Page 213 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

180 Part 3 Putting Theory Into Practice

sure you have current and relevant information from authoritative and accurate
sources. The New York Times, for example, offers both podcasts and RSS feeds.

User-Powered News Sites
An interesting variation on search engines like Google and wikis are user-
powered news sites. For example, Digg.com allows a user to post content that is
then rated by other users. As their Web site explains: “Digg is a user driven social
content website. . . . Well, everything on Digg is submitted by our community (that
would be you). After you submit content, other people read your submission and
Digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is pro-
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moted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see.” So rather than relying
on some editor to rank stories (as a newspaper would) or on a computer algo-
rithm (as does Google), Digg relies on its users to post news stories and then
relies on other users to give their evaluation. You can search the news by topic and
then arrange the results by most Diggs to fi nd the articles that were found most
useful by the community of users. You can link back to the stories that are most
relevant to your topic and also give your own opinion as to whether or not you
“Digg” it. For example, in January 2007 we found that the most “Digged” article
on global warming was an AP report on an allegation that a major oil company
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had given millions to groups in an effort to discredit global warming. Digg.com
is useful as a different way to search for information on topics, but you still have
to assess whether or not the articles that it points to are from credible sources. A
similar Web site primarily useful for science and technical news is slashdot.org.

YouTube
One of the most popular and now copied Web sites is YouTube. It allows users
to post videos (often of themselves) on the site for anyone to view. Most of the
material on the site is entertaining or just odd,
but some important videos have found their
way onto this site. For example, Senator George
Allen of Virginia, who was widely seen as a
shoe-in for reelection in 2006 and a likely presi-
dential candidate for 2008, was videotaped (by
a campaign worker for his opponent) making
what were interpreted as racially insensitive
remarks. The story was soon picked up by ma-
jor news organizations. Not only were Allen’s
hopes for a presidential campaign destroyed,
he was narrowly defeated for reelection in a
race that tipped the balance of the U.S. Senate
from Republican to Democratic control.
YouTube is a great source for fi nding video
material for use in speeches or as background
material. For example, a search for videos on
global warming located everything from the
trailer to An Inconvenient Truth to a spoof mak-
YouTube has become a popular site for viewing video clips
submitted by users. ing fun of Al Gore. Just as with Wikipedia and
other sources where the content is not screened