'Oxygen is more vital to human like than gold, but because are is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price' (Shirky 2002, p.2). As such instead of a handful of news sources we can now find thousands if not millions of blogs on different topics around the web. But with such an abundance of people publishing items, he likelihood of it being incorrect is growing higher.
Epitomised by Gus Cirola (2011) when he said 'you found it on a credible site not just some persons blog'. Shirky's argument about online blogging killing print media is true in a sense, however it is not killing the Giants of the news world. People still visit big newscorp websites to receive their news than other we resources. Granted places such a reddit and ohmynews are growing in popularity but even things on those "trusted" sites need to be fact checked before sharing them.
Kevin Kelly put it best when he said 'trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world...you'll pay for authenticity'. The relationship built up by big news networks through years of being the only news source does not simply wash away once free items and other sources become available. Humans are creatures of habit and stick to those habits as much as possible. I am not saying that newspapers and big news companies are "authentic" simply that they are trusted by most. Big media companies tend to avoid having egg on their face by reporting wrong facts as much as possible, that isn't to say theyw on't spin it to suit their own agenda.
Cirola, G. 2011, podcast, The Drunk Tank, RoosterTeeth, 9 June, accessed 6/10/2011, http://roosterteeth.com/podcast/
Kelly, K. 2008, Better Than Free, accessed 3/9/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
Shirky, C. 2002, Webligs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 3/9/2011, http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
The interesting thing about Ohmynews is that the stories are edited and fact-checked before they are uploaded to the website. That is the only way that Ohmynews can retain its credibility. However, people are still highly encouraged to participate to the website and they still remain to be a citizen journalist website. Good post though.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that blogging is killing print media I think print media putting their own stories on their own websites is killing print media. You have a legitimate point there saying that the newspapers and news companies are more trusted. I know personally I would trust a newspaper over someone’s blog if they had conflicting ideas. Like you said humans are creatures of habits.
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