To boldly go where no man has gone before

Currently we are existing in the era of Web 2.0, which is the term used to describe the changing trends in web technology and design. It effectively refers to the changes in the way developers and end users utilise the Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the evolution of hosted services and communities that we all use every day, for example social networking sites or blogs. In this rapidly changing environment, the question is what's next? The answer: quite simply, Web 3.0.

So what will the future look like with the arrival of Web 3.0 and beyond? Well the honest answer is that most people don't really know. The future is just as unimaginable as the world we live in today was just a couple of decades ago. There are obviously some educated speculations, such as Nova Spivack, a leading web pioneer who says Web 3.0 refers to the attempt by technologists to radically overhaul the basic platform of the web so it understands the near infinite pieces of information and connections between them. So it is effectively about making the web smarter and as Jonathan Richards puts it, "giving the Internet itself a brain". This to me sounds all too close to science fiction.

One thing we can be sure of is that the web will become even more fragmented. More information will be floating about and there will be even more customisation and personalisation of what of we want to use and consume. This trend has already started to emerge, for example just look at applications, such as iGoogle and Google News. Google News uses content from all other sites to create its news page with links to other news outlets. While iGoogle gives the user even more freedom allowing them to decide what news, feeds and information they want to consume and read with links to favourite sites and headlines or information streams from chosen web sites.

The next question is, how far will this trend develop within computer technology? Are we actually going to breach the realms of many of the fictional representations that we so often see of the future. Hollywood movies over the years have predicted or at least envisaged the future, most of the time quite wildly inaccurately, but every so often a film or fictional idea comes along that ends up being truly prophetic.

Films such as 2001: A Space Oddysey, Blade Runner and Minority Report have all contained ideas and visions that scientists think may become reality or have already formed part of real science.

In years to come will we have even more personalised computer technology that even greets us via retina identification when walking into shopping malls like in Minority Report?

Click link:

Or will we have to worry about this dismal depiction of the future from Terminator 2, by giving the web its so called 'brain'?

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Some claim that science and technology are moving so fast that it has become impossible for science fiction to keep up. Sci-fi did fail to predict the transistor, which as Marcus Chown from the New Scientist argues, is the development that enabled computers to conquer the modern world. Chown now believes that it may have become harder to predict the technological developments which will change our lives. With huge sci-fi films that portray even more depressing visions of the future, such as Avatar and Terminator Salvation, on the horizon lets just hope the rest of these predictions don't actually become reality.

Photo courtesy of Troutfactory:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/troutfactory/2046952826/

SuperlativeQuip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeradkaliher/2226420056/
and

anthx: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23402088@N07/2237237354/

Blog first, ask questions later

Individuals are finally taking over the web. Today over 50% of online pages are now personal pages and for the first time this year social media even overtook pornography.

In a recent Online Journalism lecture Antony Mayfield from iCrossing (a leader in Search Engine Marketing) hit us with some pretty impressive statistics. There are roughly 1.4 billion people online with 400 million members of social networks. There over a trillion web sites tracked by Google and ten hours of video footage is uploaded onto Youtube every minute. Who are all these people producing all this content? The people formerly known as the audience.

Clearly as I am blogging, I should talk about one of the biggest forms of user produced content, the blog itself.

In an even more recent lecture from Shane Richmond, the Communities Editor of the Telegraph, we were told that their most successful blogs were not chasing the mainstream audiences, but the niche, focused blogs that build audiences at title and even article level. He wasn't just referring to Telegraph journalist's blogs, but more importantly the user blogs part of their My Telegraph site that allows anyone to start blogging on the Telegraph's site. It was also clear that unless you blog regularly, its not worth blogging. This can be witnessed even when looking at more mainstream blogs for example Ricky Gervais's Blog that keeps its high popularity with constant posts including numerous links, multimedia and amusing anecdotes.

In this new world full of virtual conversation it is Google that rules. It doesn't just have an 80% market share, but effectively defines the way in which we know and use the web today. The reason for this is that Google puts the user first. And guess what? Google loves blogs. There are many reasons why, including that it fits their business model and that blogs are constantly updated and full of archived information, but also because blogs are considered one of the most honest resources on the net. This brings me onto one important factor when considering user content, which is moderation.

Many people argue the web is full of rubbish user content. Shane Richmond argued that it might be rubbish or it might just be not be for you, which is a fair point. Yet one thing that is clear in this era of necessary constant contribution, immediate updating and even possible future correction, is that sometimes content is let loose on the web at the cost of accuracy. Not only that, but despite re-editing, the idea of yesterday's news being tomorrow's fish and chip paper isn't true anymore as this content is effectively out there forever, rubbish or no. Sometimes this need for speed, as it were, can even have more serious dangers such as legal implications.

Many argue that it is the journalists and media that have allowed the user conversation to flourish online, but the conversation has always happened, instead it is the journalist that has joined the conversation. Richmond said that as journalists we should not expect the audience to change, but we are the ones that have to change the way we think and evolve in this modern world. Clearly in this epoch of more freedom and individual expression online I agree we need to let the conversation continue, but as long as its not at the total expense of accuracy and decency.

Photo courtesy of kekuri:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kekuri/1116048366/

The Deadline is now

The deadline isn’t next week, it isn’t tomorrow, and it isn’t even 5 o’clock. For the journalists of today the deadline is now.

This was the message in this week’s online journalism lecture endorsed by Adam Tinworth, Head of Blogging at Reed Business Information, Europe’s leading online and offline publisher.

Adam said that weekly news magazines don’t work anymore as news has to be instantly published in today’s modern world. Undoubtedly this is true. There still can be weekly news analysis magazines and print media still has a role to play in news telling and analysis, but it is the world wide web where news is now first broken. News today also doesn’t end when the article is published, it is constantly updated, re-examined and followed up. News stories aren’t finished they are simply developed.

I was doing work experience with a local newspaper, the Bath Chronicle in September 2007 when they changed from a daily to a weekly edition to cut back on costs. This made me realise how the stories and style of news reporting had to change and adapt to fit to this modern world and evidently so much more emphasis for breaking news went through the online site.

All of this led me to consider the British newspaper reporting on the American election last week. Ironically this came up in conversation with Peter Preston the ex-Guardian editor in a lecture later in the week where Peter was questioned about why some British papers had the election result by the morning and why others didn’t. We were told it was simply about editions as certain national newspapers managed to get the result in earlier editions than others. Yet it did make me wonder whether anyone in the UK read a British newspaper to find out the outcome of the election unlike maybe in the past. Surely it would be through the online and broadcasting channels that most people found out that Obama had won.

Certain sporting matches bring up these issues again for newspapers where decisions whether to include results or match reports in the first edition can depend on where and when they finished. Sports reporting in fact is one sphere of journalism where these wider changes can be noticed more than anywhere else.

Today sites like the BBC have minute-by-minute updates of all the football matches and you can have instant messages sent to your mobile phone.

We also have massively successful and exciting live sports programmes such as Sky's Gillette Soccer Saturday that have instant reaction, analysis, scores and information. Despite not actually showing any football coverage it remains one the most popular, distinguished and as you can see from this clip brilliantly funny sports programmes on television.

Then you also have Setanta’s 24 hour sports channel that is hugely popular online available through a stand alone player as both audio or video with constant rolling sports news, which is also on a digital television station.

Even ITV’s Formula One site is full of continuously updated news and video content with live streaming of races.

This trend has even reached more local stations and individual matches for example Steve Tucker from Wales Online blogged the whole Cardiff game at the weekend live.

Newspapers have to keep up with broadcasters and online stations with their own online coverage, as shown by the acclaimed Timesonline ‘news site of the year’, whose own sport coverage is pretty extensive and revolves around breaking stories, updates and scores.

So it seems if the news and sport isn't instantaneous, live, breaking or immediate, then the chances are that it is probably not news anymore.

Photos courtesy of JonHall: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ormondroyd/265542756/

and sunsetbeach: http://www.flickr.com/photos/veeg/64817511/

Digital Storytelling

This is my digital story I made on a course with Daniel Meadows last year.

At the touch of a button

Max Frisch the famous Swiss novelist and architect once said:

"Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it".

Today I think this is both true and false.

It is true in the fact that we are using more and more technological applications, devices and methods to organise, socialise, structure and categorise our lives.

Yet on the other hand so many people have been given the freedom to do things never before thought possible thanks to technology. As we now know this is not just true for the professionals but for the amateurs too. Arguably today’s generation are experiencing more than one could ever imagine.

One vital element of this experience is networking. Networking in the twenty first century is worldwide, free-flowing and immediate all thanks to technological advances meaning billions of people are ‘hooked up’ at the touch of a button.

Without networking, journalism of any era would be pretty much futile. Without communities, media organisations and journalists would struggle in ever knowing how to connect with and increase their audiences. And without participation, journalism wouldn’t be the true form of communication that is has always aspired to be.

The networking, forming of communities and participating of the modern world has allowed new realms of possibility and advance in the world of media. Today’s technology now allows a wider, faster network between journalists and the public with a multitude of new forms of communication.

Modern technology has also made it easier for audiences to share at the touch of a button and as we know they now even have the tools to capture the news themselves. Just look at the bottom of the BBC homepage and will see links to e-mail news, mobile alerts, podcasts, news feeds, alerts and interactive TV. Another example is The Telegraph online site, which has a growing emphasis on audience interaction and online communities with their user written My Telegraph section as explained by Shane Richmond, Communities Editor in a recent lecture.

However we look at it, journalists and audiences are more networked than ever before.

Lets just take one illustration of modern networked, community based communication: online forums. Forums are a place for debate, critical analysis, comparison, sharing of knowledge or just simply socialising within a network of people anywhere in the world.

If we look at two examples of forums that I have recently read, one discussing a Fox News story on whether a recent Family Guy episode went too far in the presidential race by likening the McCain/Palin ticket to the Nazi party and one debating the recent Empire review of the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Both the FoxForum and Empire magazine ‘Write Your Own Review’ section led audiences to partake in intellectual discussions about the presidential race and critical analysis of the new Bond film. Empire even more recently through another format opened up an online web chat with film director Danny Boyle, where online subscribers (such as myself under the username djimi42 - see transcript) asked questions and got the latest on his new upcoming films, which was then published as an interview.

Clearly there was some comments and discussion that was not relevant or intelligent. Yet the fact that these forms of online networked communication on what would appear trivial subjects or journalist territory managed to produce what I would describe as interesting and informed conversation not only serves as point scoring in favour of citizen journalism but is just one, small extract of the wonder of this networked world we live in.

Photo courtesy of luc legay: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195/

Citizen or Journalist? You decide.

Today there are more people making the news than ever before.

The rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and User Generated Content (UGC) seems to be dividing the people, in particular, the journalists themselves. The big question: is this citizen journalism democratising the media?

We know that the public have always communicated with the journalists, whether it has been through letters to the editor or radio phone-ins, but now this communication has sky rocketed into a world of instant contribution, reaction and interaction from audiences and readers worldwide.

One crucial aspect to any discussion of journalism and one that I find essential to this debate is in the element of trust. The Watergate scandal in the early 1970s involved one of the most important journalistic investigations and discoveries in American political history that not only centred on the lack of trust between the government and the public, but was also an episode that demonstrated how important trust was in the newsroom. This was depicted in the film All the President’s Men which centred on this scandal as displayed in this dialogue extract between two of the journalists:

Ben Bradlee: How much can you tell me about Deep Throat?
Bob Woodward: How much do you need to know?
Ben Bradlee: Do you trust him?
Bob Woodward: Yeah.
Ben Bradlee: I can’t do the reporting for my reporters, which means I have to trust them. And I hate trusting anybody. Run that baby.

This scene from the film represents the importance of trust that should be inherent to all journalistic practices, but the rise of UGC and citizen journalism has created concerns over whether this trust could be being eroded when so much content is left unchecked.

One of the obvious issues with aspects such as blogging, forums and discussion boards is that it is difficult to know which sources and comments are credible and accurate when so much of the content is unverified. It is evident that fakes and hoaxes aren’t that uncommon on these UGC sites.

Even when considering the debates and comments that develop beneath a Youtube video - questions over authenticity, knowledge and accuracy should be asked as if there is no verification, whom do you choose to believe?

On the other hand, one undeniably positive aspect of citizen journalism is a matter of access. Citizens can often get places where journalists can’t. It does open up questions of safety with the endangering of citizens to capture extraordinary events, but it is difficult to deny the potential impact of utilising public access to certain stories, for example when lives could be saved or if it is for the good of a country.

UGC can also clearly provide many positive possibilities through the sharing of knowledge or opinion for an experience or even a product. If we listen to Rupert Murdoch this revolution won’t hold back journalism, but instead help it progress:

“So unless we awaken to these changes, which are quite different to those of 5 or 6 years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans. Properly done, they are an opportunity to actually improve our journalism and expand our reach”

One important point to consider is how different news organisations deal with UGC. Is the ‘Unedited, Unfiltered News’ that CNN’s iReport promotes really a force for democracy when you consider that a significant proportion of the content is taken up by home videos and genuinely not newsworthy content?

Fox News’s current online tagline is ‘We Report. You Decide.’ , yet ironically they also have a UGC section called ‘uReport’, and when looking at the most viewed videos there is a lack of real journalism present.

Alternatively the BBC has complete control over the UGC in its Have Your Say site with 30 people employed moderating exactly what gets published online and more importantly what doesn’t. Applying old media values to new media has worked so far, but The BBC may be going down CNN’s path of less and less moderation possibly because of financial reasons or maybe because audiences may prefer this.

I find myself still undecided over the democratic potential of UGC and citizen journalism and I think all these questions of trust, quality, accuracy and impartiality will continue to dominate discussions around these issues.

Photo courtesy of rsambrook:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sambrook/100538533/

and

Tommy_Vercetti:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vercettisworld/1464656950/

How's My Blogging?

Blogging, Twitter, social bookmarking, Mento, Flickr. The message for today’s journalist: ignore at your peril.

As we now know blogging isn’t simply done by frustrated film fans wanting to unload their grievances with the latest Star Wars sequel. Users of Twitter aren’t just procrastinating web geeks bored of Facebook. In reality blogging is a fundamental facet of modern journalism and modern communication, while Twitter has been used by journalists in danger to alert their community of serious predicaments they find themselves in. The contemporary journalist must keep up or be cast by the wayside.

These Internet services are proof of not just the growing awareness journalists must have of the online sphere, but also how interactivity and collaboration between the journalists and the public plays a more vital role than ever before. This direct engagement, interaction and collaboration is not just exciting, but transforming the news climate with citizen journalism blurring long-standing media boundaries. This is just one other aspect of change that is happening on a vast scale at an alarming rate.

Glyn Mottershead opened his first online journalism lecture telling us how the industry is in flux. Unquestionably it always has been, but it appears that these changes are happening faster than ever. You only need to consider some of the recent developments within online news to appreciate this.

One central example is that online news sites are now awash with media as journalists are now expected to be multimedia skilled professionals. The BBC online news site now bursts with video content including a combination of exclusive online footage and excerpts from TV and radio BBC news content.

This recent revolutionising and revamping of the UK’s most dominant online news player is an indication of the wider changes taking place globally to online news. The Guardian has a tab and whole section of their online website dedicated to video and you only have to enter the Sky News homepage to see video and moving images fill the screen. A recent study reflects this growing interest and popularity of video content online and also the BBC’s dominance in the online news category.

Not only has video become so vital online, but also the aspect of live video streaming is becoming increasingly newsworthy and popular. To coincide with the coverage of rolling 24-hour news stations, news companies, such as Sky News and BBC now have exclusive live content streamed online. Just take a recent example from the BBC news website that demonstrates the significance of exclusive live streaming. This week a lion kill was filmed part of the programme ‘Big Cats’ and was streamed live to web. News or not, this later became the most watched video of the day of the BBC news site.

So today’s journalist must be a blogging, twittering, bookmarking, flickr pro that keeps up to speed with everything taking place in the World Wide Web from live streaming to flash journalism. My only question: is there enough time in the day?

Image used courtesy of Laughing Squid at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/1184346933