Posts Tagged: Iceland

In my first question, I asked how gatekeeping will change in the digital age.  I thought that the article’s discussion of a “gatewatcher” as opposed to a “gatekeeper” was a very good analogy.  The word gatekeeper implies to me a sense of elitism– and this is becoming the case in gatekeeping less and less.  Anyone can affect what is news, not just an elite few in a newsroom.  A good example of this is the “60 Minutes” issue a few years ago.  The program reported inaccurate facts about President Bush, and it was the blogosphere that called the prominent news empire on their mistake.  Because bloggers were up in arms about the mistake, and could prove the inaccuracies, staffers were fired and Dan Rather ultimately resigned.  These bloggers were gatewatchers– paying attention to what was reported, and making sure that it was accurate.  I think that a combination of gatekeeping and gatewatching is good model for journalism, specifically political journalism.  It keeps everyone honest, especially in topics where people are passionate and opinions can easily masquerade as facts.

In his article Lilleker says that audiences are becoming harder and harder to reach.  In my second question, I asked how audiences can be so hard to reach.  I want to expand on my point of view here.  I can see how audiences could be harder to reach purely because of the magnitude of options viewers have.  The drastic fragmentation of audiences could lead to people being harder to reach.  However, I think that with all of the technology available to us, people are just a click away.  It has never been easier to get feedback from users on stories and opinion.  And, this feedback often shapes the news.  When what I tweet shows up on the bottom of the screen on CNN– that is visible, that is making me very easy to reach as an audience member.  Thus, even though audiences are greatly fragmented, it is much easier to reach out to the audience you do hold.

In my last question, I asked if there was a link between citizen journalism participation and political participation in Iceland.  This political participation could come in the form of running for office, helping to campaign, or simply taking part in the democratic process by voting.  Indeed, it did create more interaction of citizens.  Ordinary citizens took to the web to discuss issues facing their country.  Political initiatives entered the national arena by people who did not have direct political authority.

For this week’s readings, the focus was the on the empowering of citizen’s as journalists and its effects. More specifically, the readings looked at what affects the empowerment of citizen journalism has, can, and may have on politics.

My first question of the week asked if the empowering of citizen journalist meant a draining of power from government institutions. Based on the readings for this week and our class discussions, I would say that if anything there has been a breaking of control that governments and their officials have on what information they want to get out into the public sphere. Some examples from class include the Republican National Convention’s attempt to make a site similar to mybarackobama.com and the story from Here Comes Everybody regarding the senator who expressed racist views at the birthday party of another political official.

In addition to these examples are the various news stories and youtube videos about politicians ranging from the extra audio from President Bush and Senator Kerry when they forgot their mikes were still attached to the Tea Party’s candidate Christine O’Donnell appearances on various MTV interviews. All of these examples illustrate the loosening of content control and the resulting possibilities to increase watchdog efforts on not only politicians, but on anyone involved with some form of publicity. The Brett Favre scandal comes to mind.

Unfortunately, and this is probably because this is a relatively new movement, what I have yet to see regarding the growth of citizen journalism and watchdoging is a power to help keep them in check. I have not heard of any group forming to act as a counter balance. Initially, it could be argued, the government was a counterbalance to citizen journalists since not all citizen journalists have the best intentions. However, with the drop in control the government has over certain areas I could see there being an imbalance at least temporarily. I suppose there is always crowdsourcing to make sure the facts are kept straight. There are numerous examples of it working across the internet so it is a matter of watching how crowdsourcing works in this context.

My final question for this week was related to the Shadow Government experiment in Iceland and how it might be replicated in a large country. Taking into account all of the articles this week, it looks like the Icelandic government is willingly giving power to the people; allowing them more direct input into new policies. I do not know enough about this and it is still too new to see how this will turn out. Also, presuming that it does work would it be possible to use a similar system in a country like the United States? A factor that I see being looked over by some people when they talk about using methods in other countries is how that country meshes. For example, the Scandinavian countries are relatively homoginistic culturally than say the United States. This can have a huge affect on how policies are received by a nation’s population. Either way, I am excited to see how this experiment plays out over the next few years. There is definitely potential in how they are using the increased connectedness of people.

1.  In Goode’s article he discusses the concept of citizen journalists as concept-creators. He argues that part of the art of journalism is the craft of re-telling stories rather than simply disclosing them. If we accept the fact that citizen journalists can in fact become content-creators and develop news stories for the public, do we hold them at the same level of accountability and credibility as we do traditional news outlets?

2. In Lilleker and Jackson’s article touching on interactive political communications, the authors analyze interactive tools in regards to political branding and campaigns. As they discussed the benefits of social media and online branding on President Obama’s election, it made me wonder how his team was able to manage/control so many media outlets? One of the perks of social media is the ability to control and generate content to an extent and to enable public discussions, however, one disadvantage to using this medium is the loss of control when it comes to users commenting, posting and responding in a a negative fashion. With numerous MySpace groups, Facebook pages and interactive branding features, is social media worth the risk of negative public backlash?

3.  In Lackaff and Grimsson’s article, they discuss the benefits of a website dedicated to helping citizens stay in touch with local government and current legislation. While I like the idea of having a website to help citizens stay informed, I wonder if this model would work in a country with a much larger population such as the U.S.? While the U.S. has specific political parties that could be represented as they were in the Iceland model, would a single site be broad enough to address all the political issues? Additionally, with all of the media outlets within a larger country like the U.S., would a single site like this be utilized as it was meant to be?

Week 9: Politics

Social news, citizen journalism and democracy
– Luke Goode

1. What is metajournalism and how does it play a role in our society?  Does metajournalism or citizen journalism have more positive potential in our world today?

2. Will we see a time when citizen journalism replaces professional journalism entirely?

3. Are metajournalism and citizen journalism extensions of active audience engagement or a rupture in the previously settled producer-consumer dichotomy?

Interactivity and Branding, public political communication as a marketing tool
– Darren G. Lilleker and Nigel Jackson

1. After seeing the impact of social and online marketing during the 2008 presidential election, is is safe to say that future candidates will have no shot at winning without embracing digital branding?

2. When it comes to public scrutiny of political figures running for office, have we lost sight in today’s digital world of  what the politician actually stands for compared to candidates from historic times when media exposure was much more limited (mainly print)?  Has digital exposure of candidates done more harm than good or vice versa?

Shadow Governments: An Icelandic Experiment in Participatory Governance and Social Change
– Derek Lackaff and Gunnar Grimsson

1. Why have people turned to public actors of today to be the leaders of tomorrow?  Is this fair and a smart move overall?