Are you feeling like yourself again, or someone else?

In so many ads today, someone says that, after taking some drug, he or she feels like him or herself again.
What a revelation! “I took kalipentamyzine, and I feel like myself again!”
Who would you expect to feel like? What if I said, “I took kalipentamyzine, and I feel like Ashton Kutcher again!”
I don’ t think [...]

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Media relations in a Web 2.0 world

My Organizational Communication Master’s class discussed media relations last night. It was enlightening.  Most all of the students are working practitioners attending night classes to earn their Master’s degree. Their media relations experience runs from none at all to their major job responsibility.
I ask this question of and for them: In the world of Web 2.0, what [...]

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Studying online conversation in the Twitter generation

The major advance is the internet, and after 20 years (has it really been that long?) we are seeing parts of our society crumble around us as the new processes — effortless information sharing, hierarchy-destroying collaboration, online community-building and citizen journalism — begin to take hold.   Ron Shewchuk
This quote from Ron’s timely and insightful comments [...]

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Atlas is beginning to shrug

Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged, reads like today’s news.
In Atlas Shrugged, the country is in an economic downturn marked by business closings and massive unemployment. Many other countries are destitute and are becoming socialist states. In the U.S., Colorado is the last great industrial center. Leading the charge is Ellis Wyatt’s productive oil field, made [...]

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Content analysis used in Communication/PR/IMC shows up in education qualitative research, too

In reading Merriam (1998) Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education, I ran across an old friend — content analysis.
In a chapter on mining data from documents for qualitative research, Merriam discusses content analysis for qualitative case studies. As a communication/PR/IMC professional, content analysis is a familiar frequently used tool for determining what is [...]

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What is the sound of birds chirping?

Twitter.
For some strange reason, I looked up the word “twitter” in Webster’s New College Dictionary, and look what I found — “twitter”, as a verb, means:
 1. To utter a succession of light chirping or tremulous (vibrating) sounds.
2. To titter.
3. Tremble with nervous agitation or excitement.
As a noun:
1. The light chirping sounds made by certain birds.
2. Light tremulous [...]

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Ubiquitous chipotle

Is it just me, or does it seem to you like the word “chipotle” is everywhere these days?
As a friend from Tennessee asked with tongue firmly in cheek on a recent visit to Northern Virginia: “How did we ever live without chipotle?”
That wry rhetorical question says it all.

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