The news world is constantly changing, especially when it comes to helping causes such as Haiti. After the era where you had to actually watch the news to get the news, I remember the day where I would be watching a show and a news story would scroll across the screen. Years later, not only would the breaking story show up, but then a number or a website would scroll across after that one could contact to send money to the relief effort. Well now, journalism has taken it one step farther. While watching the NFL, Minnesota Vikings vs Dallas Cowboys game today, a box at the bottom of the screen popped up. This box gave the opportunity for one to text the number 90999 to the U.S. Department of State, and by texting this number, $10 would be taken from your phone bill to help Red Cross Haiti relief efforts. On Friday, it had raised over $8 million, and the number continues to rise substantially. Besides the advertisements on television for texting 90999 to help, blog spots have also made a huge difference in this project. About 3% of all blog posts (including this one) have something to do with the earthquake in
Haiti, with "tweets" from Twitter being the leader. The Red Cross on Twitter has gained more than 10,000 followers since the earthquake, which is clearly much more than the usual 50-100 a day. Whether it is popping up during a football game or on your Twitter homepage, the advertisement to text 90999 to help the Red Cross seems to be everywhere. Journalism, along with technology, has taken the relief effort one step further, helping an astounding number of victims from the earthquake.
1 comments:
This is really interesting information and I'm glad I was informed of this. It's great that the media can help to get the word out about wonderful causes like this one, and that the phone companies are willing to do their part to help.
It's also interesting how a tragedy like this can bring such large attention to Twitter accounts such as The Red Cross. The fact that people are going to resources like Twitter and Facebook to talk about the Haiti earthquake shows just how much our world is changing through technology.
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