Archive for April, 2006
We Media Fringe Event
If you’re in London next week for our We Media Global Forum - or for some other reason - you might be interested in another blogging event planned for a secret location the evening of May 3. It’s a “fringe” conference, and sorry if I somehow taint its fringiness by saying how great I think this is. I don’t know the organizer, Robin Hamman, but I hope someone out there in cyberland appreciates how amazed and humbled I am that he or anyone is paying attention to what we do at The Media Center. Details here. I understand space is very limited. Good luck Robin.
Previous Comments
Nice work. I thought the entry ticket for We Media was rather pricey, so nice to see you cooperating with a fringe event.
The wemedia global forum sounds very exciting.I will be monitoring it from Honiara, Solomon Islands.
All the best.
He Tells Two Friends, They Tell One Billion…
What is perhaps the greatest driver of consumer choice in business? (should I buy a Toyota or a Buick? Sony or Sanyo?) It is, of course, old-fashioned word of mouth (WOM). Still. Yep, the future of business looks a bit more like the past than you might think.
What’s been happening around us is the application of WOM to the digital medium. It’s not much of a leap from the oral reviews of Shakespeare’s latest to the printed recommendations of Benjamin Franklin to the broadcast voices of amateur tinkerers of the early 20th century - hundreds of personal broadcasters on this new thing later to be called radio. (The earliest podcasts, I might add.)
To help buffet my point, in Margaret Penrose’s 1922 “The Radio Girls of Roselawn” two characters discussed whether they might, pretty soon,”carry receiving and sending sets in our pockets” which would allow them to “send or receive any news we wanted”.*
Send or receive any news we wanted. Hmm.
So the latest method of carrying that news (gossip, advice, pointed suggestions, criticisms, warnings) is of course the online manner. All these avenues opening up to deliver assistance with choice of what to buy, what to sell, where to do it, how to do it, what to charge… are making it both simpler for the savvy and possibly overwhelming for the rest. “I’ve got opinions on that latest film from Spike Lee but how can I choose among the thousands of outlets from which to pass it on?”
Setting aside the profusion of choices - and the dilemma that might be creating - the fact is all this chatter is making its way naturally above the din and creeping into the public consciousness. How this happens has always included a bit of magic (I like to think so), and a lot of common sense.
People pass on passion along the extreme edges: what they deplore and what they love. For anyone running a business of any kind this should be a blessing wrapped in a challenge. The blessing is that it is becoming easier for folks to comment on “Shakespeare’s latest” and know that not just the schlub gnawing on a drumstick next to him will be persuaded, but maybe thousands at once. The challenge for business is simply not to produce crap.
Seems to me the challenge is one of imagination: to be bold and create with the WOMers in mind. It is soon that the masses will allow substandard, overpriced and over-hyped stuff to rot on the shelves. People are being motivated by virtual, temporary acquaintances and it’s all about to meet up on a grand scale.
Businesses need to continue preparing for this not by creating thinly veiled marketing ploys in the form or a wikis, but prepare for it by putting all their energy into pleasing people with their results. Because no longer is John Smith just passing an opinion to Sally Jones on that Buick… He’s passing it on to 10,000 of them.
* earlyradiohistory.us
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
You’re right. It’s a WOM-a-rama out there. Just think of Tivo, one of the biggest beneficiaries of WOM. People didn’t just talk about it, they evangelized. The product had such an impact on people’s lives that they became sellers themselves. Businesses need to realize they are now dealing with empowered consumers: Wayne and Garth in a virtual Speakers’ Corner. WOM on, everyone. WOM on.
On Starbucks, franchises, media brands and eroding trust in your brand
When is a Starbucks not a Starbucks? Apparently only when I’m in the grocery store, or a hotel or, I don’t know almost every place I ever encounter the behemoth’s logo in person.
Confused? Me too.
All I wanted was a bottle of water, a delicious slice of marble cake, and to pay for it with a Starbucks card I received as a gift.
Believe it or not, I’ve been having trouble clearing it out, due in large part to the fact that I’ve been working from home for the past six months (I DO love the Internet 
and also because I’m in Boston and Dunkin Donuts is still putting up a good fight.
Anyway, when I do encounter something claiming to be a Starbucks, I want to use the card. I don’t want to hear anything about “Oh, we’re a franchise and not a real Starbucks and that card doesn’t work here.”
So, they pay Starbucks to use the logo, get the merchandise delivered, yet can’t configure their registers to accept this card.
These are my encounters with the Starbucks brand, and I’m not happy about it.
The same can largely be said for media companies. I’ve worked at more than one Big Newspaper that seems to have a Kane and Abel approach to dealing with its web operation.
Corrections that only appear in the late print editions but not the Web version that more people end up reading through the course of the next Web cycle? Not the newspaper’s problem.
Invented URLs to sites on either the newspaper’s site or other sites? Who cares! You can’t click on the newspage anyway.
I could go on, but it’s too easy and depressing.
Sure none of these things will hurt the newspaper but they are examples of how users can be turned off by their experience with the company’s brand.
It’s probably a lot like being in a Starbucks with a caffene jones and a giftcard you can’t use.
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
As much as I hate Starbucks, I admire their business model.
Less Information, better information
I have been in two minds these days, caught between the inner conviction I had nothing new to add to these week’s posts (plus I agree with most), and a faint surge to get down to basics & do some devil’s advocacy for good measure. As Internet can link me to any website in the world at light speed or so, the current system suits me fine, not to mention that as Irina I am no geek to see what is next in technology. But one thing is sure: considering how my little lifetime has witnessed the successive births of fax, e-mails, internet, w3, mobiles, chats, fora, blogs, newsletters, RSS and the like, chances are we will keep on talking as much, if not more. That reminded me of this 20th century pun: “totalitarianism is shut up, democracy is keep talking“… That was for politics, but it also suits the media, and here is why.
Informing is commendable, but Jeffrey says the media majors are now all happy and jumpy with the idea of hopping into bed together, thereby breaking the spirit of the Sherman Act and that of other anti-trust laws. It should be noted at this point that information is at the core of modern market economics: two tenets, nay, two founding hypothesis are atomicity of actors (so no one can influence prices or society as a whole) and both perfect & symmetric information: all knowledge is available & everyone knows it (plus you know I know you know that I know you know…). But that requires sheer interest in knowing, and to ensure the system is secured. In his book Gag Rule, On the Stifling of Dissent and the Suppression of Democracy, Harper Magazine editor Lewis Lapham is one of the daring few to give a daunting and outspoken vision of how the media are channelled, and their sources unchallenged. Technology is not to blame, but rather how it is used. Moreover, according to him, neither citizens nor scholars seem to care about cross-checking or deepening the information poured on to them, to say nothing about their actually being interested in just the principle of verifying the whereabouts. Reasons are to be found both in intellectual apathy and the comfort of not raising un-PC questions or negative feedbacks.
So This leads to several questions:
1. in democracy, what are people interested in?
2. in democracy, how do the media ensure people are informed?
3. journalists often claim “the People have the right to know”, but why should the media impose their interests if the ‘consumers’ are not interested?
4. therefore, what is the compatibility of mass media and democracy?
As with economics, research has long debated over this common nagging question on the independence of media and that of Central Banks (like the Federal Reserve): both these independences are theoretically & morally there to secure and optimize the system. Yet their instances and actions are neither elected, nor subject to democratic scrutiny. They are not only imposed on us, but We The People have no say, whether before or after, and that is that.
Next: the democratization of media. Gloria says the media are often dubbed the Fourth Estate. Well, they certainly are in that they make the news, they decide what is a headline news and what is not worth mentioning, and when to break them to us (or not). And isn’t the World a rich place: everyday has its toll of good news to fill 60 minutes and the tabloids’ 64 pages or so… Those are some reasons why, as this blog basically said, people don’t really trust the media and welcome the sprout of the hundreds of millions of personal sites worldwide. As the concept of Estates was Made in France, a reminder of the current situation there may be appropriate: nobility was officially trounced two centuries ago, and a century ago the Church was basically confined by law to janitor its precincts. So the media are an Estate in this other way: the people might listen but not follow and even joke about them. That leaves the country with one Estate only: the merchant class. What a coincidence: it is the merchant class that sells or controls the media, the hardware, the internet providers, and most diffusion & distribution networks. Whatever its noble motives, that is its business at heart: earn enough to sustain itself and pay the thousands of salaries it hires. And to develop itself, the best way is still to buy all your pals’ shares, just as in Monopoly. M&A in Media are the rule, though somewhat less blatantly than in Italy, Spain or the UK: media conglomerates are the rule.
So what about democracy in grassroots media and ‘personal’ websites many contributors here run in their spare time? Technorati will soon cover over 36 million blogs. Supposing one were curious enough and wanted to have a quick glance at every such weblog, and assuming furthermore one has large BW and restrains oneself to one second at every URL, that alone would require 1,000 days on a 10 hours daily basis (week-ends and holidays included). And that is only the top of the tip of the iceberg, as the rest of the world is in line still waiting for their turn: is it not just awesome how many people have things to say? And the fact Web 2.0 is talked about so much only underlines how much people are interested in virtual media and how much they yearn for a system more customized to their likings. But as Juliette pointed out : “What shall we do with this opportunity to shape the world we live in?“. That may require some clear objective for the future, something akin to Kennedy’s exhilarating Last Frontier to gather all the hundred millions of media users…
Nevertheless, much of the available information is redundant, either because watered down or because relayed on other sites (quoting, syndication, links, newsletters, RSS, etc). In a way, spread of information resembles what Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson says about ants (one should also read his Consilience and On Hulman Nature): when finding food, an ant leaves a scented trail which another soon follows thus doubling the scent, so that in no time more and more ants flock in, in a self-reinforcing boot-strapping mechanism until they form a full armada and clean up the place. That’s one way to modellize trendy information, you know the kind everyone talks about (celebrities, news, politics). The trouble is that as with everything in life, any information breakthrough has its own object-oriented devil ingrained in it: what were really good positive-discriminating tools (links, RSS feeds) are soon diverted to other ends, such as to increase visibility and pagerank. To make it short, this leads to white noise, a synonym to random walk after the property of light (a sum of all wavelengths). Because people are talkative (and if you got here, you now know how much I am), democratization of media leads to exponential white noise.
There is no doubt modern media provide users with so much more information than ever before, at the personal level. At the world level however, that is unclear: with globalization, people tend to embrace similar interests at the expense of particularisms. An example is the difference of cultural/traditional diversity within the US and within patchworked Europe, itself pretty homogeneous compared to what it was in the 18th and 19th centuries (Germany and Italy were not even unified for instance, and each had very different folklore and dialects). This naturally requires many caveats and robust research, but the trend towards homogeneity is clear. Yet, as Florian says, there is also little doubt we actually are less connected to each other. For one thing, we are not using any of our five natural senses, except the eye to recognize text, a very modern invention that lacks human touch. Images, webcams and Skype help somewhat, but they are nowhere near a table conversation. This not only shuns all body language which so often tells more than language per se and allows cross-checking, it also reduces communication to a handful of tongues. And basically, to a same culture: as the world map of this blog’s last 500 connections shows at any one time, browsers either come from English-speaking countries as most contributors here, or probably have close affinities to them (by education, living, or habit). That is fine, but one should not forget who and how many are not connecting, and what is it we are not talking about.
Last, I go for “quality connections” as John advocates, but then qualifying quality becomes tricky: information depth and topics’ interest all depend on personal perception and culture, as much as on one’s interests and ability to infer or fathom by induction. I sometimes wonder how much I learnt from all my hours spent reading the media day after day: all it takes is a few seconds for a few ideas. Those fields that so much further human knowledge (technology, sciences, history) are comparatively covered very little, or not at all. So most of what is said in the media is actually expectable, and support a basic truth: people talk about what they deem is important to them, and that can be cut down to a small number of ideas, infinite variations notwithstanding (like keeping track of friends and relatives). Repeating one way or another, and having umpteen variations on a same theme, both have a name. Despite its condescending acceptation, gossip serves a fundamental social function: to keep track of what others do, and that in turn often gives a feeling of community. No one likes secrets because they are perceived as eerie; at national level, that has led to intelligence, to learn what the others are doing. Gossip may be older than trust in human history: how can trust breed if the others are withholding information? Long gone are the times when tribes gathered and chatted round the fireplace and individuals told each other what they had leant in the course of the day. Now that humanity has expanded to all six continents, the media are a sophisticated variation thereof: tell all the others what is done in a particular place (the Olympics for instance). In terms of information flow, the media seem thus to foster worldwide gossip, and people like it. I do. Need to hear people. Not everything, not everyone, but when and what I feel like.
Thus, along Birdie’s ideas, the evolution of digital media is probably less in more information and new technologies, than in just better information. As Gloria also said, it is connectedness, not technology that is transforming society. Connectedness is not just multiplying connections, it is also about securing a wide array of trustworthy and useful information. Which in turn requires :
1. “strong reporting and informed commentary” as Clark Davey underlined, else information is superficial and hollow ;
2. synthesized information to the full to avoid yawns and ‘d√©j√† vu’. Some people can read fast, very fast: JFK (again) could reportedly read all of the NY Times in 40 minutes, and remember it. That shows how the information is immersed in noise: new information is always little, but immersed in recalls of facts people actually have integrated already.
3. communicate only when something really interesting (understandably, that is not in the interest of periodicals). Or credibility suffers: I personally do not use RSS, because I make sure I visit every once in a while those sites I’m sure are consistent and only post when appropriate.
4. targetting one’s interlocutors and topics, as Vanessa outlined when talking about connecting in different ways.
So, all in all, whatever the new developments in the future, they shouldn’t underlook information quality, and should allow variable geometries to suit every possible profile. Democratization of media, trust, social media, community, celebrities, etc : funny how topics discussed these past weeks now intertwine…
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
I couldn’t agree more. But there is a word missing from your post - and I think generally from the discussion about the future of news. That word is ’substance.’ As technology increasingly defines how people receive news (and in some cases how they collect it), our news gets shorter, more focused, and less substantial. Where have all the long articles gone? Where have all the explorative documentaries run away too? Our news may be more interesting, consumable by more people in more places, and more easily discussed or passed to a friend. But if the substance of the news continues to decline, we will have a problem on our hands.
Very good points. I’m not sure though about the loss of particularism brought about by globalization. In the digital sphere people meet because of shared topics and interests. But they are relatively removed from their socio- economic and cultural trappings: these don’t affect online exchanges of information or only in minimal ways, so that often we gloss over actual differences that lurk in the offline and very real context. There are cultural differences, it’s simply that they don’t weigh much online.
I am assuming English speaking readers flock to the wemedia blog because the organizers advertise on English language media and blogs - there’s an active non English language blogosphere (Global Voices proves it), but many of us Western bloggers never care to go look for it. Could it be the language barrier?
Not So Random
Florian Brody asks: Should we wait for a random start-up to come up with some new web technology to find out about the next major change of the media that defines our society?
Well, from someone who hangs out with “random start-ups” here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I proffer that they are not quite so random. Defining society and defining technology and defining media — these “definitions” are all connected by two-way streets, so one cannot happen without the other.
So the “geekstars” putzing around on the Internet right now are being influenced by where society and media are going, so their new web technology is going to be influenced by how they live and what they see and what they do. It’s unavoidable.
Kids had cell phones that could record video….boom! Random start-up YouTube gives us the society-defining gift that won’t stop giving.
Kids love flirting on MySpace….boom! We have more online social networks than we have friends.
Unfortunately, I’m just an observer and a consumer — I can’t imagine what the kids will do next. So I had some trouble with Florian’s next question:
“I would like to steer our discourse into the direction of how digital media can enhance and augment other media types that - for the lack of a better definition - function without computers. How does thinking about these media types help us to define the next step in digital media?”
I could feel my brow furrow. “I don’t think I know any media that function without computers.” Surely, a silly response but that was the first thing I thought. Then I looked up media in Wiktionary just to make sure I understood correctly. “Formats for presenting information.” That don’t use computers? Painting. Singing. Collage? They’re always talking about mixed-media collage in art history books.
Collage!
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
It’s “We Media” not “Media with Batteries” - so I hope there is more to human communication and expression than the boxes we have been using since the early 80s. And then - Computers will go away, the same way LPs and CDs and Linotype became obsolete.
It’s all about We Media Mix - there is a reason why Moody’s cuts Knight Ridder, McClatchy to junk: “concentration on a single industry creates vulnerability”.
Will Digital Advertising Doom Quality Journalism?
There is a great deal of understandable excitement about the potential of digital communications to help unleash the public service potential of journalism. Many journalists hope that new digital technologies will provide them with an opportunity to bypass the mainstream gatekeepers. Others believe that a non-professional form of public journalism can create a vibrant new model for reporting and editorial analysis. Such new approaches are desperately needed (as demonstrated by the failure of much of the U.S. print and electronic press to effectively cover the issues related to the run-up to the war in Iraq).
But there are a number of obstacles that must be addressed. First, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the structure of new media distribution doesn’t automatically guarantee that content providers will have the necessary range of access to distribution. To succeed in the digital environment, most content providers will require unfettered connections to what the broadband industry calls its “triple play.” That means programming seamlessly available on PC’s, IPTV (or interactive TV), and mobile devices. It’s not just in the U.S. where closed or highly controlled models of broadband distribution, especially for IPTV, will emerge. It’s a issue that should be on the agenda in London. News programs and content should automatically receive prime distribution on all platforms: satellite, broadband, cable, etc. There should not be any gatekeepers for news-related content. News providers must also be given access to all the necessary tools for promotion, including electronic program guides, personal video recorders, and default portals. (I think such access should be for free.)
Two, the core of the business model for digital content–the seamless weaving together of information, data collection, profiling, and targeting–is problematic. The market will require content providers, including news producers, to deliver unique information about individuals. While the advertising industry likes to claim that such personalized ads are a service to consumers, it ultimately means violating their privacy (and engaging in deceptive behavior). The relationship between content and marketing online–where everything will be a form of virtual infomercial–is also troubling. I fear that the same ad dynamics that have helped `dumb’ down much video news will also greatly influence broadband. If you can’t deliver the right demographics and targets, advertisers won’t support the service. That’s why we need to develop new policies and business models for news in the digital era.
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
What about micro-targeting? Can’t advertisers make an educated guess about what type of user is looking at certain content and promote ads accordingly? The technology supports it. The content supports it. The user doesn’t mind that much. So it seems the folks who don’t seem to get it are the publishers.
I work in public affairs, so I spend a lot of time trying to position advertising alongside relevant news in order to drive action among key audiences online. We have statistical evidence that suggests that people who see an ad that relates to the topic of the article they are reading is more likely to click through than if the ad if that ad appeared randomly. But did we really need to run lots of tests to confirm what our gut told us from the start? No, but we needed the data to demonstrate to the venues that our demands for specific inventory were not unreasonable. They will sell advertising to the highest bidder, the person who will pay the most. I could have an ad for a humanitarian organization trying to respond to a crisis that is being covered extensively in the international section of an online news site, but if a financial services firm comes along and offers a higher CPM, I will get bumped.
Targeting advertising online (or via mobile, or via iTV, or whatever) is not easy. There are billions of impressions available on millions of different sites. But its also not as difficult as a lot of organizations seem to think it is. When data is available about who an audience is, we use it to tailor and target our ads more appropriately. When it is not avaialble, good ‘ol common sense seems to work pretty well. The challenge is that the venues just want to make money and haven’t realized that allowing context to rule will lead to profits.
Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sachs, UN’s Nitin Desai to Speak at Global Forum
So, one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World (Time Magazine, in both 2004 and 2005), Jeffrey Sachs, will beam into the We Media Global Forum via satellite from New York. Isn’t technology wonderful? Prof. Sachs is director of both The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the UN Millennium Project.
Also new to the program is Nitin Desai, who is special assistant to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Mr. Desai will speak about media and the informed society.
Hmm, let’s see…
In one place, we’ll have a VIP rep of the UN, plus the likes of Tom Glocer and Mark Thompson (Reuters and BBC), Dave Sifry (Technorati), Scott Heiferman (Meetup.com), Wahdah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Joanna Shields (Google), Graham Ferguson (Vodafone) and Jeff Jarvis (buzzmachine.com). Should be interesting…
We Media Global Forum Goes Live Online on May 3-4
For those of you who prefer to hang out in pajamas, you can participate in the Global Forum from home.
We Media GOES LIVE on May 3 and 4, at 9:00 am GMT / 4:00 am EST, on the conference Web site ), with live video, blog reports, live-chat discussions and podcasts. You can tune in, have your say, and maybe see your words come out of the mouths of one of our online curators, who’ll be bringing the questions, insights and comments of our Internet audience to the live conference.
Will the U.S. Get the Democratic Media We Deserve?
The answer is that for the short-term–even in the broadband era–it isn’t likely. First, our largest media companies have a current political agenda that will further weaken the institution of journalism. They now seek - at the FCC and in Congress - to remove what remains of critical safeguards designed to ensure the public receives a diverse array of information sources. Newspaper and broadcasting companies want to kill the broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership safeguard. That rule has prevented one company from dominating the two most powerful sources of information in a single town (a number of such combinations were “grandfathered” in 1975 when the rule went into effect). Once that rule is killed, expect more newspapers to be swept up in TV-oriented empires, forced to focus on TV industry tabloid, sound bite, business models.
The TV networks and major broadcasting companies also want to scrap what’s left of the “cap,” the number of stations a single company can own in a town and nationally. Expect fewer voices, less news, more commercials. As my colleague Tim Karr wrote recently for this blog, the big cable and phone companies want to control the future of the broadband Internet in the U.S. Under their proposed business model, they would become powerful digital gatekeepers. The content owned by a Comcast, Time Warner or AT&T would travel to TV’s, PC’s and mobile devices on a super-fast highway. Competing content, such as new forms of news, would likely have to face an expensive toll road or resort to what will be the equivalent of a digital dirt road. In the next few weeks, both the House and Senate–now being heavily lobbied by the cable and telephone lobby–will decide whether such a scenario is likely to come to pass soon. The big cable and telephone companies will very likely win–since they are currently spending many millions for lobbying and on political donations.
The current crisis in U.S. journalism reflects two decades (and more) of such special interest lobbying by the media lobby. The cut-backs in overseas bureaus, elimination of most investigative reporting on TV, and the lack of electoral related coverage is all linked to the sweeping away of FCC safeguards (including limits on media ownership). A business model that has little regard for public service dominates.
If the media lobby has its way, we will have even fewer owners controlling newspapers, radio, broadcast TV, cable, satellite, and broadband access. Is this what we really want for the U.S.? In my next post, I will discuss the future of alternative media in the emerging digital world.
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
Check out Tim and Jeff’s campaign to ‘Stop Fake News’ to see that their battle against the big media companies is as much about the substance of the news as it is about the fairness of the process. We all deserve real news. Thanks to Tim and Jeff for stepping up to lead the fight for all of us.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) Author of The Declaration of Independence said that “We hold these Truths to be self-evident that Governments are insituted Among MEN, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed. We, the people give our representives the power and right-the authority-to govern us. We, as citizens, have the right to control how our government uses the authority we have given to it. As citizens in a free society , all of us have the responsibilty to deal intelligently with issuses of authority and make informed decisions about it.
What makes you think that the US public deserves any better media than it now has, i.e. chooses to watch, i.e. supports by purchasing?
I’d say the American public is getting exactly what they deserve, by buying into the dumbed down mainstream.
Hence ignorant blunders like Iraq.
Hence the scorn of the rest of us.
The Democratization of Media: Icarus Retold
The news media is often referred to as the Fourth Estate, alongside the other three Estates (church, nobility and merchant class) described by Edmund Burke, that comprised the body politic of 18th-century France. The Estates represented the acme of the social hierarchy - the powerful, established elite who determined how everyone else should worship and be governed, who owned the means of production and commerce, and who told the masses what they should think.
Over time, the members of the Fourth Estate (at least in western civilizations) began to see a different function for themselves beyond exhortation. They started to see themselves as the fountain of knowledge, responsible for delivering objective, fair and accurate information that enables an enlightened, knowledgeable citizenry. This change in focus only served to raise the Fourth Estate even higher, setting up its members as superhuman in their ability to be perfectly unbiased and always right.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the news media solidified their position as the final arbiters of what information should recieve the attention of the public, and as the best interpreters of that information. They were able to do so because there were no means to challenge them - no easy and timely mechanism for others to call them on mistakes, no channels through which alternative interpretations of events or information could be offered. The news media began to believe their own hype that their sense of fairness and accuracy was greater than that of mere mortals.
Then came the Internet, and discussion lists and blogs and citizen journalism and we media, which illuminated the news-gathering and reporting process, uncovering all-too-human errors in judgement, interpretation and accuracy. Icarus began to fall.
The democratization of media is a retelling of that Greek myth, where a youth with man-made wings and great arrogance decided he could soar as high as the gods and flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax holding his wings together and sent him tumbling back to earth. If the news media had not reached such heights of hubris, would they seem to be falling so far and fast today?
In mythology, the story ends with Icarus’s death, but such an outcome seems unlikely for the media. For all their faults, they are still the best agents we have for collecting and disseminating the huge amounts of information that serve as our common reference points, promote social cohesiveness, and oil our democratic systems of governance. And their fall is but the introduction to a much larger story. Thousands of years ago, Icarus fell to a pre-biblical earth of passivity and ignorance, but today he would fall to a digital world - limitless, potentially borderless, filled with millions of voices, and characterized by diversity, transparency, nuance and action. It is a world where the dominance of every long-established institution, not just in media, can be challenged. It is a world where all underdogs - be they individuals, start-ups, non-profits or developing countries - can have the means to, if not to soar with gods, then at least walk among giants.
Is the democratization of media the beginning of true, cataclysmic change? In what ways can underdogs stand tall, and how are the giants reacting? Will democratization eventually happen across all social sectors equally? Or is it possible for some sectors to ignore this transformation and survive? And what other developments and issues in this topic am I missing?
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
There’s an interesting discussion in the most recent For Immediate Release podcast about MSM now being best an providing analysis since they can’t really break news anymore.
Likewise, I find info quantity and organization to be best provided by RSS, search, metadata, etc.
Icarus hasn’t fallen yet here in Denmark. To my great dismay, most of my friends and acquaintances - well-educated, internet savvy people - have no idea what a blog is and little conception of its inherent grassroots power. The traditional media is still largely the main fountain of information and no serious “challengers” have emerged as far as I can tell. Popular blogs tend to focus on IT or travel, rather than politics and in general have made no significant impact so far on mainstream opinion. (I haven’t heard of any blog front in the Italian election for instance). Nor have blogs made an impact as business models. In DK, only one blog seems to be making any money. Many business people I speak to seem to find the idea of advertising or running PR campaigns on blogs and other social media slightly ridiculous. There is still little if any cross-pollination between social media and mainstream media.Does all this reflect a more entrenched media establishment here in Europe? A lack of grassroots user activity? A more passive electorate? Or just the usual lag of 2 to 3 years that characterizes innovation originated in the US? Europe?
Staying Connected Across Time
In his kickoff post, Florian talks about well-connected societies using a “range of different media types available to them to exchange news, establish and maintain connections and establish history.” The last word, history, made me think about connectedness across time through your personal history.
I use new media in so many different ways to stay connected to people and places from my past.
My childhood home is pinned on Google Maps. I’ve visited the web sites of my grade school and high school. I’ve bookmarked pictures of snow in Michigan so I can play “you think this is a blizzard, check out what winter was like when >I< was a kid!" with my friends in New York. I like staying connected to my midwestern roots so I listen to webcasts from radio stations in Detroit, visit the Freep and am on the Pistons' e-mail list.
I stay in touch with my grade school best friend and two of my high school roommates via email. Of course, I’ve Googled old boyfriends and found out that the boy I went steady with in sixth grade ended up being a state attorney general who resigned after being accused of ethics violations. Good thing we broke up before summer vacation.
I belong to classmates.com. I’m on MySpace, too, and have added several acquaintances that I’ve lost touch with over the years by finding them on other people’s pages. I’m just getting started with LinkedIn and hope to find some former co-workers there, too.
I recently started using my AOL Instant Messenger again and reconnected with some old friends there as well. My new job’s messaging standard is AOL, but I stay connected to my pals at the previous job via Yahoo, and at the job before that via Hotmail. Thank you, Trillian!
I wonder if the Next Big Thing will be a tool to make it easier to keep your own personal history and stay connected to the places you’ve been and the people who’ve been in your life. Of course, privacy would be a big concern, but it would be interesting to see your own personal history all in one place.
TAG: wemedia
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As a person who is outside her own country - I am particularly amazed by how much social software and the net can dissolve borders.
Despite being out of my country - I don’t feel like diaspora. As long as I have a computer on me - I feel intricately connected with India. Aware of every bit of news. Random chats with friends back home.
It would be interesting to see what the internet does in terms of identity-politics in the life of diaspora.
Connectedness and Technology - Evolutionary Siblings?
Connected? Has the Net been Darwinian in its brief evolution, and are the characteristics of a networked society akin to different genus/ nationalities, seemingly different people within a network sharing common characteristics or ideals?
I ask this with regard to the tell tale signs that may be staring at us and what will probably emerge ( c.f ¬†Florian Brody’s post : Should we wait for a random start-up?), whether that’s through Darwin/Dyson’s eyes, trend extrapolation or modelling.
So far we seem to have been confounded by the successes whether its blogs, RSS, wikis, but some may hint, academia for example, to the genesis of these tools and how far they were right for their time within their communities but ahead of the curve for us. A typical example being email. What else lurks within the in-tray marked: “To do at some point”.
We are certain of one thing, to paraphrase Robert X Cringley, that the Net is like the universe a few seconds after the big bang. What may come has me pondering The Outernet, the Net’s inevitable telelevisual state and the richness of hyperlinked video.
The Outernet would be an elevated state of the Net, emerging from the home, office or classroom to become a unifying unit of all public-facing visual /auditory/text information. Your local council, school, street, high street shop would show its own programming on jumbo screens ( see above) combined with all manner of data, that simultaneously could be accessed.
At 8mb plus, the Net assumes TV transmission qualities and how far away are we from this with Gilders Law. And then just as we have linked data through text, video links allow us to drill information, perhaps even construct on-the-fly our own news items.
Incidently if this means anything to you, good to see a prosumer camera on the market from Panasonic offering real HD video. All this perhaps may add to a further level of connectedness.
The mind of the fanciful thinker perhaps, but I’m taking my chances.
TAG: wemedia
tags: No commentsThree Futurist Ideas
Florian Brody asks: Should we wait for a random start-up to come up with some new web technology to find out about the next major change of the media that defines our society?
From Florian’s discussion leading up to that question, he seems to really be asking “What’s missing, what holes are there, what opportunities have yet to be explored in terms of media connectedness that will shape and define the future of our society?” He also, while posing this question, is really getting at the breadth and depth of the informational level that we become involved in while communicating, and whether we can push the envelope of involvement beyond its current level.
Another aspect of the question, of course, is do we have any choice, but to wait for a random start-up to come up with the next Big Thing? I mean, after all, the mere fact that we spend a lot of time in this new media doesn’t mean that we have the gift of creating the unexpected. But let’s pretend we do, and then we can anticipate the unanticipatable and go from there!
So, one path to this kind of futurist exploration would be to identify what’s missing? What are the holes in this field of communication?
In my essay on March 24, 2006, Focalize, Vocalize, Localize, I imagined that an organization - maybe more than one - could target areas of interest and concern to communities around the globe, target them so that they could be addressed by bloggers and other new media participants including journalists, academics, kids - no restrictions, and followed by residents of the new media at a specific date and time. In this way, the attention of communities small and large and even global, could be brought to bear on topics that otherwise are discussed in such a random and dispersed manner that they disappear for all intents and purposes. Kind of like Earth Day except every day - and maybe every hour - something, somewhere on Earth is focused upon. The input for what is to be focused upon could come from everywhere but some group of people would have to filter through all of that using a fair formula so that no country, no community, no region is ignored because of relative economic or political power or position. Let’s call this Big Idea Number One.
Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity, and former President of Poland - a person who knows the power of leverage even when most of the world did not - had some very interesting things to say at a lecture given at the Armand Hammer World College this past week in my town. He pointed out that when he was a dissident, in the “bad old days” of the Soviet Union and the captive Eastern Block, it was difficult to connect with others of like mind and even more importantly, it seemed like the fate of the world would always be determined by who had the most weaponry. And for Poland - how many tanks and machine guns were pointing at your head. But he knew that ideas were more powerful than weapons. Even with twentieth century methods of communication - telephones, writing, leaflets - it was possible to overthrow an empire. But the first thing that he wanted his audience and the world to understand is that the internet has - without any direction whatsoever - succeeded in globalizing the world in terms of information. The second and most important thing that he wanted his audience to understand was that in a global economy, a now almost entirely market-driven economy, consumers have the power to turn the wheel, push the gas pedal, and hit the brakes. They only need to understand that. And when they do, we can change the world.
As with other imagining about a way to bring the world’s attention - its focus - on issues from all over the world, imagine if consumers could, through the internet, form coalitions where the power of numbers united by the power of ideas could be focused on institutions, politicians, corporations - every single estate to bring about change. This would be the conversion of information into involvement in a way the world has never seen except on those occasions such as Lech Walesa experienced where a simple set of ideas spread like a virus and grabbed the world’s attention and changed it forever. Talk about a way to take something that has been done before many times in the old ways and powering it up with the new ways! Let’s call this Big Idea Number Two.
How about the quality and reliability of the information? This is another hole that needs to be filled. So much of what is expressed in blogs and really all over the web is of personal interest - really more like person to person communication and that’s a great thing because when it happens globally it changes the world without anyone having to direct it, just like Lech Walesa said about the world in general. But one problem is that when it comes to news, and reporting and investigating what’s happening in the world, very few non-journalists are equipped and have the experience, the training, the time, the money to really investigate and report to the new media world. And so, we seem to have fewer journalists working for fewer organizations disseminating what they’ve gathered to a much larger audience. That means that more and more of the information we get - the “news” - is recycled and copied. Can we find a way to increase the number of news gatherers, investigators so that we get a commensurate increase in the sources and diversity of the information? What we need is kind of a new media news organization that finds a way to organize and perhaps even pay people to do a professional job from everywhere around the globe. News gatherers and investigators who are beholden to a global community of media consumers and interests. Is this really important? Well when you consider the fact that almost all the major newspapers and new media disseminators of content are owned by a few corporations that are tied in with a few of the most powerful governments on the planet, I think there might be a problem. Of course, existing news organizations can change with the times and find ways to be directly accountable, such as those involved with this blog. The fact that Reuters and the BBC are sponsoring the We Media Global Forum says a great deal about their vision of the future. Hopefully more news organizations will also embrace change. Let’s call this Big Idea Number Three.
So there you go, three big futurist ideas. Who knows whether any of them will come to pass?
TAG: wemedia
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dearest birdie!!!!!!!!!
hurrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!
i have to do a debate for my stupid theolgy class!!!!! face the wrath of ALEXANDRA EVAN HEATH!!!!!
muahahahahaha!!!
love,
the theology class
Trust
Thank you for the invitation to weigh in. Trust is as old as the human race, as is its opposite, betrayal. Why? You can get what you want through authority - “he or she who has the gold makes the rules” - or you can solicit what you want through trusted relationships. Trust is a more powerful organizer of people when the chips are down and the way is uncertain as we saw in the micro economies in the tsunami, Hurrican Katrina, 9/11 and in any organization with its back against the wall. But having trust can also be a set-up for betrayal, aka, “trust is for suckers.” I have researched people who work hard at engineering trust just so they can betray it in the end - either to get what they want or enjoy the rush of duplicity. Now that’s something to deal with! Who do you trust and how long can it be sustained? I don’t know the answer to that one but I am working hard in the field of practical measurement to it find out.
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Trust is understood in many different ways depending on the context. Trust in media means reporting correctly what you see and what you hear and documenting it without bias.
Where Do Trust and Connectedness Overlap?
Last week, we talked about Trust in the Media (as well as trust generally). This week we have been talking about connectedness. Is there a relationship between the two?
Karen Stephenson, a social-network business consultant and friend of the Media Center (I first met Karen at a Media Center sponsored Symposium last year) would argue there is. She is profiled in the most recent issue of Business 2.0. Here is an excerpt from that article:
There is a secret structure at every organization that spells its success or failure. You can’t see it in the org chart or in the flow of money on the spreadsheet. But within this structure, the assistant in the third cubicle from the elevator may be more crucial than the suit in the fancy corner office.That’s because the web of alliances is woven not by the vice presidents or generals but by people Stephenson has dubbed “hubs,” “gatekeepers,” and “pulse takers.” The links they create combine to form the network of human trust in your company, and that controls the flow of ideas, which is the lifeblood of any business.
“You may think you know your organization from the org chart, but the fact is, things work much differently,” Stephenson tells her audience emphatically. (She says almost everything emphatically.) “You have to discover the world of connections buried underneath the traditional hierarchy.” What she means is that knowing who trusts whom is as important as knowing who reports to whom.
Woe to the person who doesn’t understand the trust network in his or her company, she tells the generals, whose attention is now becoming more focused. Ignore this hidden structure and your quality team players will jump ship, mentors will abandon their charges, institutional memory will vanish, and glad-handing schmucks will weasel their way into power. But if you fathom how your company really works, you can identify and reward your most valuable employees and unearth innovative ideas.
Ok, I think I get it. Trust is the direct result of being connected. And being connected becomes even more possible, or more valuable, when there is trust. Without it, the whole system will fall apart. More from the article:
As Stephenson sees it, organizations’ structures fall on a continuum between rigid hierarchies and bloblike networks. Government bureaucracies are often the worst examples of hierarchies. But there’s a different danger in networks: If no one knows who’s in charge of what project and everyone thinks he has real input into every decision, the company can become directionless. So, too, can academic bureaucracies, which Stephenson believes contain some of the most amorphous, paralyzing networks.
“The trick is to balance the hierarchy–the clear line of command–with the more tribal trust relationships that exist within a healthy network,” Stephenson says. “Hierarchies can neutralize networks, and networks can unhinge hierarchies. In the end, one does not work well without the other.”
I am still wrapping my head around this stuff, so I’m not sure I have much to add to the conversation at this point. What do you think? And, Karen — if you are out there, please weigh in.
TAG: wemedia
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Trust dominates informal networks within a hierarchy. This is often taught in MBA classes, but amazingly once out in the executive suite, many professionals seem to forget all about it and focus purely on hierarchies. Interestingly, digital connectedness has managed to thrive without an explicit hierarchy and in fact has proved very resistant in acquiring one. Or are today’s A list bloggers going to be tomorrow’s big cheeses on the digital landscape?
A secret? What kind of a secret is that, if one is talking about it worldwideweb?
Which reminds me of that riddle going about at school when I was a kid: Do you see that elephant behind that sprig out of the window ?
No? It’s well hidden, huh?
Anyway, I was just wondering: can connectedness ensure facts are plain enough to be seen?
According to the article, that hidden structure would go unnoticed to most people (as does by the way the eye’s big blindspot, constantly recomputed by the brain without one ever noticing: one can’t even trust what one sees).
But well, as it’s the same for everyone, suppose now one does see it, whatever that ’secret structure’ may be: does it automatically inspire more trust? What if actually one doesn’t like the new picture?
Funny what synchronicity does sometimes, I was just (re)watching Minority Report: this film based on Philip K. Dick’s story actually portrays a society wired and connected to the extreme, at all levels. And there, one sound elderly woman not only asserts women know better (poor us, we men), but goes on saying something like “trust no one but yourself, because that is the rule of life”. Or, at the other end of the social spectrum, to paraphase dear ol’ Churchill: “there are no international interests, only changing national interests”. As dwindling trust in Congress was mentionned earlier in this blog, the Romans obviously shared the opinion way back then with their say “Senatus bestia, senatores boni viri”: The Senate is a beast, senators are good men.
Is it the same with individuals, as public entities are a sum of people? So who should one trust? The people, or everyone one by one? As people have lived together ever since the dawn of humanity, how do we know trust is as old as the human race? And now what of the people wired and connected internationally? Which triggers umpteen questions: “what is trust?” in the first place ?
I don’t mean to split hairs, but for the sake of clarity and from a methodological point of view, just what definition are we using? Come to think of it, do we have one?
Or have its terms been specified?
Trusting we are talking about the same concept doesn’t mean we are.
Huh, and what if we were just dwelling on mere drivelling? Or is trust just a matter of dialectics? In which case, chances are there is no end to it, even by war of attrition. Gee, so many questions…
Anybody a clue?
so glad that both events can collaborate. i will be at the fringe event but will also be tracking the forum as much as possible.