Web 2.0 – from professional mass media to the citizenship media (by Kristaps Brūveris)

Fast development of new technologies and switching from using TV, radio and newspapers to Internet in our everyday lives also lead down to changes of ways of receiving, creating and posting the news. The biggest difference is – everyone who wants can be journalist or media nowadays. In this essay I will discuss the changes on society and flow of information because of the appearance of the new media.

The technical potentialities offered by the Internet provide limitless opportunities for spreading information by anybody who wants to say something. As David Gillmor, journalist and author of the book “We the media” indicates, if everybody (he mainly concentrates on society of US) got the latest news about World War II from few national radio channels, and later TV replaced the importance of radio, September 11 was the first large accident where the latest and hottest information like photos of crash was received and forwarded thru Internet as well (Gillmor, 2006, XIX). Earlier New York’s bloggers were able to post on their blogs that they are okay to everyone concerned (Gillmor, 2006, 20). The one-to-many media also took advantage of grassroots citizenship by publishing photos and videos shot by simple individuals but professional journalists and photographers (Gillmor, 2006, 49).

Although it may seem that grassroots journalism started in the beginning of the XX century, there were at the end of 90-ties mail lists and forums as well which the first time introduced many-to-many information streams while the weblogs – main many-to-many media at this moment had not appeared yet (Gillmor, 2006, 27). The first well-known germ of grassroots citizenship could be observed already on 1994 when Pentium company touched with the users of Usenet who forwarded the information about discovered Pentium bug.

Gillmor mainly looks at web media mainly as an alternative for what he calls Big Media – censored national mass media which mainly belongs to some large corporations and are working only for profit or interests of the particular media’s owner but for the sake of their audience (Gillmor, 2006, XXVI). It means that one of the main advantages and goodness for the new media is impossibility for the censorship. For example, Gillmor describes the protest bombing in Iraq on December 10, 2003. None of major media informed their audience about this happening. Probably, most of Americans would not find out about that if local bloggers would not inform their readers about this wild protest. So these blogs become a key channel for getting the uncensored and true information about what is happening in Iraq (Gillmor, 2006, 136). One can find many other tries by national media of US to pass over some scandal and only thanks to bloggers they have been became known, see for example, Lott incident.

On the other hand, there are several discussions, can one mention blogging when speaking about journalism and media if there is no editor between the author and reader. (Lasica, 2003). Still, if the bloggers broadcast news or information about latest events, no strict rules can be drawn for the borders of journalism.

Not only weblogs are the proof for the changes from one-to-many to many-to-many information channels. Gillmor gives an example how simple SMS bypassed the censorship of government of China when it tried to hide any information of SARS epidemic on 2002 (Gillmor, 2006, 46).

Forwarding of SMS allows comprehend them as many-to-many media as well nowadays not only one-to-one media. Just by the help of short message service tens of thousands of Filipinos brought down a corrupt Philippines government (Gillmor, 2006, 91).

Moreover, SMS services joined with blogging open up new opportunities for transforming latest information with help of such services as Twitter. Just sending SMS with one word ‘arrested’ helped student from US to inform all his acquaintances that he was putted illegally in Egyptian jail (Simon, 2008).

Twitter as a service even comes to light as the fastest media at this moment – it is recognized as the first media where one could get known about earthquake in California on 2007 (Hopkins, 2007).

Internet as a medium between people now allows creating most unimaginable forms of protest. One of the examples Gillmor draws is the campaign “Bush in 30 Seconds” where everyone on portal MoveOn.org in the spring of 2004 could create and post his own made anti-Bush commercials and compete for the best commercial’s title (Gillmor, 2006, 100).

As Gillmor points, biggest mistake of old media and advantage of new media is listening to audience (Gillmor, 2006, 237). For example, some popular internet portals like portal for women wowowow.com have been created just as an answer for magazines which didn’t satisfied the demands of its main audience (The Guardian, 2008). And the Internet with its feedback options is the first democratic not top-down hierarchy media (Gillmor, 2006, 236). There is now another option than to read the news selected by some news editors. As blogger David Weinberger points, why should Americans hear the news about Japan every day and never about Nigeria if both counties are the same size and average reader is not related to any of both countries (Weinberger, 2008).

The professional media have yet realized that they can’t prevail over the new citizenship media, so their only possibility is to use advantages of new media for their own sake. Gillmor tell that in last times before writing a new article, he asks his blog readers for their additional ideas as he realize that his audience in total is smarter than he alone (Gillmor, 2006, 113). The New York Times also has started similar practice – by publishing some articles at first on web, and after taking into account readers’ comments and supplementing the article with new viewpoints they publish improved article in the newspaper (Landman, 2008). Even the media giant BBC has chosen similar approach by asking their audience to send pictures from hot spots like Iraq war (Gillmor, 2006, 121). BBC even had gone further with starting a project iCan which should help citizens write the news themselves from the local level on up (Gillmor, 2006, 124). It is hard to guess the reasons but now this project is already closed and probably it didn’t reach it goal for attracting the new audience who doesn’t use the old media anymore (Gillmor, 2006, 124).

On the other hand, some ways of controlling the latest technologies as a media should be taken as there have been already situations when new media are used not only for spreading latest news but just some private and sensitive data like hidden videotapes from the gyms (Searing, 2003).

The old media like newspapers have even no choice as to convert to new media. Even editor of one of the biggest US newspaper The New York Times admit that their online audience is much larger than the one of printed newspaper – he moreover specifies that almost all readers of their newspaper visit also their web page, but not the all web page’s visitors read the newspaper as well (Landman, 2008).

Spreading of possibility for each citizen to inform everybody about his opinion has also changed other fields of the common communication channels like public relations as well. In the golden era of radio and TV the communication between producer and costumer was also one way – thru commercials. Now, if the costumer is dissatisfied or catch the producer in the act, he can tell it to much wider audience as ever before. Gillmor mention how simple citizen found in the pictures’ archive photo which was used for Microsoft’s advertising campaign with the description that person in the photo have recently switched from Mac to PC. The particular citizen when realized that the ad is fake, published the information forward till the Microsoft took down the ad (Gillmor, 2006, 50). Nowadays even one can find many testimonials on the web about any good or services he is going to buy. Every big company now follows or at least try to follow any discussion on the web about themselves (Gillmor, 2006, 57). Only so big companies as MySpace can allow to not paying attention for such kind of activities as “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day” (Hopkins, 2008).

But the marketing specialists have also discovered the power of the new media and now they just take into account that it is more productive to reach one blogger with large audience who is specialized in particular theme than to spend thousands for the TV ads (Gillmor, 2006, 69). Any good or bad reference by well known blogger will even appear in the first page when searching for the product in Google as Google ranking system evaluates blogs higher than any other sites. Some companies have realized that contacting personally the blogger who have posted bad reference about their product and correcting any possible mistakes in the communication with the blogger may convert the bad reference for the good one (Gillmor, 2006, 86). To reach the costumers, some companies have created also their cooperative blogs which helps also to inform their regular clients and any interests about any news they would like for clients to know (Gillmor, 2006, 74). Some public relation people go farther on using Internet for their own goals – creating RRS feeds of releases helps to distinguish the information from just over spammed email boxes (Gillmor, 2006, 81).

The changes of everyday using of media which have been brought by the new technologies most probably will disappear in the future but should lead as closer to the complete democracy if no censorship by governments appears in the closest time. Moreover there should be some noticeable improvement on the average quality of news as the Internet allows to edit them later and include suggested updates from the audience as well. So the largest difference between old and new media should appear that now story does not belong to the journalist alone anymore but to the audience as it must be able to change or edit it freely (Bowman & Willis, 2003).

List of references

· BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/

· Bowman, S. & Willis, C. We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. The Media Center at the American Press Institute, 2003. http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php

· “Bush in 30 seconds” http://www.moveon.org/bushin30seconds/

· CNET. Intel exec on the future of Net, computing. 1999 http://news.cnet.com/2009-1001_3-224567.html

· Dan Gillmor’s home page http://www.dangillmor.com/

· Gillmor Davis. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. O’Reilly Media, 2006. pp301 (Available also on the internet: http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/)

· Hopkin Marks. California Earthquake: Twitter First, Take Cover Later. 2007 http://mashable.com/2007/10/30/california-quake-twitter-first-take-cover-later/

· Hopkin Marks. Journalism and PR in the New Media. 2008 http://mashable.com/2008/01/24/journalism-and-pr-in-the-new-media/

· How Google ranks pages http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34432

· Kaus Mickey. Bonus Onus, 2002. http://slate.msn.com/id/2075444&#darkmatter

· Landman Jonathan. Talk to the Newsroom: Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman. The New Your Times; 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/business/media/27askthetimes.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1212041024-CwLix/Lodhqou1Lqvf4xCg

· Lasica J.D. What is Participatory Journalism? 2003 http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060217106.php

· Mallory Simon. Student 'Twitters' his way out of Egyptian jail. CNN; 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html

· New Media. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media

· Pentium FDIV bug http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

· Searing Linda. Some Gyms Ban Camera Phones. Washington Post, 2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49274-2003Sep22

· Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS

· The Guardian. The wow factor. 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/21/pressandpublishing.internet

· The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/

· The Woman on the Web http://www.wowowow.com/

Weinberger David. How much do we have to care about? http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-may30-08.html#care