Energy Sustainability in Richmond, Virginia

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Energy Sustainability in Richmond, Virginia

Contextual Impact of Social Media

A category 5 hurricane named Typhoon Haiyan hit directly on Tacloban, Phillipines. A devastating tragedy that happened to people just like you and me. I can't even begin how to explain how horrible I feel as I observe each picture of the aftermath. Dead bodies on the side of the road, peoples homes and special belongings are thrown everywhere, wet and destroyed.

Typhoon Haiyan is the strongest hurricane ever recorded in history. Winds were near 200 miles per hour that nothing could stick to the ground. 80% of homes were flattened, buildings were destroyed, power lines were cut, and landslides and floods formed. Tacloban did not declare marshall flow allowing people to lood without getting seriously hurt. 

The typhoon is number one on every news station and website but I noticed that it is not even trending topic on twitter when I was on later on in the afternoon that it had happened. You would think that it would be a hot topic to talk about all day maybe even all week. I also trolled around facebook and saw not one post talk about anything related to the Philippines. My array of facebook friends are either not keeping up on their news or just do not care to post about it. On the other hand, I may have not seen posts because I might have not scrolled down long enough.

I checked twitter the following morning and noticed that #Philippines was trending again but not number one. Scanning through the tweets there was a lot of "pray for Philippines" or donating links but it makes me wonder if people really are. I feel like over here in America it is important and sad to us but some people move on from it a few minutes later and keep surfing the net after viewing it. I'm telling you it was not being talked about on my facebook or trending on my twitter, what is that telling me? If something just as big happened here in the US I wonder if Australia or another random country would be freaking out and running around to see how they could help out or if they would just say "Oh no how terrible" and then just move on.

I'm waiting to see the next big move towards the Philippines and see if they are going to involve celebrities. A familiar face telling you what happened and trying to make you feel bad and get you to donate money that will be sent straight over there to help someone in need. Or I wonder if they will skip the celebs and go straight to slow motion shots of people suffering. In the end it will most likely be both. So I decided to get on the most followed celebrity I could think of and that was Justin Bieber. I don't like him but he is rather influential amongst teens or teen girls to be exact. I wanted to see if he had anything to say about the Philippines. I forced myself to read through his annoying tweets from the past few days and you know what I found . . . nada. Just him talking about his new album coming out and every other tweet about how he had food poisoning, boo hoo. I looked up the other most followed twitter celeb, Katy Perry. I didn't have to scroll through anything because her latest tweet was actually about how one could help the children that were affected by the typhoon and a direct link to help.

I then searched celebrities + Typhoon Haiyan and I was so happy to see that there were many other celebrities who urged people to help and pray and actually mentioned something to do with the Philippines. Some even wanted the fans to get involved with their tweets and retweet them so their followers and then their followers could pass along the word.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-haiyan/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews
http://www.nbcnews.com/entertainment/celebrities-urge-twitter-followers-help-wake-typhoon-haiyan-2D11577483

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Syria

To be honest I was one of the many who did not know anything about what was going on in Syria. I don't keep up with the news and so I decided to just watch Obama's speech on Syria and then find out more afterwards. I agreed with almost everything Obama said in his speech, I felt like it was the right way to go especially if his decision isn't going to be made alone but with the support of congress and America. I then afterwards found out that for the past few weeks he has been wishy washy with his decisions and that not too long ago he was wanting to bomb Syria and make history by making this decision by himself. Luckily he didn't and has now changed his mind and asked for support. I went on to Twitter to see what people had to say about the whole speech and Obama and Syria. Tons of people on Twitter were nothing but negative and a bit mean towards what Obama had to say. After reading through most of the #Syria and #Obama tweets I can honestly say I don't know who to believe. I would hope that Obama will stick to what he said in his speech and follow through but if people are being negative towards him through social media and they follow him more than I do then who knows if he will continue to be all talk.

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