About 2 weeks ago I found an article online that talked about conditions in hotels at Sochi. Here is the article. The article talked about journalists at Sochi finding themselves in less than desirable conditions in terms of hotel rooms. The journalists in the article “talked” about their hotel horror experience by tweeting them. One journalist had a tweet on how they were told that they shouldn’t wash their face with the hotel water and that tweet was accompanied with a picture of the hotel water – which was a yellowish amber color.
What surprised me about this article was how the journalists tweeted their experiences and although the things that they tweeted about were serious and dangerous living conditions, it almost seemed as if they are displaying their experiences in a comedic way. My question is, when sharing experiences through social media technology, are things serious things taken more lightly? I ask this because in the article it felt like the journalists were making jokes out of their hazardous living conditions instead of legitimately showing that it is a problem.
I feel as if the reason many reporters make “jokes” out of these types of situations is because they receive more attention when they do. For example i saw this exact tweet as well but not in the “news” per-say, i saw it on a comedic show called THE DAILY SHOW with Jon stewart. If this author was to never make a joke and just tell it how it was it probably wouldn’t have received as much attention and a broader audience as it did and not have been used in the show i watched.