Journalism

1
Journalism

• Graham Choo
• Wong RenhaoHans Yamin
• Roshni Rawla

2
Journalism (Late 18th Century)

• U.S. Constitutions First Amendment Freedom of
  speech
• Personal journalism
• Ben Franklins Pennsylvania Gazette (political
  and controversial)
• Pamphleteers published their writings at great
  personal risk of death e.g. Thomas Paine

3
Journalism

• For most of American history, newspapers
  dominated the production and dissemination of
  what people widely thought of as news
• Yellow journalism by William Hearst to provoke
  public opinion in helping to spark the
  Spanish-American War, 1898
• Muckrakers exposed a variety of outrages e.g.
  cruel conditions in workplaces

4
The Corporate Era (20th Century)

• Economics of newspaper publishing favored big
  business ? local monopolies
• Radio and television lured readers and
  advertisers away from the newspapers ?
  consolidation of newspaper industry ? Big Media

5
The Corporate Era

• Positive aspect
• More resources to improve on quality and
  investigative reporting e.g. The New York Times
  where there is voting control by families or
  small groups

6
The Corporate Era

• Negative aspect (Profit centered)
• To lure viewers with violence and entertainment
  (irresponsible) Celebrity journalism, gossip
• Centered on violence being a major issue, even
  when crime rates were plummeting ? kept other
  serious issues off the air
• No depth in news coverage ? a shallow citizenry
  can be turned into a dangerous mob more easily
  than an informed one

7
The Corporate Era

• Cable technology bring more channel capacity and
  choice to the people
• But is still a central point of control for the
  owner of the cables e.g. they decide which
  package of channels to offer
• Could threaten information choice in the future

8
From Outside In

• How changing media technology has been in favor
  of journalism
• ARPANET ? Internet, which allowed people to
  connect with one another, acquiring information
  for journalists through public message boards for
  example
• Personal computer with word processor programs to
  aid journalists

9
Ransom-Note Media

• Desktop publishing had the clearest potential for
  journalism
• Entry level moved down to small groups and even
  individuals ? personal journalism
• Problem of wide usage of too many fonts
  (mimicking a ransom note)

10
Out Loud and Outrageous

• Modern talk radio provide entertainment and
  commentary, and the participation of the audience
• Predated and anticipated the weblog phenomenon,
  where people in the audience make the news

11
The Web Era Emergent

• Hypertext technology ? to publish documents as
  web pages ? to write, not just read from the web
• Now we have a medium that has worldwide
  distribution and can be anything one-to-one,
  one-to-many, many-to-many
• Information technology would lead among many
  other things, to mass customization,
  disintermediation (elimination of middlemen), and
  media convergence
• Markets are conversations journalism is also a
  conversation

12
Writing the Web

• Technology
• Everyday people given the tools they need to join
  this emerging conversation
• Cultural
• Putting the tools of creation into millions of
  hands could lead to an unprecedented community
• Blog format where most recent material is at the
  top

13
Open Sourcing the News

• Linux created to bypass the limits of software
  code
• More about freedom than cost
• Where project leaders contribute bits and pieces
  of what becomes a whole package
• Safer to use because people can find and fill the
  security holes

14
Open Sourcing the News

• Open source journalism where bloggers and
  operators of independent news sites scan for and
  sort news for people
• Where we can correct our mistakes and add new
  facts and context
• We can do journalism together

15
Terror Turns Journalisms Corner

• September 11, 2001 terror attacks, was the key
  building blocks of emergent, grassroots
  journalism and collaboration with Big Media
• New York city bloggers posted personal views of
  what theyd seen, with photographs, providing
  more information and context to what the major
  media was providing
• Tamim Ansary, an Agfhan-American writer shot to
  recognition when his email intended for friends,
  got circulated and broadcasted by the Big Media
  to mass audiences

16
How Technology is Changing the Media
17
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Newspapers
• Attempting the goal of neutrality
• An impersonal point of view and rhetoric
• Standard style of reporting
• Voiceless
• Dead language

18
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Blogs and the Internet in general
• So much more life
• People are looking for a human soul and voice
  behind the news
• Hence the flourishing of weblogs

19
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Traditional Journalism
• Expensive
• Requires people to know what they are talking
  about
• Requires them to go out and try to get the truth

20
How Technology is Changing the Media

• New-world Journalism
• Publication is the middle, not the end of the
  story
• People discuss it
• Plug holes (citizen) journalists have no way of
  doing
• Opinions, corrections, etc.
• Audiences select what to discuss/correct

21
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Moving from the culture that news belongs to news
  organizations
• To a culture that news belongs to us at
  ground-level
• We the Media

22
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Koreas OhmyNews
• 40 000 citizen journalists
• Small team of professional journalists
• No print edition weekly print edition
• Citizen journalists send stories in, professional
  team edits
• Calling for global reports to go international

23
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Koreas OhmyNews
• An alternative to retrograde, conservative
  natural newspapers
• A gift economy
• Korea is a small, homogeneous, same-language
  country
• US? Singapore?
• Korean broadband

24
How Technology is Changing the Media

• To what extent has blogs reached a peak?
• Info garbage ratio
• Blogging as a tool
• used in different ways
• Addressing Niche Communities
• Mugglenet.com

25
How Technology is Changing the Media

• Astroturfing
• Will always be there
• Sometimes will be caught, mostly not
• Humans are fooled
• Perception of sincerity
• Achilles Heel of blogging

26
Citizen Journalism
27
The Past

• Industrial age model Manufacturing news.
• Still works to some degree, but less effective.
• Newsmakers need to understand the swirling
  eddies of news are not tiny pools on the
  shoreline.

28
Citizen Journalism

• Outsiders of all kinds can probe more deeply
  into newsmakers businesses and affairs.
• They can disseminate what they learn more widely
  and quickly.
• The current technology makes it even easier to
  gain support from like-minded people.
• In this current age, information can be easily
  accessed and made almost instantly available to
  anyone who has a connection.

29
Citizen Journalism

• SARS epidemic despite Guangdong governors
  effort to hide the outbreak by forbidding
  announcements on TV as well as radio, news still
  got leaked out via word-of-mouth and SMS.

30
Citizen Journalism

• The emergence of moblogging
• Almost everyone owns video-enabled phones and it
  is really easy to make news
• The mass is now the paparazzi
• CNN report case a 15-year-old snapped a picture
  of a would-be abductor, leading to the arrest of
  the suspect.
• We have since become a society of voyeurs and
  exhibitionists.
• Powerful? Its actually pretty scary.

31
Citizen Journalism

• 9/11 case Individuals with video cameras
  captured parts of the story, and their works
  ended up on network TV as well.
• The big networks stopped showing most graphic
  videos fairly quickly, but those pictures are
  still on the Net for anyone who wants to see
  them.
• What if everyone in that very plane actually had
  camera phones and was trying to send images and
  audios from the epicenter of the terrorists
  airborne arsenal? Hm

32
Citizen Journalism

• Truth Squad people expose bogus news and show
  the true scenes
• Contents can actually be crucial.
• e.g. video account of a crime scene which can be
  used as evidence.
• The accumulation of data is also a powerful
  research tool for anyone who wants to drill
  deeper into an issue

33
Citizen Journalism

• McSpotlight McDonalds sued two activists in
  London, claiming that they had been libeled by
  their pamphlets
• These activists counter-sued McDonalds and
  created the McSpotlight website, which provides a
  deconstruction of McDonalds marketing materials.
• Although McDonalds officially won the trial,
  they ended up suffering huge damages, and the
  McSpotlight website was not pulled down even
  after the trial was over.
• Instead, the website developed further to look
  into other MNCs behaviors.

34
TROLLS, SPIN, AND BOUNDARIES OF TRUST
35
WAYS TO MISLEAD
36
CUT AND PASTE PROBLEM

• Cutting removes relevant information
• May lead to distortion of original meaning
• Considered harmful and malicious
• Cause misunderstandings

37
FAKE IMAGES PROBLEM

• Leads to manipulation of public
• Naming images are its proof of authenticity
• Use of image altering tools like Photoshop and
  Cropping
• Increased use of doctored video
• Use of electronically inserted backdrops leading
  to trickery

38
FAKE IMAGES PROBLEM
39
ANONYMITY

• Used to protect oneself from people around
• Example Person with AIDS, unpopular person,
  corporate and government whistle blowers
• Has hazards and credibility issues
• Example Give trashy reviews, unable to
  counteract to enemies reviews
• Adoption of pseudonym as an alternative
• Implement use of digital signature

40
TROLL

• A troll is deliberately crafted to provoke
  others with intention of wasting their time and
  energy.
• Time thief
• Isnt necessarily insulting

41
SPIN

• Putting events or other facts, especially those
  of political or legal significance, into contexts
  favoring oneself or ones client or cause, at
  least in comparison to opponents.
• Insidious routes to public
• Google bombing

42
CITIZEN JOURNALISM

• Fast checking
• Open source projects
• WordPirates

43
CONCLUSION
44
Conclusion

• The Corporate Era
• The advent and increasing popularity of radio and
  television
• Positive and negative aspects
• Cable technology leads to increased choices
• 
  

• Web Era Emergent
• Hypertext technology
• Changes in information technology

45
Conclusion

• How technology is changing media
• Newspapers
• Blogs
• Traditional journalism
• New world journalism

46
Conclusion

• Citizen journalism
• Rise of citizen journalism
• Emergence of moblogging
• Truth squad

47
Conclusion

• Ways to mislead
• cut paste problem
• fake images problem
• anonymity

48
QUESTIONS?
49
THANK YOU!