Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks
Clay Shirky: End of audience
Media Magazine reading
1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?
Emailing and exchanging files with other people at university, access to talk to hundreds of thousands of users and being connected to other people and information around the world.
2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?
Illicit images may be discovered, bullying and abuse, extremists and radicalism and the dark web.
3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?
The idea of ‘openness’ lies at the centre of this debate:It needs to be built on technologies which are themselves ‘open’, and that this is the only way to encourage a diverse online culture that allows all voices to be heard truely.
Digital information is very hard to control in an open world, because it arrives in a form that allows it to be manipulated by its recipient. When you listen to the radio or record a TV programme, all you can easily do with the result is listen or watch again.
5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?
The fact that we currently have a mostly open network is no reason to believe that there is a pre-ordained path towards constant improvement as we deploy advanced digital technologies throughout the world. Different choices could be made at every stage, and the outcome is far from determined.
1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?
A profession is something that exists to solve a hard problem. the newspaper industry, this idea of professionalism can be applied to the concept of having a "good journalist." Journalists traditionally needed to be trained in order to know how to seek out newsworthy stories or fail in the process of trying.
2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?
As a result of the development of the internet and its "new ecosystem", the newspaper industry now ask different questions regarding publishing. The questions have changed from "why publish this?" to "why not?"
3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?
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."
Mass amateurization refers to the capabilities that new forms of media have given to non-professionals and the ways in which those non-professionals have applied those capabilities to solve problems that compete with the solutions offered by larger, professional institutions.
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’?
This suggestion relates to the concept of fake news because it suggests that if a piece of information is consistently repeated across all media, it is likely to be repeated more often and generally acts as an indicator of whether it is received.
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?
We are in an internet revolution because the internet enables us to promote important change. On the other hand, this can also be seen as chaos because changes due to the Internet are not always controllable/not always changes we welcome.
This means that the audience is not only the people who consume/watch the content but now they can also play. This also means that people don’t need higher training to do journalism. This is important because it points to the fact that the quality of news coverage may be reduced due to the audience having less professionalism/knowledge about news gathering.
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?
The changes brought about by the Gutenberg/printing press revolution caused great distress to those who took pride in their work/life as writers because they introduced faster and more efficient ways to print more words, thus suggesting that the this scientist is no longer needed. Being a clerk was an honorable job because it required good literacy. So while anyone who runs a newspaper can be a writer, this was kind of a psychological mess.
9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?
Traditionally, photography required a professional camera to produce high-quality images. However, with technological advances, this is no longer necessary. People can just take professional, high-quality photos on their phones without having to spend hundreds for a digital camera.
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 this era of mass amateurization is a good thing to some extent. Because it means that people can now add to the media and find their true voice by contributing to the media in their own way. This is a good thing because it enhances the sharing of ideas and ideas in the media; Thus, it is resistant to media.
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