Category: Brad Mu

My “friends,” according to Facebook, are a pretty diverse group of people.  They span geography, time, points in my life.  I would probably be depressed to count how many people out of my “friends” I actually keep in touch with.  Friend is not the correct word though, it should be audience.  My “friends” are the people I care to keep up with or share information with.  They don’t need to be soul mates, buddies or even people I particularly like.  They serve as purpose as a “friend” for a certain reason.  They embody the potential reach that I have to broadcast information.

Danah Boyd makes an interesting point comparing journalists to those who participate in social network sites.  Journalists carefully craft a message to their audience.  People on social network sites do the same thing except it’s more casual; they’re conversing with their audience consisting of people with whom they share some connection, however faint.

Approaches to the friends you keep on social network sites could be classified as micro or macro.   A micro approach is to use social network sites to deepen the relationship with those you know and actually are friends with.  A macro approach is to use social network sites to widen one’s reach, to connect with the most people.  Naturally, one questions if one is better than the other.  They are simply different approaches.  However, the macro approach potentially has more implications.

As Boyd later says, “The Internet lacks walls. Conversations spread and contexts collapse.”  For those who choose a macro approach, they way they shape their message or more broadly, their online persona, becomes increasingly important.  The wider your audience is, the more diverse your audience is, the more important it becomes to control how your persona and message is received.

People who lack tact or don’t have a “filter” when it comes to what they say are going to run into problems as social network sites widen the reach of their message.  Previously, a gaff, faux pas or minor, insensitive comment received as humorous, have the potential to become disproportionately embarrassing or even a liability.  I think this point ties in pretty well with my first–and as yet, unanswered, point in my framing post–how has what is private versus public changed recently? Instead, I want to look at how public versus private applies to how users aggregate and interact with “friends” on social network sites.

I wondered if public versus private cuts across generational differences or user ability differences.  I think it applies to both, but in a unique way.  It exists in a balance.  Looking at what we perceive of as private versus public in the sense of social network sites, the better users, who tend to have more experience with these sites, understand potential consequences.  They understand the need to actively shape their online persona rather than simply post every photo they’ve ever taken and include in their status updates every thought that has ever entered their head.

User ability does, though, trump age differences in how users fare online–with a newly found, extended broadcasting reach.  Older users, not familiar with social network sites are weary of putting any information online.  Perhaps they feel it’s a slippery slope and they must resist the temptation to post information.  Perhaps they’re jaded and don’t want to risk having any personal information online.  While they fully understand the need to shape what is broadcast to the world about them, perhaps they don’t know how they would manage that message because they’re unfamiliar.

Younger users, out of juvenile stupidity and rampant vanity, exist on the other end of the spectrum.  They want as much information out there about them as possible.  They’re too young to understand the need to control how they’re perceived.  Young and reckless are often synonymous and absolutely in this case.

It’s ironic, young users have the ability to use these social network sites, but they don’t have the wherewithal to shape how they’re viewed by their audience.  Older users understand how best to control how they’re viewed but lack the technical ability to do so.

I just deleted a paragraph discussing whether today’s younger users will be more adept as older users in the future.  One would think younger users growing up in this new paradigm of the Internet and connectivity would make for better future older users.  But it’s also a little self-centered to think that technology will cease to continue to exponentially increase in capability.  There’s no telling where technology will take us, how advanced it will become.  One would think technology is only going to build on itself faster and faster which would mean that today’s younger users will in fact be worse future older users.  And this is a question I cannot answer.

The shifting views on what is public versus what is private…are the changing views purely a generational difference or do they cut across power users versus less adept users?

The article mentions ‘Friend’ lists.  What does it mean to be a ‘Friend’ online?

The future of journalism no longer seems so bleak.  The fears of true journalism falling to the side are unfounded.  We talk about commenting and blogging, Twitter and hyperlocal news as the downfall of professional journalism.  But the speculation misses the mark.  New developments and conventions surrounding online journalism do not necessarily detract from professional journalism, rather they add to it.  User comments on published works of journalism, whether inane back and forth, valuable questions and concerns or useful additional information only strengthens the original article.  Without the original article, the public conversation would never occur.  The user comments, the prominent placement and publication of a user’s comment adding valuable information to a story would not be possible without the original article originating from a professional journalist.  This is metajournalism.  It’s the weird in between, grey area, existing between professional journalism and citizen journalism.  Its value is hit or miss.  Sometimes insightful comments and facts, sometimes childish back and forth.

Speculating about the future.  Everyone will have some form of publication.  Everyone’s “daily life footprint” will be viewable online.  Either through direct posting, like today’s blogs or indirectly through status updates on Twitter and Facebook.  What people encounter, see, do, hear about will only be increasingly broadcast online in the future.  This being the case, citizen journalism is only going to explode in the future.  If anything, professional journalism will be more valuable in the future as users struggle to sort through the sea of information.

Like many of the fears about the future of media, once the transition is closer to complete, once the dust has settled, once new conventions are established, old practices can find their new value.  Trending on Twitter may become the future counterpart to the AP news feed.  Professional journalists will still be necessary to make sense of, simplify and relate the fragmented stories of our societies.

Metajournalism will shape what journalists report and maybe even how they report it.  But the one user with a single first hand account of an event, the one user with a valid question cannot stand on his own.  The professional journalist can.  But the professional journalist, through message interactivity can tailor his articles, his message more to the users reading his work.  Metajournalism is not the death of professional journalism, if anything it bolsters professional journalism.

Citizen journalism is more independent from professional journalism than metajournalism.  It can be and is often perceived as the alternative to professional journalism.  In a period of transition, two opposing sides have everything to loose.  The fight isn’t pretty.  Professional journalism, as a commodity, (as it always has been and will be) is reliable, insightful information; both reporting and opinion.  Citizens of a society always have a necessity for reliable, accurate information.  True citizen journalism, by definition, is the layman acting as journalist.  It inherently isn’t always reliable.  It can be, but for it to be citizen journalism it has to be fast and loose.  Once it becomes edited, fact checked, vetted, etc. it becomes professional.

Citizen journalism is a user seeing a status update that a student was hit by a vehicle, a status update that police are breaking up a protest.  It can be as simple as one sentence or a link to a five page blog post.  Yes, it informs the user but a smart user understands the necessity of professional journalism to report that event.  In this moment in time there probably are users who don’t understand this necessity; users who believe what they read of citizen journalism is true journalism.  But it’s logical to assume that in the future, as users have more experience online and become more “online worldly,” they will understand that what they are reading within the realm of citizen journalism isn’t always reliable.

What clouds the discussion of professional journalism versus citizen journalism is free journalism.  Citizen journalism is, top to bottom, 100% free.  Professional journalism has operational costs.  Professional journalists have to be paid, it is a service.  It is now the task of professional journalism, in the face of citizen journalism, to find ways to offload the price of of professional journalism.  The burden of payment has to be shifted from the old mode to a new mode.  Either someone else has to pick up the tab or the user has to feel he is paying for something different or more.  Or all professional journalism sources have to agree on a pay wall.

No matter what path professional journalism chooses, professional journalism still remains a commodity.  Will the industry shrink because of citizen journalism?  Perhaps.  Will it grow in the face of an ever increasing body of information?  Just as likely.  It is a commodity.  It goes beyond basic information or ideas which inherently have a price of $0.  It is verified, accurate information.  And that is uncommon and worth paying for.

Before we move on from Journalism, because I’m really interested in the future of journalism, I’d like to frame my blog post this week for Monday’s reading.

1.  What is metajournalism?

2.  I’ve heard the term citizen journalism thrown around a lot in the last couple months.  What exactly is it and what are the implications for traditional media?

“Shrinking newsrooms are asking their remaining ranks to produce first accounts more quickly and feed multiple platforms. This is focusing more time on disseminating information and somewhat less on gathering it…”

This point stuck out at me while reading.  It makes sense and I’m not sure I would have drilled down to this level on this concept on my own.  But on some level, I’ve been thinking about this point for a while regarding journalism.  Since reporters are spending so much time trying to disseminate information through so many different platforms and the work forces at major news sources are smaller, investigative journalism suffers.

The current economic model does not support investigative journalism.  Newspaper sales are down, advertising revenue is down and money coming in from a news source’s internet presence is minuscule.  Newspapers don’t have the money and resources to put tenured, well-paid journalists on a story for weeks or months without those reporters having something to publish.  It reminds me of the main concept of the documentary we just watched “Before the Music Dies.”  Our industries demand an immediate hit, a quick product to distribute to the public.  A product to turn a quick dollar.  Quality is lost.

Yes, television news still conducts investigative journalism.  Yes, major newspapers are able to continue investigative journalism.  But what about small town newspapers.  How are small town governments being held accountable?  What is the state of access to information in areas where the local newspaper has gone bankrupt?

It’s ironic.  In an age in which we’re more connected than ever, it is easier to spread basic news by word of mouth than ever before.  Yet that is what our news agencies seem to be giving us…basic news.  I wonder if the principles of economics will apply to the state of journalism in the future.  If investigative journalism isn’t conducted regularly, will it become a commodity?  Is it already?  Has all journalism always been a commodity?  In a society in which investigative journalism isn’t conducted, will it one day become so valuable that we’ll pay for it?

I’m fascinated by the prospects of which direction the economics of the Internet will take, especially news media.  We’ve seen online newspapers provide completely free content, then attempt at least a partial pay system, then return to a wholly free system.  We’ve seen Napster – which everyone used – followed by Itunes.  A free system accepted as the norm followed by a pay system as the norm.  Which direction are we headed?  Why is it that some electronic books sold by Amazon for their revolutionary Kindles are more expensive than print versions which require so much additional manpower and lets not forget the costs of physical distribution.

Will we see a system in which we no longer use credit cards but rather our smart phones with our financial information encoded within to pay for products and services?  Will we all have to pay a measly $.50 to have access to a full single issue of the New York Times?  An issue which now becomes undoubtedly one’s own?

Are the economic problems of our time a result of the massive shift we’re witnessing right now?  When things settle and businesses find their way to conduct business via the Internet profitably, can we expect a more stable economy?  Perhaps a return to the proliferation of work seen during the decades of the 60s through the 90s?

1.  Lessig talks about John Phillip Sousa’s fear that culture will become less democratic as “fewer and fewer would have the access to instruments, or the capacity, to create or add to the culture around them; more and more would simply consume what had been created elsewhere.”  What role does the Internet play in this assumption?

2.  Lessig talks later in the section Remix: Text about how people can wade through this vast sea of text and information.  He mentions three layers that help individuals filter what is important from what is garbage.  What are the three layers?  Will there be more layers in the future?

1.  I’m interested in the emergence of the “networked information economy” and how the “broad range of laws and institutions” will affect this emergence.

2.  How will the “diversity of production strategies” influence “user-driven innovation” and the open system of sharing ideas, technologies (shareware, etc.) that the Internet is becoming?

3.  In the chapter Publish Then Filter in “Here Comes Everybody” Shirky talks about how, formerly, filtering the good from the mediocre happened before publication.  He says now filtering is “increasingly social, and happens after the fact.”  How is this done?

1. In the section “Technology and Mass Media” Rosenberry and Vicker talk about the history of mass communication.  In their look at the different mediums of mass communication over generations they bring forth a valid point without saying it; the content is roughly the same from one age to another, all that changes is the medium.  With this in mind, I do believe older mass communication theories are relevant today.  What is different is that we’re a “media saturated society.”  It is difficult to take a simplistic theory from 70 years ago and apply it to a technologically advanced society.  But these older theories still apply today.  Whether the technology “mediates” the message by printing press or by a hyper mobile web, the content of the messages is still the same, it’s effects on an individual can be the same. Look at Bullet Theory for example.  With the wealth of information individuals have access to today, it’s harder to immediately, powerfully, directly and uniformly effect an audience.  Individuals to verify on anther news source website.  We can easily call someone or log on to social media.  The War of the Worlds incident happened because people had only one method of quickly receiving information.  That’s not the case today.

Mass media of previous paradigms did exist within a “one-way flow.”  The message was sent out and received.  However, with much of today’s mass media, we’re seeing a two way flow or a multi-directional flow.  A theory of mass media may still be relevant in interactive media but to a lesser degree if the theory rested upon the idea of a “one-way flow.”   Rosenberry and Vicker also look at impersonality/anonymity.  This concept is related to the one-way flow.  “The creator of the message does not know who might receive it.”  With the advent of social media and the ability to know one’s audience, this idea of impersonality/anonymity is starting to fade.  Theories resting on this idea may not be as relevant today as they once were.  The section titled “New Media Blur the Lines” discusses computer mediated communication as interpersonal communication.

2. Logically, propaganda’s success rests on one major requirement; control of a medium.  Similarly to the War of the Worlds incident, it would seem logical that propaganda would only be successful if the audience had limited means of receiving information. If a medium is controlled, the person in power has the ability to shape how the audience views the world and their situation. But in the age of the internet, anyone can blog and publish their thoughts and experiences.  Individuals have access to almost every news source available.  With this in mind, it would seem propaganda is a thing of the past.

But it isn’t.  Look at current politics in the US.  Look at misinformation circulating online surrounding issues of healthcare, immigration, even the citizenship of President Obama.  This misinformation isn’t resonating with just a select, extremist slice of the population.  Average, normal (although probably not highly sophisticated) individuals are being convinced of utter lies.  How can this be in a technological culture in which news sources abound?  At this point I think I’m veering into psychology, but I believe even though people have numerous avenues to obtain accurate information, they stay with the one they feel the most comfort and familiarity.  Is this a result of older generations accustomed to being spoon-fed news?  Or maybe this is Joseph Klapper’s ideas in effect that the media reinforces attitudes people hold.  Will younger generations be more active in checking different sources?

I’m not sure it’s as simple as controlling a medium.  Adolf Hitler’s controlling of the radio in Germany was not the sole reason why an entire population allowed the systematic extermination of another population.  There were a number of socio-economic factors that played in.  With that in mind, maybe we begin to understand misinformation in US politics in current socio-economic conditions.

And what about smaller matters?  Jimmy Carter carrying his own luggage to appear as “plain folk.”  Propaganda on this level will certainly continue in the age of the internet.  In fact the internet may even aid propaganda on this level.  Take celebrity for example – for which we have an unreasonable fascination.  The internet fosters a connection between determined broadcasters and interested users.  The internet allows us to create a persona that may not be completely accurate.  Perhaps the age of the internet will be the age of propaganda.

3. Fourth Estate theory says “the media are expected to fill the Fourth Estate functions of serving as a government “watchdog” and providing accurate, credible, relevant and sufficient information that becomes the basis for public opinion.”  This theory along with the marketplace of ideas is central in American media.  In 1947 the Hutchins Commission elaborated on this basic idea with four main points that were aimed at contributing to the “maintenance and development of a free society.”  The ideas of the Hutchins Commission brought about social responsibility theory.  Rosenberry and Vicker include a quote from Siebert, Peterson and Schramm “Social responsibility theory holds that the government must not merely allow freedom; it must actively promote it.”

Will the internet help social responsibility theory?  Will it aid in society being as it should be?  I think it’s too early to tell.  The internet is still finding its way into our lives and into our society.  If it isn’t already, it’s becoming the primary means of mass communication.  I believe at some point it will have to be regulated in some manner; take radio and television for example.  Either through self regulation or governmental.  Regulation of the internet with public approval would be tricky.  But it may become necessary for whatever reason.

Much of the internet serves the same purposes of prior technology and mass communication.  Everyone likes to compare bloggers to the pamphleteers of revolutionary America.  We read the same content online that was once found in newspapers.  What is different is the discussion, the back and forth.  That is what is new and different, what has the ability to help society be as it should be.  We’re better able to share thoughts than ever before.  So with this easy access to information and then the ability to converse on the subject of that content, I do believe the internet can enhance society.

We talk a lot about old theories, Bullet Hypodermic Theory, Public Opinion and Progaganda Theory, etc.   Do they still apply today, and if so, how?  Has the huge shift in communication paradigms at all affected how these theories are applied?  And if they are still relevant, where is their place in current mass media theory?

Propaganda is a loaded word, but fascinating to think about.  The idea of propaganda as being effective in today’s world is hard to imagine.  Look at the shift in advertising as a prime example; individuals are more informed than ever.  What is propaganda’s role in the current paradigm?

What are the normative theories of social responsibility?  Fourth Estate Theory, theories of the press.  Does the internet and its greater communication abilities enhance how society should be?