AirTalk for Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Contact: Producers Joel Patterson, Jasmin Tuffaha & Anny Celsi

626-583-5100

SCHEDULE FOR AIRTALK WITH LARRY MANTLE

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

 

* * GUEST HOST IS PATT MORRISON * *

11:07 – 11:20
Topic: OPEN
Guest: TBA

* * PITCH BREAK * *

11:26 - 11:39
Topic: Are online reviews trustworthy? If you own a business, you know how important word of mouth is. As consumers, we are making more and more of our purchasing decisions based on what other consumers say...and not what advertisers tell us. Many websites have sprung up to meet those needs, providing consumer reviews on everything from restaurants to hotels to local services. A 2012 report from market research firm Nielsen found that 70 percent of consumers said they trust online reviews, a 15% increase from 2009. But the ecosystem is rife for abuse. Stories abound of unscrupulous companies and manufacturers paying people to write rosy reviews.  And one researcher says as many of 30 percent of all reviews online could be fake. So who can we trust as consumers? How can we sniff out bogus reviews? What are consumer review sites doing about this growing problem?

Guest: Bing Liu, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago.

BY PHONE

Guest: Adam Medros, Vice President of Global Product at TripAdvisor

BY PHONE

* * PITCH BREAK * *

11:44 - 12:55
Topic: Are online reviews trustworthy? [CONT’D]
Guests: see above


12:07 – 12:20
Topic: OPEN
Guest: TBA

* * PITCH BREAK * *

12:26 – 12:39
Topic: Letters to Newtown and the psychology of grieving online: In the months since the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown, CT has been inundated with mail. Gifts and letters from around the world flooded in, filling warehouses. Memorials cropped up all over town, in front of churches and on people’s lawns, and though many of the larger memorials were taken down not long after the shooting, reminders of the December 14th shooting remain. Ross MacDonald, “Mother Jones” contributor and Newtown resident, watched as memorials were erected and dissembled -- when the town made plans to incinerate the letters sent to use in a permanent memorial, he decided to archive the material. What began as a project co-sponsored by blogging site Tumblr became a larger collaboration with the town library and the Smithsonian museum. Online grieving is not unique to large-scale tragedy. Social media has changed the way many people mourn. Dealing with loss has come to include announcements about difficult events, handling the online footprint left behind by a lost loved one, and coping with the fallout on social media. Have you dealt with the grief process online? Do you prefer privacy while you mourn, or can the support of an online community be beneficial? Is group grief a natural impulse? Is it healthy?

Guests:
Dr. Karen North, Director, Annenberg Program on Online Communities, USC Annenberg
School for Communication and Journalism; psychologist specializing in online communities

BY PHONE

Ross MacDonald, Mother Jones contributor and creator of the Letters to Newtown project

BY PHONE

* * PITCH BREAK * *

12:44 – 12:55
Topic: Letters to Newtown and the psychology of grieving online [CONT’D]
Guests: see above


Anny Celsi

Producer - AirTalk with Larry Mantle
89.3 KPCC | 89.1 KUOR | 90.3 KVLA
Southern California Public Radio
474 S Raymond Ave
Pasadena, CA 91105

Desk: 626-583-5363| Cell: 323-842-6807
Studio: 866-893-5722

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