What’s the Difference?

One of the biggest ways digital media writing differs from print is that digital writing has interaction as “Writing for Digital Media” by Brian Carroll states. The interaction has to make sure that the links have “usability” as defined by Jakob Nielsen in “Usability 101: Introduction to Usability” https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/. This essentially means that every word written has to have a purpose. Not only that, but it needs to be formatted to the correct audience and be understood with the least possible errors present. 
 Another difference is that digital media writing is easily accessible whereas print writing takes more effort to find. This can be good and bad. “What has been produced in any medium across time largely has been mediocre or worse, perhaps 90 percent of it or more” (24). These days, everything is “googled” when we do not know an answer. However, that makes it where there is too much information accessible. Thomas Jefferson stated “Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem” translated to “I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude” or “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/i-prefer-dangerous-freedom-over-peaceful-slavery-quotation. This freedom however, has made it possible for us to know how to make homemade flamethrowers, all the way up to how to commit murder, which may not be the best subjects to have accessible for everyone to view. 
 As far as composing stories on Medium, it is the same as writing for any other online media. The writing must have a point, nothing is done without links attached, and as minimal words as possible. As students, we see posting as writing directly for a grade from the professor. However this type of posting and assignment was given to us to show that we need to not only be aware of our grade, but to write to an outside audience that can view any and all of our work. Writing on a media site will make the writing eternal. Even if the site crashes or gets taken down, odds are someone, somewhere has seen and taken in the information that has been written. #QkCon