear everywhere as one can never know when the spies of Big Brother are listening. 

Orwell wrote this masterpiece, to caution governments against excess power and further still to warn about the future of lost privacy. It can be seen that there is an inverse relationship between government’s power and privacy.  When the Government becomes too powerful, there is a very high likelihood that the citizens will lose their privacy. For example, it has been argued that the events of 9/11 made the American Government more powerful, and with this power, the government can justify any war or any invasion of privacy as trying to protect the state. It must be noted that, at the time when Orwell was writing this book, totalitarian governments were in the march all over the world and the future from a commoner’s perspective looked extremely bleak. Orwell had seen the direction future was heading and; therefore, he decided to warn future generations and future governments about the effects of having too much power on their hands.

Nowadays, as we all know the web’s new gold mine is our secrets. We are losing our privacy, our private data to Internet sites.  For instance, we all have to think about what Google knows about us. Also we all have the same feeling, disturbance, when non-government establishments (companies, schools etc.) watch our every move. Watching every step of people may help clearing illegal actions in schools, companies etc. since people will be aware of the fact that they are being watched all the time. However it will also change a person’s life by taking maybe the most important wisdom that he/she owns which is freedom; freedom of making decisions, freedom of deciding on actions, freedom of living our lives without no-one’s interrupt. And at last it will make us –lost- unfortunately.  I think as the technological innovations increase, surveillance and the methods will increase in many ways. As Jesse Schell, the former Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio said “You have no idea what books your grandparents read, or where they went on a daily basis, but these sensors that we’re going to have on us and all around us everywhere are going to be tracking and watching what we’re doing forever.”  (Dice, 2011)  We should decide on if we want to live like this. Of course, Big Brother is only an ostensible invention; an invention to show the power of the government under personified name and status. Maybe Orwell’s theory of Big Brother in 1984 is not the most appropriate way to describe the latest situation but I do believe that we should get ready to feel claustrophobic as you feel while reading Orwell’s book. Since watching by the government means destroying the concept of individuality for me. And destroying individuality will also clear the meaning of self-control; our minds will be under control by government. How can it be accepted as normal to interfere to people’s thoughts, decisions or actions?  This reminds me the Mussolini’s famous quote “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”(Mussolini)

However, today one can read the book knowing that the core of the book has not happened yet. But we have to be aware of the fact that governments decide what should be available to public and this still have to be considered as “freedom” of information. I think the most important conclusion is the question emphasized by Matthew Dowd “When as a country did we become a place where the government gets upset when its secrets are revealed but has no problem knowing all our secrets and invading our privacy?” (Dowd, 2010). But we still hope that, with our vigilance, there prophecy set in George Orwell’s book 1984 will never come to pass.

As freedom is the most important treasure for people, when you finish reading the book, 1984, you will have a better understanding of the worth of freedom. Since you will see the paradoxes revealed by Orwell by showing the real case: “freedom is slavery” and “ignorance is power”. All the images and metaphors in the utopia he created will be a hope for you but then a huge desperation. And if you can see the parallelism with today’s world conditions you can see the real big brother threat. My only complaint about the book is lack of background information about how the party imposed their regime to people. There is no information about how they obligated people to dark days. However, I think 1984 is a real masterpiece by George Orwell considering the date it is written and highly recommended for everyone.

Accounts of Journalism in the 19th Century

The two hilarious as well as intimidating accounts of the 19^th century journalism by the famous author Mark Twain that are “Journalism in Tennessee” and “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper” shed loads of light on the intellectual concerns and the well meditated public response surrounding the journalistic pursuits in the 19^th century. In these two short stories, Mark Twain’s attitude towards the 19^th century journalism is one of an active engagement marked by a peculiar blend of reverent loathsomeness, bordering on the constraints of caution and an enlightened suicide instinct.

The illustration of the 19^th century journalism in the short story “Journalism in Tennessee”, with a clear cut elaboration of the arrogant gumption and sense of sacrilegious self righteousness  marking the contemporary editors, the colored and pepper sharp register resorted to in the editorials, the impetuous and short tempered readers who responded with revolvers and hand grenades rather than mailing a simple letter to the editor, the fervid and aggressive competitors owing allegiance to the age old Western tradition of engaging in duels, and a general sense of contempt and blasphemy hovering around the print media in the 19^th century Journalism as narrated by Mark Twain is amply enough to make any modern day reader or editor go crazy. The respect and decorum with which the reputed editors addressed their colleagues as is evident in the sentence “That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren” (Twain), speaks a lot about the professionalism and journalistic restraint marking the 19^th century journalism. However, in a more serious and practical context, considering the accounts of the 19^th century journalism given by Mark Twain in his short story, there is no denying the fact that there existed a method in its madness. If one forgets the historical and chronological context marking these accounts, one could easily assume that the narrative speaks of the journalistic pursuits of the days when Adam had just been banished from the paradise and the nascent humanity was trying to come to terms with the question as to how to engage in an informed print dialogue to elaborate on and delve on the important issues of its times. Not to say that the logic and imagination of the editorial staff is sporadically and expectedly stimulated by the barging in of readers with a view. “That was the Colonel, likely. I’ve been expecting him for two days. He will be up now right away.”  (Twain) The 19^th century Tennessee journalism as portrayed by Mark Twain is a journalism that is rural in its approach, mannerism and scope, and the one which tends to inform and enlighten its readers by using a format and the language that smacks of the rawness and freshness of a grass roots level expression.

The second account of the 19^th century journalism by Mark Twain that is “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper” is an antithesis to the first one I explained above. It delves on the mind raking lack of common sense on the part of academically accomplished, refined and industrious wannabe young journalists in a print media that catered to the country affairs in a language and format that was of country origins as is explained by ,”Turnips don’t grow on trees!… The language was intended to be figurative, wholly figurative.”  (Twain) The reader response once again in this case is fervid, hot and threatening, marked by ample physical display and emotional expression, though tinged by ample common sense and a sense of practicality. In the given piece Mark Twain also speaks about the hypocrisy and fake erudition that are so common to journalism, not merely in the 19^th century South, but as well in the current times and age as is explained by the remark, “I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I have ever heard of a man’s having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper.” (Twain)

Above all, his stories delves on suffer from the sales war by cause of commercial pressure on editors. And, in a more serious and practical context, this sales war supplanted the ethical standards of journalism. Unfortunately, the focus and the benchmark in journalism became customer demands to reach larger audience together with more profit. During the time that journalism was a considerable profession to earn money even for authors known as milestones of world literature along with their masterworks; some of them assigned to this manner to earn their living and the others to be established. Mark Twain’s life can be the most crucial example according to information compiled from his biographies. As he was represented as one of the America’s most famous personalities-authors-the famous author of children novels, by cause of his attitudes towards “new journalism”, he spent his considerable life time in debts.

Overall, the 19^{th century} journalism depicted by Mark Twain in his short stories is a rugged journalism, catering to ground level issues, in a language and register of the common masses, with scarce tolerance for the urban refinements and constraints. Most importantly, journalism described in the 19^th century by Mark Twain is journalism that accrediting to larger audiences and more profits not content or quality.