From the Consumptive to the Productive
Journalism is at a crossroads. Despite the ever-increasing array of sources to better understand current events from multiple perspectives, the way we view news has created new challenges for media outlets, independent producers and consumers of media alike. Over the last decade, we have witnessed a dramatic decline in the number of people obtaining their news from old-fashioned “newspapers,” with a rapid increase in the number of people obtaining their news from the Internet and the vast majority still relying on television. As advertisers took notice and news outlets began downsizing their actual news-gathering force in search of a lucrative way to expand their viewing markets, the focus shifted to “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” producing, partisan and inflammatory editorializing, “soft” news, info-tainment and an increasing reliance on growing social media powerhouses Facebook and Twitter for content to flesh out poorly-researched stories. News outlets bounced in tandem from crisis to crisis, creating a few along the way, with terrifying names like Snowmageddon and Carpocalypse, and claimed “fatigue” on the part of their viewers as the reason that they scaled back more in-depth coverage of ongoing social and humanitarian issues. As always, fear of potentialities, rather than naked realities, seemed to be the best sales package. Yet as more people began paying attention to the diversity of voices in the media and chiming in with their own opinions, few seemed to notice that the profession of reporting itself was imperiled, nor that they had any power to do something about it. According to Reporters Without Borders, 147 journalists are currently imprisoned worldwide, and 35 journalists have been killed while reporting on a story this year alone. A new statistic, the number of “netizens” imprisoned, such as bloggers and online activists, stands at 124. The Committee to Protect Journalists states that 869 journalists have been killed in the past two decades, and a majority killed with complete impunity. While more than a sixth of those deaths occurred during the wars in Iraq, that the deaths of journalists reporting on politics and corruption account for half of the fatalities should give people plenty of pause. When Wikileaks published its incendiary “Collateral Murder” video in April 2010, many were horrified at the impunity that the US military had when journalists from Reuters and other civilians were gunned down by an Apache helicopter, and lauded the organization for shining light on the truth. Now, as the organization’s founder faces charges of espionage over its release of diplomatic cables, few people protest or are even aware of the role banks, credit card companies and mainstream news outlets have played in demonizing the organization and blocking its ability to fundraise, ostensibly at the behest of the US government. During the “Green Revolution” in Iran, and the more recent “Arab Spring,” where mainstream and opposition news journalists were threatened, arrested or blocked from reporting acts of civil disobedience against authoritarian regimes, the for-profit media consistently praised the role that Twitter and Facebook users played in both circumventing state censorship, organizing protests and reporting on events in real time. Yet governments have quickly become just as “hip” to the ability to post on social networks, masquerading as regime supporters or instigators of violence, to monitor them to determine locations of protesters or to carry out surveillance on organizers, or even to preemptively shut them down. In spite of this evolution in the way people and governments carry out resistance and reactionism in the digital age, it remains apparent that for-profit news media and social networks leave a lot to be desired when it comes to in-depth reporting from the people who live the day-to-day realities of crisis, conflict and human struggle. In Tunisia and Egypt, supposedly victorious revolutions in the Arab Spring, journalists still face violent repression, censorship and prosecution by the new regimes, and citizens still turn out in the streets looking for a fulfillment of the promise of change. So after the major protests have been pacified, whether through regime change or violent suppression, and humanitarian crises have abated somewhat, what is it that keeps the digital eye from wandering, the international attention from waning? It can only be truthful, well-researched reporting in the common interest, which is transparent about its sources as well as its goals. Good old-fashioned journalism. More than ever, people have the ability to seek out the news that is relevant to them, from the places they live in, and more than ever, people have the ability to record and publicly comment on their milieu. Also, more than ever, advertisers are discovering increasingly effective ways to insert themselves into the field of vision, with social networks like Facebook targeting “smart” ads based on user content and interests and Twitter launching "Promoted tweets". Meanwhile, Google aims for full spectrum dominance as it rolls out Google Plus, a site that purports to give a user more control over the content it shares with certain groups, but keeps a public profile, and features a "Social Search" of a user's connections and content "+1'd" -- recommended by others. Advertisements themselves can be +1'd, potentially blending in with results of a users' personal connections. As a result of these advances, it is becoming increasingly difficult to filter and trust the content that faces us while remaining engaged, and moreover, many countries that often exist in a state of economic or political crisis are left behind as the information age progresses. A new kind of journalism is therefore necessary, one that is powered not through advertising, but through an active engagement with the viewer who has the chance and motivation to become a collaborator and producer as well. A journalism is needed that shifts away from the consumptive to the productive, and expands to every locale possible. The ultimate goal of journalism is not merely good storytelling, but rather a kind of virtual reality, an unfiltered lens on reality where people can truly understand a problem, investigate it further and seek out its solution. We need ways to regain our trust in the media we watch, and we need many more producers involved in the process. Those potential media-makers need to be empowered with the tools and training to carry out investigative journalism, and need a platform for free expression, where the influence of advertisers and trendsetters carry no weight and cannot muddy the message, and where due scrutiny falls upon those who would try to subvert the truth. By creating and providing support for dogit.org, Watchdog International seeks to foster the advancement of independent, non-corporate journalism and create new opportunities for aspiring journalists to learn and collaborate, as well as advocate for the rights and freedom of those facing repression and censorship. Our users deserve a social network that helps connect us with humanity and serves the common interest, not corporate interests. We invite you to join our network and publish media on your own terms. We invite you to write about what you know, the places you come from, and the stories that deserve a closer look than the mainstream media has the attention span for. Positive or negative, stories must be wholly grounded in facts. We invite you to question other sources and report biases, omissions and inaccuracies that do a disservice to the truth. The world is watching, and is ready for a change. dogit.org
The Pitfalls and Potential of Crowdsourcing
Too often what we see, read, or hear in the news we take at face value. Students of journalism learn to craft their articles and broadcasts to carry a certain level of official weight, framing stories through a dispassionate lens and sourcing well-established organizations, think tanks, experts and oftentimes, unnamed “officials.” However, conflicts of interest abound in the anonymous sourcing of mainstream news content. As media scholars know well, and astute observers in the public have witnessed, media accuracy is constantly in flux and bias is ever-present. Journalists may feel pressure to self-censor, or worse, deliberately convey the side of the story more favorable to their sponsors and their more reliable sources, and by extension, their own livelihood. Sometimes this has had disastrous consequences, as with the mainstream media’s assistance in limiting oppositional voices and drumming up support for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. During the past decade, as the mainstream media has grown more critical of the failures of these occupations in order to regain their aura of objectivity, we have witnessed in tandem the rise of “crowdsourcing” -- independent reporting from the public at large. The immediate appeal of crowdsourcing for news outlets was two-fold: budgets were dwindling for stationing reporters in a diverse array of countries to cover infrequent “newsworthy” events, while demand for online video of breaking news coverage was soaring; fortunately, the demand could be met by welcoming “citizen reporters” to grant rights to use of their content on mainstream networks. The mainstream media relied heavily on these reports from stranded tourists in the wake of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. However, the positive aspects of crowdsourcing go much farther beyond the benefits to the dinosaurs of news conglomerates and their affiliates to cover disasters and crisis in the making. The crowd, while international in its basic interests and shared values, tends to gravitate toward local issues of shared ongoing importance and thus bears a unique perspective just beyond the reach of a mainstream journalism that depends on momentary tragedies and sensationalism. Also, members of the crowd can utilize the content they generate to organize, affect events in the making or change their own goals in the absence of leadership on sites like Indymedia, and instantaneously keep up with each other on sites like Twitter and Facebook, while the for-profit media races to decipher the meaning of their messages, anticipate gatherings and capitalize on their trends, if not at least their novelty. Time Magazine jumped on the bandwagon with a series of articles heralding Twitter's imminent sphere of influence. In a June article titled, "Why Twitter is the Medium of the Movement," Time's Lev Grossman noted that Twitter's ease of use, speed, free access, and portability with cell phones made it the ideal tool of web-savvy Iranians who demonstrated against the reelection of President Ahmedinejad. After the official results of the vote were announced, faced with widespread protests by supporters of opposition candidate Mousavi, the Iranian government actually took down the phone system, but was unable or unwilling to prevent people from “tweeting.” On-the-ground reports and graphic images streamed out in almost real time. Pro-government supporters quickly joined the online cacophony, diluting the seemingly unified message of the opposition protesters. Grossman observed that the messages coming out of Iran were "chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable." But while the images of the atrocities of the government suppression of protest did indeed reach the eyes of a global audience, the protesters nevertheless failed to create the political change they desired, for the time being at least. In spite of this success in the face of intimidation and suppression of information, there exist substantial challenges to the ability for crowd-powered journalism to reach a mainstream audience and affect global events. With effective organization, and the development and widespread distribution of the technology necessary for reporting, these challenges should be overcome in the next decade. One major impediment lies in the fact that the crowd has significantly reduced access to official sources and events, less access to broadcast-quality equipment, and don't conform to a standard, easily-digestible story structure. A common argument is that mainstream news is much more trustworthy than independent reporting, but this presupposes the bottom line of the corporation rather than the bottom line of human interests creates a higher standard of objectivity. What this necessitates is really a more savvy, discerning, and actively engaged audience. Bias can and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and a consistent user can be trusted to be more transparent about their bias than the mainstream media. Technical issues and typos might be overlooked in favor of authentic real-time content, while social networking may enable private financial and technical support, or collaboration to increase the quality and diversity of content. Another significant issue is that the current model lies wide open to infiltration by the wealthy and the powerful, who have a vested interest in obscuring their identity, spinning their actions and promoting social trends. It can be difficult to gauge the popularity of trends and ideas based solely on who posts about them, and corporations can easily pay people to pose as "trendsetters." Potential solutions are an automated filter controlled in part by users, community self-regulation, or open risk of exposure to the general public if content is verified as originating from corporate IP addresses. With microblogging sites like Twitter, while more activists and journalists may have the chance to have their reports seen, they still face significant limitations simply in the length of the messages. This has a serious effect on the quality and reception of posts, leading many to utilize “hashtags” to organize content, and shortened hyperlinks to external websites, quickly maximizing their 140 character limit on Twitter. Independent journalists should have a bit more freedom to immediately engage their audience without sensationalism, and users more of a choice in determining how they view their content. Decentralized, without an organization or company behind them, independent journalists have the ability to find their way into a crowd where media access is restricted or forbidden. However, they are much more vulnerable to being caught and having footage blocked, or destroyed, and being imprisoned rather than simply censored. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, last year over half of journalists in prison publish online, and nearly half were freelancers. These individuals require and deserve the same level of protection, legitimacy and advocacy afforded to mainstream news journalists to operate safely. Perhaps if independent journalists and their audiences joined in a collective organization, they would gain greater immunity to document in their communities. This will not necessarily make journalism a safer profession overall in the near future, but will greatly expand the ability for people to cover and follow global events through unfiltered lenses. Finally, governments are actively working to advance their ability to stymie crowdsourcing and monitor activists’ communication. On the anniversary of the Tiananmen Day Massacre last year in China, the government preemptively blocked Twitter and a number of other sites. China’s success in tracking and blocking political dissidents makes one wonder what the true potential of crowdsourcing will be in the coming years, for example, in future multi-party elections in previously closed political systems such as Myanmar and Cuba, or in current turmoil in democratic states Kyrgyzstan and Thailand, where opposition protests face violent responses from the military. If we seek a future of free-flowing non-corporate information, it is in our interests to empower the people who continue to expand the public domain, to connect locally and globally with each other and thus empower ourselves. dogit.org
The Rise and Fall (and Rebirth) of the Social Network
If there's one thing the world should have learned in the past decade, it should be "don't believe the hype." Hype greases the wheels, butters the bread, makes the world go round. Until it becomes simply hope. It was 2000. The end of the world was not nigh, even though the "end of history" had been proclaimed. George W. Bush had come within the margin of erroneous victory in large part due to a projected surplus, which meant that everybody could get some. America was billed as a nation at peace with the world, retired from nation building. Stocks had reached the high water mark with the dot-com and tech boom. Unemployment was at 4%. It was a good time for speculation. As the bubble burst and the surplus became a deficit, people carried on believing the hype. They took out toxic mortgages, exacted collective punishment on a population alleged to harbor terrorists, and listened in deference to the new president as he began his quest for a war of choice, to spread democracy and end tyranny. Then people found themselves getting hyped up about a new novelty -- the social network. Read More »