"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/
1 comment:
Very good points, but don't forget the idea of networked journalism goes way beyond the idea of contacts.
The principle looks at how we can allow people to be part of the news process from the beginning, how we operate as part of a network and not apart from it.
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