Clay Shirky: End of audience blog task
Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks
Media Magazine reading
Media Magazine 55 has an overview of technology journalist Bill Thompson’s conference presentation on ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ It’s an excellent summary of the internet’s brief history and its impact on society. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 13 to read the article ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ Answer the following questions:
1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?
- allowed people to communicate through emails
- allowed people to exchange files
- able to communicate with anyone around the world
- able to get information
- a way to express voice
- connects people
- great source for information
- great place for gaming and education
- can be used politically and can be used for campaigns in order to draw attention to abuses for human rights
"The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,
and freedom of the press in a single connection. It’s only vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day)."
2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?
- spam
- abuse
- trading of images of child abuse
- bullying -pornography
- used by extremists and radicals to join their cause, fraud, scams
- there's the dark web
3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?
Open technology has several meanings:
• Does it mean an internet built around the ‘end-to-end’ principle, where any connected
computer can exchange data with any other computer, while the network itself is unaware of the ‘meaning’ of the bits exchanged?
• Does it mean computers that will run any program written for them, rather than requiring them to be vetted and approved by gateway companies?
• Does it mean free software that can be used, changed and redistributed by anyone
without payment or permission?
I don't agree with 'open technology' because there are a lot of risks and can be difficult to control.
4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?
- Access to dissenting or distinct voices could be limited and managed.
- a more regulated world
- less private life
- We know you care about privacy – and why wouldn’t you, I certainly do. So how can the network deliver that?
- We know you care about other people around the world, and want a fairer, more just
world – so how can the network help there?
- We know you want to understand the world and engage with it, so how do we deliver news media that can operate effectively online and still make money?
5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?
I think there should be more control on the openness because there is still a great deal of online scams and frauds going on as well as illegal images of children being sent around the internet. Therefore, the internet should be regulated more.
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:
1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?
A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that re-quires some sort of specialization. This relates to newspaper industry because In these cases professionals become gatekeepers, simultaneously providing and controlling access to information, entertainment, communication, or other ephemeral goods.
A profession becomes, for its members, a way of under-standing their world. Professionals see the world through a lens created by other members of their profession; for journalists, the rewards of a Pulitzer Prize are largely about recognition from other professionals.
2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?
The permanently important question is how society will be informed of the news of the day?
How will society be informed of the news today? Newspapers exist to print, publish and deliver a bundle of news in way that is profitable. This model has been disrupted by the internet- as anyone can publish anything for free. Therefore, newspapers need to ask themselves 'Why publish this?'
They also ask themselves "What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away?"
" What happens when there's nothing unique about publishing anymore, because users can do it for themselves?"
3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?
At Thurmond's hundredth birthday party Lott remembered and praised Thurmond's presidential campaign of fifty years earlier and recalled Mississippi's support for it: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all
these problems over all these years, either."
However, what kept the story alive was not the press but liberal and conservative bloggers, cycles. The weekend after Lott's remarks, weblogs with millions of readers didn't just report his comments, they began to editorialise. The editorialisers included some well-read conservatives such as Glenn Reynolds of the Instapundit blog, who wrote, "But to say, as Lott did, that the country would be better off if Thurmond had won in 1948 is, well, it's proof that Lott shouldn't be majority leader for the Republicans, to begin with. And that's just to begin with."
4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?
Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the
printing press five centuries ago.Mass amateurisation is a term used to describe society becoming less intelligent. Many self-published content on the internet are less trustworthy and inaccurate than real newspaper companies, such as The New York times, (surveys showed). Society trusts this news or focuses more on soft news, rather than hard news, leading to mass amateurisation.
5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?
It links to the concept of fake news because it implies that if one news story is consistently repeated throughout the media, then it is more likely to be repeated. Frequency acts as a determinant as to whether something is believed. For example, if nearly all the major newspapers report on climate change being a lie, then people will be more likely to believe them over a small group of professionals saying otherwise.
6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?
social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions dont involve an or-
derly transition from point A to point B. Rather, they go from A through a long period of chaos and only then reach B. In that chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones become stable.
This can also be viewed as chaos because the changes that come about as a result of the internet cannot always be controlled/are not always changes that we welcome.
7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?
It means that consumers are now able to create content as well, not every one has to be trained in order to create news stories. However, this is important because people would not be able to distinguish between quality journalism and less skilled work.
8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?
As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society's core institutions, but it's happening anyway. The comparison with the printing press doesn't suggest that we are entering a bright new future-for a hundred years after it started, the printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the I600s.
This issue became more than academic with the arrest of Josh Wolf, a video blogger who refused to hand over video of a 2005 demonstration he observed in San Francisco. He served 226 days in prison, far longer than Judith Miller, before being released. In one of his first posts after regaining his freedom, he said, "The question that needs to be asked is not 'Is Josh Wolf a journalist?' but 'Should journalists deserve the same protections in federal court as those afforded them in state courts?" This isn't right, though, because making the assumption that Wolf is a journalist in any uncomplicated way breaks the social expectations around journalism in the first place.
9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?
The amateurization of the photographers' profession began with the spread of digital cameras generally, but it really took off with the creation of online photo hosting sites. The threat to professional photographers came from a change not just in the way photographs were created but in the way they were distributed. In contrast to the situation a few years ago, taking and publishing photographs doesn't even require the purchase of a camera (mobile phones already sport surprisingly high-quality digital cameras), and it certainly doesn't require access either to a darkroom or to a special publishing outlet. With a mobile phone and a photo-sharing service, people are now taking photographs that are being seen by thousands and, in rare cases, by millions of people, all without any money changing hands.The twin effects are an increase in good amateur photographs and a threat to the market for professionals.
10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed?
I think that this era of mass amateurisation is a good thing to some extent. This is because it means that people can now produce their own content and stories as well as engage with other creators. This is a positive thing because it increases the range of opinions and perceptions shared in the media; thus, enabling the media to remain diverse rather than homogeneous. On the other hand, it may also be a negative thing because it means that the quality of news is also decreasing due to the lack of professionalism of amateur journalists. Also, it means that those attempting to find professions in the newspaper/journalism industry have more difficulties in doing so because professionally trained journalists are no longer needed.
Optional extension: read Chapter 1 ‘It takes a village to find a phone’ andChapter 4 ‘Publish, then filter’ to further understand Shirky’s ideas concerning the ‘End of audience’.
Media Magazine reading
Media Magazine 55 has an overview of technology journalist Bill Thompson’s conference presentation on ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ It’s an excellent summary of the internet’s brief history and its impact on society. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 13 to read the article ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ Answer the following questions:
1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?
- allowed people to communicate through emails
- allowed people to exchange files
- able to communicate with anyone around the world
- able to get information
- a way to express voice
- connects people
- great source for information
- great place for gaming and education
- can be used politically and can be used for campaigns in order to draw attention to abuses for human rights
"The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,
and freedom of the press in a single connection. It’s only vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day)."
2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?
- spam
- abuse
- trading of images of child abuse
- bullying -pornography
- used by extremists and radicals to join their cause, fraud, scams
- there's the dark web
3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?
Open technology has several meanings:
• Does it mean an internet built around the ‘end-to-end’ principle, where any connected
computer can exchange data with any other computer, while the network itself is unaware of the ‘meaning’ of the bits exchanged?
• Does it mean computers that will run any program written for them, rather than requiring them to be vetted and approved by gateway companies?
• Does it mean free software that can be used, changed and redistributed by anyone
without payment or permission?
I don't agree with 'open technology' because there are a lot of risks and can be difficult to control.
4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?
- Access to dissenting or distinct voices could be limited and managed.
- a more regulated world
- less private life
- We know you care about privacy – and why wouldn’t you, I certainly do. So how can the network deliver that?
- We know you care about other people around the world, and want a fairer, more just
world – so how can the network help there?
- We know you want to understand the world and engage with it, so how do we deliver news media that can operate effectively online and still make money?
5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?
I think there should be more control on the openness because there is still a great deal of online scams and frauds going on as well as illegal images of children being sent around the internet. Therefore, the internet should be regulated more.
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:
1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?
A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that re-quires some sort of specialization. This relates to newspaper industry because In these cases professionals become gatekeepers, simultaneously providing and controlling access to information, entertainment, communication, or other ephemeral goods.
A profession becomes, for its members, a way of under-standing their world. Professionals see the world through a lens created by other members of their profession; for journalists, the rewards of a Pulitzer Prize are largely about recognition from other professionals.
2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?
The permanently important question is how society will be informed of the news of the day?
How will society be informed of the news today? Newspapers exist to print, publish and deliver a bundle of news in way that is profitable. This model has been disrupted by the internet- as anyone can publish anything for free. Therefore, newspapers need to ask themselves 'Why publish this?'
They also ask themselves "What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away?"
" What happens when there's nothing unique about publishing anymore, because users can do it for themselves?"
3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?
At Thurmond's hundredth birthday party Lott remembered and praised Thurmond's presidential campaign of fifty years earlier and recalled Mississippi's support for it: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all
these problems over all these years, either."
However, what kept the story alive was not the press but liberal and conservative bloggers, cycles. The weekend after Lott's remarks, weblogs with millions of readers didn't just report his comments, they began to editorialise. The editorialisers included some well-read conservatives such as Glenn Reynolds of the Instapundit blog, who wrote, "But to say, as Lott did, that the country would be better off if Thurmond had won in 1948 is, well, it's proof that Lott shouldn't be majority leader for the Republicans, to begin with. And that's just to begin with."
4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?
Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the
printing press five centuries ago.Mass amateurisation is a term used to describe society becoming less intelligent. Many self-published content on the internet are less trustworthy and inaccurate than real newspaper companies, such as The New York times, (surveys showed). Society trusts this news or focuses more on soft news, rather than hard news, leading to mass amateurisation.
5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?
It links to the concept of fake news because it implies that if one news story is consistently repeated throughout the media, then it is more likely to be repeated. Frequency acts as a determinant as to whether something is believed. For example, if nearly all the major newspapers report on climate change being a lie, then people will be more likely to believe them over a small group of professionals saying otherwise.
6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?
social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions dont involve an or-
derly transition from point A to point B. Rather, they go from A through a long period of chaos and only then reach B. In that chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones become stable.
This can also be viewed as chaos because the changes that come about as a result of the internet cannot always be controlled/are not always changes that we welcome.
7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?
It means that consumers are now able to create content as well, not every one has to be trained in order to create news stories. However, this is important because people would not be able to distinguish between quality journalism and less skilled work.
8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?
As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society's core institutions, but it's happening anyway. The comparison with the printing press doesn't suggest that we are entering a bright new future-for a hundred years after it started, the printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the I600s.
This issue became more than academic with the arrest of Josh Wolf, a video blogger who refused to hand over video of a 2005 demonstration he observed in San Francisco. He served 226 days in prison, far longer than Judith Miller, before being released. In one of his first posts after regaining his freedom, he said, "The question that needs to be asked is not 'Is Josh Wolf a journalist?' but 'Should journalists deserve the same protections in federal court as those afforded them in state courts?" This isn't right, though, because making the assumption that Wolf is a journalist in any uncomplicated way breaks the social expectations around journalism in the first place.
9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?
The amateurization of the photographers' profession began with the spread of digital cameras generally, but it really took off with the creation of online photo hosting sites. The threat to professional photographers came from a change not just in the way photographs were created but in the way they were distributed. In contrast to the situation a few years ago, taking and publishing photographs doesn't even require the purchase of a camera (mobile phones already sport surprisingly high-quality digital cameras), and it certainly doesn't require access either to a darkroom or to a special publishing outlet. With a mobile phone and a photo-sharing service, people are now taking photographs that are being seen by thousands and, in rare cases, by millions of people, all without any money changing hands.The twin effects are an increase in good amateur photographs and a threat to the market for professionals.
10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed?
I think that this era of mass amateurisation is a good thing to some extent. This is because it means that people can now produce their own content and stories as well as engage with other creators. This is a positive thing because it increases the range of opinions and perceptions shared in the media; thus, enabling the media to remain diverse rather than homogeneous. On the other hand, it may also be a negative thing because it means that the quality of news is also decreasing due to the lack of professionalism of amateur journalists. Also, it means that those attempting to find professions in the newspaper/journalism industry have more difficulties in doing so because professionally trained journalists are no longer needed.
Optional extension: read Chapter 1 ‘It takes a village to find a phone’ andChapter 4 ‘Publish, then filter’ to further understand Shirky’s ideas concerning the ‘End of audience’.
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