Category: Uncategorized

Citizen journalism is still puzzling and fascinating to me in that its new and so interactive that there is not much policing or order to it, nor is there definition yet really. (And maybe there shouldn’t be) I do feel like it is a good change for our news in that more and more people can become involved in the news and more points of view can be conveyed. Also, stories can get out so much faster now. People can have access to the back story almost as quickly as it happens.

Right now, I feel like the credibility of citizen journalism is not all there. I feel like people will have to become more comfortable with the idea of this community news before they can complete trust it. I do think that eventually everyone will find worth in this and be able to separate the “Crop from the crap”. Once people learn how to decipher which parts of the news group reporters are reliable then the credibility will increase and people’s comfort with the whole idea will improve.

1.) In Goode’s article, I thought of a few questions concerning the idea of citizen journalism. I really enjoy sites, like Digg, that allow me to sort through the clutter and find some interesting articles to read. However, I also easily fit into the skewed user demographic. To combat this kind of elitist “aristocracy” of users, will there be an increase in Digg-like sites that cater to other diverse audiences? Will there ever be a site an aggregate news site that truly fulfills Digg’s promise of a “democratic” news source?

2.) In the Lilleker and Jackson article, they talk about how interactive media helped Barack Obama become president of the United States. It is inevitable that other future political candidates will  utilize social media in their campaigns but how will it be different from the election in 2008? The Web 2.0 world moves at a rapid pace so what new social media outlets will be utilized? And how else can candidates leverage the tools of interactivity to win elections?

1) I am writing my paper on how our definition of privacy has changed with new technologies. I wonder if our definition of news has also changed, including what we consider to be newsworthy?

2) The early part of this article mentioned the consolidation of smaller sites like flickr to giants like Yahoo and Google. A decade ago we were concerned with media monopolies and how consolidation might affect the democratic nature of news production. Is there any reason to believe that citizen driven journalism sites might face similar criticism in the future?

3) To build off of my previous question: do people care as much about possible news bias as we used to? I view corporate news organizations from a branding standpoint. Fox is a conservative brand; MSNBC is a liberal brand. Those two things are fact and so both sources are inherently reporting facts skewed with a heavy dose of political orientation and opinion. I’m actually not sure where I was going with this question but I suppose it makes me question why some people feel so apprehensive about citizen journalism as credible news sources.

1. What amateur qualities have professional media taken up?

2. How can we assess how accessible Web 2.0/3.0 tools are?

3. Does utilizing Twitter, Facebook, etc make professional/mainstream media more or less credible?

1. As an Interactive Media student, its been drilled into my head that traditional media is dying. The State of the Media website definitely gives some eye opening facts about the drastic decrease in old media, but are we really headed to a completely digital world? Can tradition media (such as newspapers, magazines and books) really be completely replaced by digital media? Will people really go this idea? Or can we commit to some kind of medium? If so, what do you think this balance of old and new would entail?

What have the big-time news and broadcast corporations done to step into the online world?  And how do you think this affects their revenue?

After asking this question earlier in the week, I’ve managed to absorb a few of the things news and broadcast corporations have done and are doing to step into the online world and continue making money.

First off, journalism isn’t dying; it’s changing. Print is fading fast, but online journalism is EVERYWHERE. The difference now, though, is that the READER can immediately respond to the WRITER. They can read an article on the screen and comment back and forth, swaying opinions and getting their two cents to be HEARD.

As this kind of feedback has become prevalent in the news world, corporations have changed their websites to allow it, and they encourage it. The back and forth conversations inspire more stories create discussions that can benefit both sides of the issue.

While the advent of producer-consumer-producer journalism helps keep stories alive, you gotta wonder how the corporation makes money when the content is free.  Well, they find ways.

Advertising is all over these websites, and a lot of it is specifically targeted to the readers of the story. Stories about sports have sporty advertisements, stories about politics have campaign links, and etc. People pay the news groups for this ad space, and the news groups keep trucking as a result.

They also make money through subscriptions. Even though print is dying, people are still paying for news. Certain websites allow the main stories to be accessed for free, but after a point, the user has to pay. Doing this often teases the user enough so that they WANT to pay for full access.  It’s brilliant, and it’s done in all kinds of websites.

So even though news seems free, the corporations are still trucking because tweak our interests and find other ways to make us pay.

What I learned Monday in class is this:

In order to combat all the free flowing, easily available, “free” information, you have to make your product or book or website SO incredible that people feel that it’s worth paying the money to get the information from you. That’s a tough battle to win. “Free” is always more appealing to the general public, even if the product may have more worth at a cost.

As a future designer of some sort, I will definitely want to market and sell my designs/products. Knowing this, I have to keep in mind that I have to go even farther and create something so amazing that people are willing to pay for it, even if they can find something similar for free.

I feel like the overall message of this week is that we’ve entered into a whole new world of “Free”. Whereas “free” used to have a catch, now “free” information can be really free because of the internet. The best example is Blogging, free publication.

So now the problem is not for the user to access the free information, but the producer to get the consumer to pay anything ever for a product when they can likely get it elsewhere for free. With google, almost anything can be found for free. So why pay?

Another topic we talked about in class today was “Waste”. This is a product of having something without a cost. When you pay for something you are less likely to waste it. In this sense, free can be harmful.

It’s something to think about. Is free worth it? Free is heavily positive for the consumer but can be equally harmful for the producer.
It’s a whole new world of free.

And the questions for this week are:

1. What consitutes “free” in our time?

2. Does the word “free” connote effective change?

3. What are the long term effects of Utilitarian and substitute based marketing initiatives?

1) Anderson brings up a good point when he says that prices for individual components are often determined by psychology and not just cost. Are there any online companies that already use this tactic? What are some ways that more online services could harness this technique to create a more sustainable economic future?

This isn’t a question, just a note: the chapter on the psychology of free is freaking fascinating. His example with $10 magazine subscriptions makes so much sense, yet I’ve never heard it broken down that way before. Great points.

2) I’m not sure how the psychological model of free relates to the vast majority of websites. Can we view an advertisement that you must watch before you view content as the penny that he discusses on page 59? Also because advertising is the most prominent way that web sites make money, do we judge the types of brands advertised as equal to the value of the web site that we are using?

3) Anderson brings up an interesting point about the value that we place on the things that we pay for. We tend not to care as much about the items that we get for free. Is this true of information as well? I can’t say that I value information that I get online any less than information that I get from the books that I buy so I wonder if there is any correlation here.