Participatory Media: News as Conversation

Corporate participation within social media hasn't been limited to Facebook pages or Twitter feeds, but now the up and coming photo blogging site, Instagram, which most of its users post photos of their personal lives. During the most recent season of American Idol, the entertainment show utilized this platform by regularly uploading photos of contestants behind the scenes and off the studio stage to give the world a personal view. By extending their media interaction beyond the one-way broadcasts on its regular television program, American Idol's social media presence allows audiences to feel more connected to the reality of the show. In a very limited sense, the updates can be seen as both news and entertainment.

While some, however, argue that such updates do not constitute journalism or news in the slightest bit, the disconnect is that these updates aren't purposefully traditional reports in nature. In other words, through digital technologies, journalism has come from a read-only lecture to a participatory conversation. As such, audiences aren't just consumers, but producers and participants. Add this to the way news is consumed: American Idol, whose young viewers access most of their news from instant sources and other social media outlets, had to adjust their media output.

Companies are realizing the necessity for participatory media and their branding strategies. Along with Starbucks, GE, Levis, the list goes on with those using Instagram aside from Facebook and Twitter. With Facebook's recent $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, the corporate presence within social media will become more apparent.

Liveblogging

The BBC, Le Figaro newspaper and AFP news agency are experimenting with online coverage and live blogging and realizing their potential in covering news. In a recent article from Journalism.co.uk the senior editors from the above news sources share how liveblogging can enhance the newsrooms coverage and encourage more interaction with new stories, leading to greater insight on the news reported. All three editors spoke of the added value to the news stories through liveblogging because the readers are more able to comment, tweet, and share, taking part in the feedback loop, instead of merely reading or hearing news from a televised or published source. Kate Fairhurst, international vice-president of ScribbleLive, a live blog platform explained that presenting news through liveblogging is not only changing the ways in which people are receiving and interacting with their news but it is also changing the way news is reported in an innovative way.

Mary Hockaday, head of the BBC newsroom explains that they have only been using live online coverage for the past year and are seeing their audience grow greatly sense using it and their experiences with liveblogging have developed even further recently; it's potential continues to grow. "Unlike many of the BBC's online news stories, the liveblogs carry an author's byline, emphasizing that they are authored, curated, "journalistic products". The blogs pull in tweets, emails and links to other news providers' coverage where appropriate."(Paul McNally)

The BBC has discovered what blogging styles work best for their specific audiences. Hockaday explained that in terms of writing style; a clear straight-forward presentation is better reciprocated, rather than the more informal chit chat style. They have tasked their most clear and precise communicators for this job. Another strategy they have found to be beneficial with liveblogging is having a "clearly defined single subject" They have found that instead of trying to cover every news story through liveblog they only cover their big stories because it caters to a broader audience which leads to greater participation and interaction through the news coverage. To add greater value to their stories on liveblog they began to incorporate visual journalism into their stories as well.

The Le Figaro newspaper is also seeing beneficial results from liveblogging. Editor - in -chief Ingrid Vergara claims that it has helped their newsroom "Live blogging is a very powerful editorial tool and allows you to bring together all the resources of a newsroom - desk editors, info graphics - all sorts of people."(Paul McNally) They are still experimenting with Liveblogging and trying to cater it to best suit their newspaper but what they have found is that adding context and analysis to their liveblogging is a crucial element. An example Vergara gave was of the presidential election TV debate "it was clear that many readers would be watching the television while following the blog, so repeating what was said verbatim was not the best approach."(Paul McNally) They found that it was not beneficial to simply repeat what was said on the television but instead add extra context and analysis to help people further understand.

The news agency - AFP is also incorporating Liveblogging into their news reporting. They began liveblogging in 2008 while covering the US presidential elections. AFP claims that one of the advantages of this newer form of news reporting is that "...it allows media groups to make full use of all of their correspondents' time and not waste any incoming material."(Paul McNally)

Prior to liveblogging they had many journalists gathering information and much of that information did not get published because there was too much to fit into print. One of AFP's goals is to cut down the time it takes to deliver a news story and this can be achieved by incorporating liveblogging into the main newswire. AFP agreed with BBC's Mary Hockaday that it is crucial to provide analysis and context when covering a story, but AFP also explains that preparation is an extremely important element. Hollier-Larousse from AFP explains that in order to properly cover a live story a reporter must already be familiar with the context "You have to know if it is really a breaking event or just some event that will have no tomorrow."(Paul McNally)

MetaFilter and Citizen Journalism in the 9/11 Attacks

Over the past many weeks, our class has analyzed specific case examples of the Internet's role in providing a tool for ordinary individuals to contribute to journalistic dialogue as events emerge. One of the benefits of using the Internet to studying citizen journalism is that fact that, to a large extent, many instances of citizen and witness journalism can still be found in their archived real-time state. The website MetaFilter, which has been in operation since 1999, is a great example of being able to 'go back in time' and track real-life responses to famous events as they occurred.

The MetaFilter entry for September 11th, 2001 provides for a particularly interesting, if not immensely haunting, analysis of eyewitness reports coming together through a unified electronic medium to coordinate information on a large scale. The first post on MetaFilter occurred at 8:58am, twelve minutes after the first plane hit the north tower (listed at 5:58am in the post, Pacific Time). Following the comments in the thread, one will find users chiming in, trying to gather as many details as possible. Only a few comments down, user TNLNYC posted at 9:06am (6:06 PST) that a second plane hit the South tower, an event which had occurred only three minutes prior. Commentators begin speculating almost immediately as to who perpetrated the attacks, and whether or not they were attacks in the first place. cCranium posted the first image in the thread at 9:33am (6:33am PST), which although taken from the website of a traditional news organization, represents an early use of using social media to spread multimedia and imagery about disasters.

In terms of commentary, one of the most striking moments of foreshadow comes from user ktheory, who states that "our focus (as Americans) must not only to bring justice to those organizing this attack, but on preserving civil liberties. During peacetime, it's easier to be socially conscious and live morally. I'm most concerned that an event this drastic will cause many to replace ideologies based on reason with ideologies based on fear." Furthermore, user Doug posted at 9:51am (6:51am PST) that "This is going to be a big turning point in the history and character of this country," which is followed by reports only minutes later that the south tower had just collapsed, the first of the buildings to fall. More than functioning as a mere log of events, comments such as these demonstrate the emergence of sentiments that would later permeate our discourse surrounding this particular historical event.

MetaFilter itself is unique in that it does not represent, in straightforward terms, an "open" and free web. Since 2004, MetaFilter has charged a $5 sign-up fee for creating an account, which although potentially limiting to some users and demographics, prevents a flood of troll and spam accounts. The site also features relatively strict guidelines, aimed at maintaining the site's purpose as a literal "filter" for the most interesting content on the web. Thanks to these restrictions, MetaFilter has remained a niche community, though its simplicity and ability to foster discussion nonetheless allow it to access as a hub for eyewitness reporting when important events and disasters occur. In this sense, it becomes a moderated, yet very much fruitful, outlet for the facilitation and preservation of discussion. In doing so, users nowadays can explore these time capsules of dialogue surrounding major events since the beginning of the last decade, providing a valuable resource not only for studying the emergence of early Internet citizen journalism, but also for discovering the rhetoric that surrounded such events within the discussion of ordinary individuals.

Cracked?

5/24/12: 5 Reasons You Should Never Take Advice from Celebrities

5/23/12: What People in Famous Photos Were Actually Thinking

5/22/12: The 9 Most Insane Vehicles that are Street Legal

If only I could write about stuff like this all day.

These three articles are among many on Cracked.com, a popular online magazine that posts humorous articles and infographics that satirize popular culture. Their popularity has risen from writing about popular culture in a critical perspective that is not usually seen in online publications.

Although the information presented in Cracked articles is mostly entertainment and humor driven, the odd thing about "America's Only Humor Site" is that it is not a blog forum. Cracked used to be a magazine similar to Mad magazine, but started only publishing online in 2007. Another odd trait of Cracked.com is their articles are backed by accurate facts and many of the writers post links to sources within their articles.

Another factor that is unique about Cracked.com is the writing style that emerges from each writer's clever opinions combined with their use of accurate facts. Most of the articles come off seeming like common sense to think a certain way about a subject, when in fact it may not be to most readers. For example, take a look at this exerpt from Cracked.com's article, "5 Reasons You Should Never Take Advice from Celebrities":

"The number one cause of stress in the average person's life is money, mainly because all of the other things you worry about (your job, your degree) are just other ways to worry about money. So when we get advice from Gwyneth Paltrow on "what to get the man in your life," it's incredibly hard to not burst into fits of psychotic laughter like the black guy from RoboCop. Seriously, take a look at what she suggests and tell me you don't want to punch her in the face:

• "Room spray" (the size of a pill bottle): $125 

• Sweater: $800

• Belt: $420

• Rug with silhouette of his head: $3,500

"

This writing form is persuasive and his reasoning is far from objective. However, many readers can relate to this author's assertion without truly agreeing with his claim. Most of Cracked.com's audience, comprising of mostly college-aged males, may get the pop-culture references and understand the stratification of income between celebrities, such as Gwenyth Paltrow, and the average person.

This form of writing, the humorous use of popular culture references and the interesting subjects written about are what keeps me interested in reading from this website also weekly, and possible guidelines to aid my own persuasive writing skills. It also adds credibility for a website that promotes itself as predominately a humor website.

Many readers learn from these articles while being entertained with the humor. Readers also share the articles they admire on social media sites to inform others of the information. By writing intelligent and amusing articles, Cracked.com's readers create a lot of the promotion for the website and gain even more readers in the long run.

Issues of Newsprint Plagiarism in the Digital Age

In an incident currently making the rounds on social news sites, blogger Duane Lester comes face-to-face with the potential stubbornness of print-based media. Lester's exploits, published on the site All American Blogger on May 14th, 2012, chronicle his efforts to assert a claim of copyright against a small-town newspaper in Oregon, Missouri who stole an article he published on May 1st nearly word-for-word. This incident is interesting not only because of the immediate case itself, but also due to Lester's use of Internet technologies to help his cause.

Upon finding his work so heavily plagiarized, Lester's initial course of action was to seek legal advice from Twitter user @AskACyberLawyer, who answers questions from Twitter users concerning "cyber law, from copyright to commerce, and everywhere in between." According to his account of the incident, Lester also made use of other online resources to draft up a letter with a claim of copyright before driving to the offices of the Oregon Times Observer and confronting the editor in person. Continuing with this theme of utilizing available web technologies, Lester also filmed the confrontation, in which Bob Ripley, the paper's Publisher and Managing Editor, was slow to comply with Lester's request for monetary compensation.

Lester's story, which was picked up on sites such as BoingBoing and The Daily Beast, pierces straight to the heart of conflicts surrounding copyright in a digital age. Massive Internet entities such as Facebook and Tumblr actively promote a culture of copying and sharing, often in the form of "light" content such as text or images. While these sites may not strike up high profile notoriety for sharing and distributing "heavy" copyrighted works, such as Hollywood films or commercially produced music, this culture of sharing nevertheless pushes the boundaries of reasonable copyright violation, as evidenced by an upcoming lawsuit against Tumblr. To put it simply, the ease of access to so much content sharing in online entities has the potential to create a sense of security for sharers online, masking serious issues of copyright infringement which Lester decided to actively fight.

Whether or not the paper's editor Bob Ripley was influenced by this sense of online security may never be known. However, Lester's actions demonstrate that such violations, especially by members of commercial media outlets, do not come without consequence. As commentator mazzworld2002 states on Gawker's coverage of the story, "If anything, an old-timer should know more about copyright and plagiarism than you youngsters with your Napster and your Bittorrent and your mash-ups and your.... dagnabbit!" Nonetheless, Ripley's attitude towards the incident might best be summed up in his statement written on the "For" line on Lester's compensation check, which according to the YouTube video, simply reads "Bull shit."

Revisiting Bin Laden's (Imagined) Assassination

Exactly one year ago, the contemporary world was informed that after ten years of hiding, US Navy SEALs assassinated Osama bin Laden, the individual who claimed responsibility behind the 9/11 attacks. The decade-old event, which forever affected our understanding of security both domestically and internationally, also changed news production and consumption practices. As so, the continuing debate over his actual death, a mission otherwise known as Operation Neptune Spear, and the public's understanding of it was not engaged solely through news articles and press releases, but through broadcast media's incessant pitch for immersive news.

President Obama in the Situation Room, May 2011

Nonny de la Pena, yesterday's featured journalist and professor at the USC Annenberg School of Communication, expanded on these practices through a history of virtuality in news dissemination and civic discourse by concentrating on her past work with virtual news stories.

Using the same software technology, Second Life, which De la Pena described, consider the following YouTube clip on bin Laden's assassination in relation to the nature of virtual news. Given the strict confidentiality prohibiting any media coverage prior and during the event, it is understandable that virtual media was an inevitable choice to attract viewers to tune in to the news. With dynamic scenes, rich audio and music, and crafted storytelling viewers were undoubtedly immersed in the environment of SEAL operation, despite the video description disclaiming, "this is not meant to portray actual events".  Since the public was censored of proof of his death, the next best thing was to recreate it.

The CBS video below more effectively illustrates the event using animated maps, infographics, archived footage, press releases, and most importantly, a simulated reenactment of the operation.

Though the simulation was constructed according to a collection of interviews between soldiers and White House officials, its accuracy can only be contested as much as its purpose as a simulation and not actual footage. The continually digitizing world increasingly demands virtual footage due to content output pressures, however its usefulness and accuracy must be negotiated between both journalists and viewers.

Military Games: A Multimedia Recruitment Tool

While a misleading headline like “Terrorist Video Game” may quickly grab your attention, a similar, yet true story like “Government Funded Military Shooting Game” for actual recruitment has avoided public interest until now. This summer marks the 10-year anniversary in which the US Army’s publicly funded game project, known as America’s Army, designed to provide the “public a virtual Soldier experience that was engaging, informative and entertaining,” has been in existence.

However, what steps out as most important in our case as 'digital natives' is America’s Army as a political game or alternative media influence. In contrast to this week’s reading in which author Michael Sicart stated "[newsgames] utilize the medium with the intention of participating in the public debate,” political games are explicit in limiting player interaction, like only playing for Team America. 


Unlike the chronic media reports of video games as detrimental and threatening to society, the military has contradicted itself in comparison to the Pentagon case on terrorist videos games as propaganda and recruitment tools. Yet with liaisons to the military, news outlets fear releasing such investigative stories for fear of the military ceasing it supply of stock footage, which is why the story isn’t so known.

As for the game itself, the military has gone extensive lengths to ensure its massive success. Among the many accolades it has received, from Best Use of Tax Dollars to Most Realistic Game of the Year, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded it the most downloaded War Game in 2008.

Soldiers: Official US Army Magazine

The concept of military games isn't new at all. According to author Carrie McLeroy of Soldiers Magazine, "Gaming has long been an important tool used by militaries to assist in training, analysis and mission readiness" and games have been used for thousands of years.


Despite not being a newsgame, America's Army remains essential to our class discussion because it demonstrates how the US Government and military devise alternative media methods to achieve their political agendas.