New Media Program Testimonies

I hope this counts for Web Marketing. It’s about blogging, but versus the business type. Anyway, here goes

I’m glad I ended up writing this last minute because it just so happens that I was at Vidfest on Tuesday and I snuck in to see The Wisdom of Crowds: Web 2.0 Democracy or Mob Mentality. It sort of fits with this, but I still thought the speakers’ had weak arguments. I think it was a debate, and they talked about anonymity and bloggers on the internet.

So first of all, citizen journalism is anyone who works independently from newspapers and television news to collect information on a topic. They can do anything from run a written or a video blog consistently to speak to an audience, or just run into an event and happen to document a part of it (photography, video, etc). This isn’t necessarily for free, often news stations will offer big money for exclusive rights to use their content. There is controversy apparently because: these people have no training in the area and credibility is scrutinized, they could be too biased, they could be liars, they could easily misinterpret something and spread misinformation. So how does this differ from traditional journalism? Well in my opinion, one group gets paid and the other doesn’t.

Where do reporters get their information? They interview people. So what if these people just wrote it on their blog instead? What’s the difference? One of the speaker’s asked “Where did you get your news from today?” Well sir, it’s true I got it from the television but they were actually using YouTube videos to talk about Britney Spears and Chris Crocker. A couple of weeks ago I saw a news report on the news about emo kids. Apparently no adult knew about this culture until they found out about it through YouTube. In my law class I would sometimes tell my teacher about something I saw on the news that contradicted something he said, and he explained because he’s a lawyer he constantly spots false information. So since when was television and newspapers really so accurate? Not to mention the fact that they always suppress information; our law teacher also told us about the Harry Potter case that never quite reached the media in North America. Their content tends to lean too much towards whoever is advertising on their channel as well.

Enough of pointing fingers at traditional journalism, citizen journalism is probably going to be just as biased since the writers are people who are very opinionated. Even so, people like to know that if there are at least choices then we get to at least see more sides of an argument. My favorite and probably the most risky form of citizen journalism are through forums. People who are focused on one subject get together, gossip about the latest events, share photos and videos. This is also like blogs, but a little bit easier to read. I think this is more realistic because you could be as educated as possible in journalism but then know nothing about the subject you’re researching. If a person is really passionate about something they will know way more than any news station about it. Look at it this way, it’s cheaper to buy something at Walmart because they make things cheap, but if you go to a smaller store that specializes in the product then you’re going to get better quality (I already hear readers grumbling “not necessarily….”).

Citizens are also everywhere. Reporters can’t be everywhere, and that’s why the have to do research and borrow information. For instance you can’t have people ready to film natural disasters; it’s just sort of a fluke if you catch it. I must have seen those same tsunami and 9/11 recordings a million times already, but they never get less terrifying. Seeing the fear and deaths happening before your eyes creates more of an impact than a reporter just telling you that a bad thing happened. And now news organizations like MSNBC are encouraging us to send photos and video of news events.

I’d love to know more about this topic and the other side of the story. If anyone other than my teacher actually ends up reading this, leave a comment and tell me more about what you know. One thing I don’t know very much about is bloggers and where to find the good ones. Give me some good ones to check out.