Topic: Russell et al. (2008) compares elite media and institutions with bloggers and ponders the following question: “Do bloggers, with their editorial independence, collaborative structure and merit-based popularity more effectively inform the public?” (p.67). Do you agree? Use examples to illustrate your point of view.
Superficially, the role of journalist is as a fair and balanced witness – unbiased and uninvolved. This is the ‘journalist as hero’ (Flew, 2008 p.152), an individual dedicated to ‘late nights at the office, checking their facts and sources closely’ (Flew, 2008 p.152). This idealised characterisation is flawed however, as the professional journalist is actually instilled with a ‘fear of losing audience or market share’ (Flew, 2008 p.153) by corporate, revenue driven culture. This fear translates to news which is attractive, dramatic and accessible, not necessarily news which is honest and unbiased. Increasingly though, ‘scepticism towards mainstream media’ (Russel et al., 2008 p.67) is developing in audiences as the public becomes aware of the economic and political biases of journalists.
Amateur journalism, operating out of blogs and without financial incentive, is partially borne out of this scepticism and offers an alternative to the politically and economically constricted professional journalist. It would be incorrect to say though that ‘with their editorial independence, collaborative structure and merit based popularity’ amateur journalists can produce balanced, unbiased journalism anymore so then professional journalists. Editorial independence and collaboration do not change the fact that amateur journalists, like professional journalists, are still motivated by various goals and ideologically based assumptions of significance. This is because even ‘the apparently passive act of [information selection] is…an act of active construction, a form of giving meaning, a form of guided interpretation’ (Poerksen, 2008 p.298) – by simply choosing issues to represent and how they are represented, all journalists demonstrate particular biases and ideological assumptions. Thus, amateur journalists, like professional journalists, embed their news with contextually dependent biases and motivations.
Amateur journalism can still lead to a more effectively informed public, however, as blogs act to compliment professional journalism by providing alternative perspectives – governed by different biases or motivations – on issues. For example, the actions of the contentious Taxed Enough Already party in America are framed by some bloggers as a noble battle, an opportunity for poking-fun or as obscuring of more important issues. Here, it is the public who must act as journalist by exposing themselves to these alternative perspectives and generating a detailed understanding of complex issues – a process which may be assisted by collaborative discussion between users. Thus, in their diverse representation of issues, bloggers ‘celebrate the death of centralized meaning structures and ignore the accusation that they would only produce noise’ (Lovink, 2008 p.22). That is, they draw attention to the inability of journalism to communicate unadulterated reality, the plurality of truth, and in doing so create the possibility of a more holistically informed public.
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The ideal is, of course, a situation where audiences scour the back pages of search engines hoping to construct a complex understanding of issues. This simply does not happen due to the merit-based popularity of blogs. Shirky (2003) makes clear ‘diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality’ and explains that the frequency of blog access follows a power-law distribution where 20% of blogs receive 80% of the views due to the popularity hierarchy of search engines. The result is that ‘all voices can be heard, but not all voices attract equal amounts of attention’ (Russel et al., 2008 p.67) – audiences could be effectively informed by exposing themselves to the vast diversity of amateur journalism, they just choose not to.
References:
Flew, T., 2008. Citizen Journalism. In New Media: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp.106-16.
Lovink, G., 2008. Blogging, The Nihilist Impulse. In Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture. London: Routledge. pp.1-38.
Poersken, B., 2008. The Ideal and the Myth of Objectivity: Provocations of Constructivist Journalism Research. Journalism Studies, 9(2), pp.295-304.
Russell, A., Ito, M., Richmod, T. & Tuters, M., 2008. Culture: Media Convergence and Networked Culture. In Networked Publics. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp.43-76.
Shirky, C., 2003. Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet. [Online] Available at: http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html [Accessed 03 June 2011].
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