Tuesday, April 28, 2009
PLACEHOLDER
Alright. I hate to slack off already, but I was planning on finishing my blog post after getting back from My Bloody Valentine (!!!) in Seattle, but the show just wiped me out. I'll have it up first thing in the morning. Cheers!
Monday, April 27, 2009
user-based content pt. 1
On the way down to My Bloody Valentine last night, a friend of a friend and I got into a discussion about online media. It was mostly about what the future of web content is going to be. If web 1.0 (I hate these terms) was static information being presented to you (like, say, an encyclopedia), and web 2.0 is the progression to "bottom up" production, with users beginning to supply, dictate and shape content, what will web 3.0 look like? 1The other dude thinks it's going to be completely decentralized media, with hubs being focused around individual people's profiles a la facebook or myspace. I think dude could not be more wrong.
In my last post, I briefly mentioned the inherent dangers of building media models that are built on user-generated content. It's true that there are plenty of emerging models that are using this model to a lot of benefit - Youtube is probably one of the greatest examples of this, as are wikileaks and wikipedia. However, while these sites may have featured articles or videos, there's a difference between providing information and entertainment, as these sites do, and providing news. For starters, these sites have no responsibility to filter content for the most relevant stories of the day - which is a good thing, because the sheer volume of content would render that almost impossible.
For user-based news models, it's clear that people are still figuring how to incorporate it within traditional news formats. CNN's iReport, for example, does some interesting things with user-based content, but with a lot of clips, people still seem to be operating under the assumption that iReport is just another video blog service.
That's not to say that getting people's feedback isn't important - one of the basic rules of Journalism is voices from the community are absolutely essential. The BBC has done a pretty good job of using the web to obtain community voices, I feel - at the bottom of their article on swine flu, for example, you find this:
What CNN and the BBC are doing aren't that different, really; it's just that CNN lets us see the unfinished product, most of which will never make it on air. It's an interesting experiment, but whether it's effective or not is up for debate - I say no, because we don't get to see the whole process - see what system CNN uses for selecting clips that will air. What's also interesting to me is that both organizations apply filters to the information.
I think it's easy to understand why the aforementioned dude had it wrong about web 3.0 when you look at the BBC and CNN models - even for sites that tout lines such as "you report. No bias. No bull.", there's still a degree of filtration going on there. As the information landscape becomes increasingly saturated as a result of the speeding up of information cycles and an increase of user-generated content, I think there's going to be a reaction to that. I suspect that while the role of journalist in the role of arbiter of information has diminished, people will still look to news outlets to sort and aggregate the significant stories of the day - the public just doesn't have the energy or time to do so on their own.
1 It's interesting to note that the web eras, for lack of a better term, have really been defined by the technology that's available to them. The CEO of Netflix gave this definition of the separate web movements at a 2006 tech conference:
"Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0." -http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3959
Also worth noting was the founder of Yahoo's definition: You don't have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications." I'll be exploring that, and delve deeper into the impact of user-generated content on news in the next post.
In my last post, I briefly mentioned the inherent dangers of building media models that are built on user-generated content. It's true that there are plenty of emerging models that are using this model to a lot of benefit - Youtube is probably one of the greatest examples of this, as are wikileaks and wikipedia. However, while these sites may have featured articles or videos, there's a difference between providing information and entertainment, as these sites do, and providing news. For starters, these sites have no responsibility to filter content for the most relevant stories of the day - which is a good thing, because the sheer volume of content would render that almost impossible.
For user-based news models, it's clear that people are still figuring how to incorporate it within traditional news formats. CNN's iReport, for example, does some interesting things with user-based content, but with a lot of clips, people still seem to be operating under the assumption that iReport is just another video blog service.
That's not to say that getting people's feedback isn't important - one of the basic rules of Journalism is voices from the community are absolutely essential. The BBC has done a pretty good job of using the web to obtain community voices, I feel - at the bottom of their article on swine flu, for example, you find this:
Are you in a country which has confirmed the virus? Do you know someone who has been affected by the outbreak? Are you a health worker in one of the affected countries? Tell us your experiences by filling in the form below.
A selection of your comments may be published, displaying your name and location unless you state otherwise in the box below.
The result of which, is this - great, compelling articles that wouldn't have been possible without contributions from the greater public.
What CNN and the BBC are doing aren't that different, really; it's just that CNN lets us see the unfinished product, most of which will never make it on air. It's an interesting experiment, but whether it's effective or not is up for debate - I say no, because we don't get to see the whole process - see what system CNN uses for selecting clips that will air. What's also interesting to me is that both organizations apply filters to the information.
I think it's easy to understand why the aforementioned dude had it wrong about web 3.0 when you look at the BBC and CNN models - even for sites that tout lines such as "you report. No bias. No bull.", there's still a degree of filtration going on there. As the information landscape becomes increasingly saturated as a result of the speeding up of information cycles and an increase of user-generated content, I think there's going to be a reaction to that. I suspect that while the role of journalist in the role of arbiter of information has diminished, people will still look to news outlets to sort and aggregate the significant stories of the day - the public just doesn't have the energy or time to do so on their own.
1 It's interesting to note that the web eras, for lack of a better term, have really been defined by the technology that's available to them. The CEO of Netflix gave this definition of the separate web movements at a 2006 tech conference:
"Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0." -http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3959
Also worth noting was the founder of Yahoo's definition: You don't have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications." I'll be exploring that, and delve deeper into the impact of user-generated content on news in the next post.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Huh. Been a while, hasn't it?
It almost seems inevitable that this thing has come back to life - things have changed so dramatically in the media landscape in the past year. Before, when I tried to start this thing, it was half-hearted; I've always been a little leery of blogging and the sense of self-indulgence that comes along with it, but now, chronicling the events that are going on now (and dissecting them, and possibly predicting what comes next) seems more urgent - like we have to figure out what's going on before it's too late. That's probably a little, um, self-indulgent though.
At any rate, the signs were probably already there a year ago, but now they're pretty much impossible to ignore. Whether or not the decline of print media is a good thing is certainly up for debate at this point - and it's an issue that this blog will be exploring - but first, before we delve into that realm, let's look at one of the major alternatives to print media that's arisen in the past few years - blogging itself.
A pretty decent introduction to blogging is conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan's piece in the Atlantic entitled "Why I Blog". Sullivan argues that blogging changes the media game (which it does) due to a few particular inherent characteristics.
First is the idea of hyperlinking. Here's an example: in print media, readers would have to rely solely on my summary and interpretation of Sullivan's piece. With blogging (and the internet in general), it takes very little effort to provide access to primary reference documents.
Next is the idea that blogs occupy a different temporal space than traditional print media, or at least operate on a different cycle - blogs are able to react on a much quicker basis than a paper, for obvious reasons.
Finally, Sullivan argues that with blogs, the barriers between writer and reader are much more permeable, as comment features allow for much more potential dialogue (and scathing critique) between journalist and reader than traditional media models.
These three major features, combined with other factors, make blogs a pretty alluring new media form. One can argue that the way they function serves as a "democratization" of media - anyone can have a blog, and by providing easy access to primary reference sources and giving instant feedback, part of the power of journalist as "gatekeeper/arbiter" of information is somewhat transferred to the greater public. As Sullivan puts it,
It almost seems inevitable that this thing has come back to life - things have changed so dramatically in the media landscape in the past year. Before, when I tried to start this thing, it was half-hearted; I've always been a little leery of blogging and the sense of self-indulgence that comes along with it, but now, chronicling the events that are going on now (and dissecting them, and possibly predicting what comes next) seems more urgent - like we have to figure out what's going on before it's too late. That's probably a little, um, self-indulgent though.
At any rate, the signs were probably already there a year ago, but now they're pretty much impossible to ignore. Whether or not the decline of print media is a good thing is certainly up for debate at this point - and it's an issue that this blog will be exploring - but first, before we delve into that realm, let's look at one of the major alternatives to print media that's arisen in the past few years - blogging itself.
A pretty decent introduction to blogging is conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan's piece in the Atlantic entitled "Why I Blog". Sullivan argues that blogging changes the media game (which it does) due to a few particular inherent characteristics.
First is the idea of hyperlinking. Here's an example: in print media, readers would have to rely solely on my summary and interpretation of Sullivan's piece. With blogging (and the internet in general), it takes very little effort to provide access to primary reference documents.
Next is the idea that blogs occupy a different temporal space than traditional print media, or at least operate on a different cycle - blogs are able to react on a much quicker basis than a paper, for obvious reasons.
Finally, Sullivan argues that with blogs, the barriers between writer and reader are much more permeable, as comment features allow for much more potential dialogue (and scathing critique) between journalist and reader than traditional media models.
These three major features, combined with other factors, make blogs a pretty alluring new media form. One can argue that the way they function serves as a "democratization" of media - anyone can have a blog, and by providing easy access to primary reference sources and giving instant feedback, part of the power of journalist as "gatekeeper/arbiter" of information is somewhat transferred to the greater public. As Sullivan puts it,
"The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority. He is—more than any writer of the past—a node among other nodes, connected but unfinished without the links and the comments and the track-backs that make the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production."
Journalism shouldn't always look like a conversation, however. While blogging is now pretty much a necessity to media (I can't think of any major news outlet that doesn't have an online presence now), in its current form, it supplements and supports - it doesn't replace.
Journalism shouldn't always look like a conversation, however. While blogging is now pretty much a necessity to media (I can't think of any major news outlet that doesn't have an online presence now), in its current form, it supplements and supports - it doesn't replace.
A perfect example of the shortcomings of blogging would be one of its supposed strengths - hyperlinking. In an almost parasitic fashion, blogs rely on hyperlinks as story starters - most blogs either synthesize other people's information or post reactions to it, (sort of like this blog - oops!) but they don't do the research themselves. When print media dries up, so do the primary sources - and without the links, the blogs don't have a lot. It's true that there's nothing stopping from bloggers from doing the research themselves, but with the near-instant pace of online media - where getting it first is more important than getting it fully - that idea doesn't seem compatible with current trends.
Other issues with blogging include the pitfalls of user-generated content when it comes to journalism - I think I'll explore this more in future posts, but there's an underlying danger in shifting the power dynamic to the reader - just like how media shouldn't be accountable to corporate or special interests, I also think that the journalist shouldn't be beholden to public opinion, in some cases.
These are just some of the issues that surround blogs as a medium - some of these can probably be attributed to the fact that blogging is still relatively in its infancy - it'll be interesting to see how it develops and what the infrastructure surrounding it will look like. We've barely begun to scratch the surface of how new media models are changing the media landscape, but future posts will explore this more - this post was intended solely as a primer, a reminder that the way I'm exploring this ISP holds certain strengths - and limitations.
Other issues with blogging include the pitfalls of user-generated content when it comes to journalism - I think I'll explore this more in future posts, but there's an underlying danger in shifting the power dynamic to the reader - just like how media shouldn't be accountable to corporate or special interests, I also think that the journalist shouldn't be beholden to public opinion, in some cases.
These are just some of the issues that surround blogs as a medium - some of these can probably be attributed to the fact that blogging is still relatively in its infancy - it'll be interesting to see how it develops and what the infrastructure surrounding it will look like. We've barely begun to scratch the surface of how new media models are changing the media landscape, but future posts will explore this more - this post was intended solely as a primer, a reminder that the way I'm exploring this ISP holds certain strengths - and limitations.
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