Week 8 Response

The Internet as an interactive forum has definitely changed our perception of what is newsworthy. Top viral YouTube videos are now seen regularly on CNN and so are many other viral movements when it comes to the political sphere. News organizations are hip to the fact that they must pay attention to the same things that the general population pays attention to. I think that part of this new definition has to do with our discussion of the entertainment factors of new news structures. This reminds me of Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” and I would reference him if I owned a copy of the book. We’ve built a culture based on being entertained. Realizing this makes you realize just how driven our society is by advertising and marketing efforts and how much we as parts of that society quite literally “buy” into marketing ploys.

The point that I’m making overlaps with my third question about opinion bias in corporate news networks and the branding of news networks as liberal or conservative. Because we want to be entertained by our news we have a higher threshold for bias in reporting than we used to. Opinions entertain us far more than a strictly professional reporting of the issues. Social media allow us to contribute our opinions too.

My second question involved consolidation of online citizen journal portals through sites like Google and Yahoo. I questioned whether the monopolizing Rupert Murdoch effect would ever be present in the digital community. I don’t think that this will change the way that we see individual citizen journalists but it could change the way that we view their web portals, platforms and publishing sites.  It make me think harder about sites like Digg and I can’t help thinking about the economic model of most web sites. As a site grows in popularity, it also becomes more attractive to advertisers. I think that just as politicians often pander to the highest campaign donators, news sites in the future may be essentially bribed by their largest advertisers to skew information or pursue various agendas over others.