View source for Informing the Public in the Internet Age

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'''April 16'''

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?

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== Readings ==

* [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Overview_MR.pdf Persephone Miel and Rob Faris, News and Information as Digital Media Come of Age] (read executive summary)

* [http://law.wlu.edu/deptimages/Law%20Review/68-2Jones.pdf RonNell Anderson Jones, Litigation, Legislation, and Democracy in a Post-Newspaper America] (Section I only, remaining optional)

* [http://transition.fcc.gov/osp/inc-report/INoC-Executive_Summary.pdf Federal Communications Commission, Information Needs of Communities] (read executive summary, skim overview)

* [http://banyanproject.com/index.php?title=Main_Page Banyan Project, Introduction and Overview]

* [http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/111660-muckrock-city/ Chris Faraone, MuckRock City (''Boston Phoenix'')]

* [http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/from-cold-calls-to-community-building-propublica-tries-to-make-crowdsourcing-more-meaningful/ Adrienne LaFrance, From Cold Calls to Community Building, ProPublica Tries to Make Crowdsourcing More Meaningful (''Nieman Journalism Lab'')]

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3TRKPSmoZk Brendan Nyhan, Biases Abound] (video, watch all)

== Optional Readings ==

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXZAIrDI66E&playnext=1&list=PL1E8598023D37F7AC&feature=results_video Jonathan Zittrain, 2009 Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press] (the lecture starts at 19:45)

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== Videos Watched in Class ==

== Links ==

== Class Discussion ==
<div style="background-color:#CCCCCC;">'''Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (<nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>) to the end of your contribution.  This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: [[User:Asellars|Asellars]] 15:29, 21 January 2013 (EST)'''</div>

I tend to agree with the gist of the Miel and Faris, Berkman Report that argues there is a merging of traditional media reporting and online independent blogging. For instance, today at around 2:45 the terror attack occurred in Boston. At 3:15 I saw a notice on twitter and googled it to see what was happening. None of the first page of google links were to major media resources, they were all to minor blogs that were carrying the story which is where I got my information. So for breaking news it can be quite often a minor blogger or on facebook/twitter where a story breaks for the first time. Conversely, I've noticed a marked decline in the online stories of the traditional Canadian Newspaper sites. I often go to CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) to browse the news and I've noticed quite often that they revise their online stories continually to add a fact here and there like a blog. In doing so they often make mistakes in their haste and it seems as though their articles are of no higher quality than an independent bloggers... [[User:Joshywonder|Joshywonder]] 20:59, 15 April 2013 (EDT)

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Like everyone else, I can't stop thinking about the tragedy in Boston today. The event was particularly timely for a class about journalism, because it is a pretty telling case study about informing the public in the Internet age. Indeed you could see many of the positive and negative effects of public participation in media, as presented by the Berkman report from Persephone Miel and Robert Faris and the FCC report from Steven Waldman. 

I  initially heard about the explosions on Facebook from a post by a friend based in NYC who was watching a live stream of the event. Then I immediately searched online to find out more information from a reputable news source. Even though social media broke the news for me, I still needed a journalist for verification and confirmation. But the New York Times and Boston Globe only had basic, incomplete information at this point. So I jumped back over to social media, where information was readily and rapidly flowing. However, finding credible information and assembling a coherent report of what had happened turned out to be incredibly challenging. Twitter became a hot bed of misinformation (i.e. of alleged perpetrators), insensitive scheduled tweets, graphic images I wanted to avoid, general shock, speculation, retweet hoaxes, and conflicting reports. It felt like a highly visible news room flooded with all the crap that usually gets filtered out. One tweet even read, "everyone just chill for a sec until confirmed reports come in."  

So right away, I could see the advantages and disadvantages of participatory media outlets and traditional news outlets. I needed professional journalists to confirm information for me, to give me an objective  and authoritative source. But the news outlets moved too slow. So I turned to social media to give me updates and reactions, even if they were inaccurate. For me, any information was better than none at the time. Ultimately, I found myself glued to CNN while perusing Twitter and Facebook and texting everyone I knew. It felt as though the participatory and  traditional media were working in concert with one another, satisfying different needs. Looking back now, I think there is a place for both traditional journalists and community driven-news so as long as each focuses on what they do best (news outlets: slower but accurate reports, social media: speedy but not always accurate reports) and not try to serve the function of the other.  The Banyan Project seems like an interesting hybrid. Anyway, my heart goes out to the victims on this sad day. [[User:Asmith|Asmith]] 00:37, 16 April 2013 (EDT)

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When I read the assignment summary/description for this week which included a reference to the alternative, citizen-led media sector and asked, "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?", my instinct was to answer with the one word: both. And when I say "both", I mean that what we are seeing happen with media as a whole is the inclusion of enthusiastic amateurs as well as a fundamental restructuring of the way media and news are contained. One only needs to look at the number of direct references in the so-called mainstream, traditional media to social networking. The initial coverage of yesterday's bombing of the Boston Marathon including repeated use of amateur (presumably cell phone) video and still shots by the mainstream media as well as repeating twitter posts. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that as the old, traditional media begins to enjoy less consumption (Newsweek gave up its print edition this last December and long gone are the days of the three main news media TV channels - ABC, CBS and NBC, who have all lost their share of the market to the likes of CNN, FOX, MSNBC and online sources) while relatively new media (or at least new compared to the traditional sources) such as Drudge, Huffington Post and any of the millions of bloggers continue to enjoy large and in some cases constantly increasing shares of the market. As the Miel and Faris article states, "The distinctions between professional and amateur are blurring, and the definitions of commercial, public, and community media are shifting." It's no longer one or the other, but how much of each component does anyone news/media source choose to use in order to attract information consumers. I would even throw the spectrum of hard news versus opinion in there. I also think the Miel and Faris article summarized it well when they said: "Understanding these trends requires a broader and more holistic view of the media environment than isolating new or 
participatory media, terms that are losing value as meaningful distinctions." 


The Jones article stated that, "Scholars and commentators have been closely monitoring this decline for several years, and much has been written about the ways in which the demise of traditional mainstream media might negatively impact the flow of information to the public, and ultimately undermine the strength of our democracy."  I disagree. Information consumers must simply learn to adjust their understanding of the sources of the information they receive. It is absolutely essential to be critical of every source of information and attempt to analyze it objectively and without personal bias if the truth is ultimately the goal. It's not as if the traditional print media was immune to bias or inaccuracies. Facts are obviously of value. Opinions are also of value if they are viewed as such. The internet and "citizen journalists", bloggers and individual producers of information have value in that they bring all of these to the table and therefore it becomes critically important to discern what they have to offer before properly consuming it. The most important (and critical to democracy) things that can happen is to be able to draw a distinction between hard news (i.e. what happened) and opinion/editorial pieces. Very often today we have people wearing two hats - they are both consumers as well as producers. And sometimes one effects the other.[[User:CyberRalph|CyberRalph]] 09:42, 16 April 2013 (EDT)

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