The destruction of Haiti due to the earthquake is speechless. When this happened, I was watching various news networks to get updated stories about the earthquake. With that being said, I don’t know if the media is exploiting the Haiti Earthquake by reporting personal stories or if they are delivering personal stories to raise awareness on how severe this is. For example, is Anderson Cooper in Haiti reporting new facts to increase ratings and compete with other news networks or is he there for our sake to increase our awareness by using personal stories? Is it necessary to know personal stories of various Haitian people and use graphic pictures for competition and to capture the American audience to watch a specific news program or read a specific newspaper? In my opinion, I think all the news programs are doing both competing with one another to increase their ratings and to persuade Americans to help out in any way possible. On the positive side, relief for Haiti has been technology friendly. For example, the International Red Cross is using text messaging for people to give $10 and will show up on people’s cell phone bill. Haiti is receiving faster, quicker relief due to people having more access to social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging. As an active member of Facebook and Twitter, I have seen various tweets and status updates on both social media sites for people to help in other ways. This strategy is genius because we didn’t take advantage of the technology for Hurricane Katrina, which exemplifies how technology has become more advanced within a couple of years.
Tags: communication, current events, International PR, PR, student
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