New and Old Media, Participation, and Information

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Syllabus


March 1

The profusion of low-cost media production and distribution has led to the rise of an alternative citizen-led media sector. Is this a passing fad of enthusiastic amateurs or the beginning of a fundamental restructuring of the way media and news are produced and consumed? Will the current trends lead to more information, better information, and better informed people or to an infinite stream of unreliable chatter? Will it lead to a more politically engaged populace or to an increasingly polarized society that picks its sources of information to match its biases and ignorance?


Readings

Optional Readings


Class Discussion

Links from Class

Slides for class: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is2011/Image:IS2011-3.1.11-New_and_Old_Media.pdf


The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers article made me ever more thankful for my International Herald Tribune (the international edition of the New York Times). Top reporting, top writing but at a top price (3 euros – approximately $4.00 cover price), it has become a luxury product targeted to a specific and affluent international readership. I was horrified when it started including advertisements on the front page, and worse, on the once sacred editorial page - then I understood why: survival.Mary Van Gils 19:03, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Since we are going to talk about the old and new media, I thought that we should have an idea about the sequence of events that have much contributed to the technological development of the internet. By knowing the rate of improvement in hardware and infrastructure, we can hopefully realize an impact the internet made on legacy media and what role did the government play in the downfall of the American journalism. Internet Timeline: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ --VladimirK 18:29, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I can readily sympathize with this week’s selected authors. It is unquestionable that the state of journalism is declining, and it was declining long before the Internet was to available to blame. I had been involved in local politics from the mid 1980’s until a few years ago. At the start there were always 3 or 4 reporters attending the Selectmen’s and Finance board meetings, and 1 or 2 at every other board or commission meeting. By the time I “retired” from politics only one local paper remained. The sole reporter couldn’t (and still can’t) attend the meetings so he would call the local officials to ask what transpired, then write the report based on what he was told without any further fact checking. Often the newspaper reports are wildly inaccurate. While the newspaper was the government watchdog of the past, today it is usually the lone gadfly who attends all the meetings, asks the tough questions, and does whatever he can to make his voice heard. The Internet is his most powerful amplifier. -Chris Sura 00:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The fact that journalism was already declining long before the widespread of the Internet was novel to me. I assumed that emergence of citizen-led media is taking significant roles of reporting and distributing information away from the conventional media. Was it a lame excuse of the existing journal entities to explain their reduced power which is caused by factors other than the bloggers? --Yu Ri 09:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

It is interesting that a proposed solution to the decline of American journalism, is to look at government subsidies. Would the fact that journalists are subsidized by the government in some fashion, make it a target for political and other influences? What would stop Congress or the President from cutting off subsidies, or having undue influence on an investigation by a reporter for an article they did not like? The reality is that the world is changing rapidly, and that includes the way we consume information. Social media is what helped fuel revolutions across Tunisia, and the Arab world. This was done by empowering the people with information; not through state subsidized news outlets... Earboleda 17:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the frustrating elements of the discussion of the decline of journalism is that which focuses on global coverage; I am unconvinced that rhetoric regarding pre-Internet global coverage is anything more than nostalgia. Even the major bureaux often lacked (and still lack) the local knowledge required to cover a locale accurately. In that sense, I think it's important to note how social media, citizen journalism, hyperlocal journalism, and other forces have improved upon global coverage of news.

The Nation piece touches on this, certainly, but I don't think it digs deep enough into the issues surrounding international correspondents and fixers. Jyork 18:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

There is an interesting case on appeal in the Belgian courts regarding Yahoo’s aggregate news service that could have further European implications. A Belgian court ruled in 2007 that Google News’ publishing links breached Belgian copyright laws. See http://www.bloomberg.com/news - search Google Belgium 2011-02-24 “Google Belgian Copyright Case Could Set Europe Policy”


In the United States the way one of the founding fathers envisioned free speech was that “the people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”'

While the premise of this argument exists in America today, I am unconvinced in the current culture that the majority of citizen “journalism” promotes and/or moves facts forward to actually enhance the greater good in many cases. We continue to see this during times of difficulty where inaccurate and misleading information is relayed through one source or another. I think the larger argument that needs to be made is that the separation between opinion and fact is almost virtually extinct in the media today. In the age of the five-second headline of hyperbole the “quick hit” is king over the investigated fact.

There are only a few large corporations that own the media outlets and they have control over the way news is relayed. These organizations often relay “news” into the public forum through the prism of political bias and financial expediency. http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main

On September 22 2009, Clay Shirky spoke at the Shorenstein Center on accountability journalism. Shirky noted "we are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism because the old models are breaking faster than the new models will be put in their place." He goes on to note that decisions about what news is being desired, “is now being made more by the consumer of the news than by the producer of the news.” In an effort to keep up with that constant appetite, media organizations have become sloppy in their reporting. 

 1.  James Madison, House of Representatives, June 8 1789
 2.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnW2Lv8aFGs

Camcloughlin 21:43, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

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