Are we citizen journalists in the same sense as an actual journalist? Are we hired or self-appointed, amateurs or experts, investigators or merely camp followers? Do we practice the same standards of journalistic integrity as we expect from a professional? Or have we merely become part of a noisy rabble indistinguishable from those whom we criticize?
The Internet has been an empowering (some will say 'democratizing') force in the world. More than any medium in human history, the World Wide Web is truly the culmination of Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village. It connects us to commentary, ideas, and newfound friends. It shapes our perceptions and self-conceptions, enables saints and sinners, empowers reformers and terrorists alike. Have we let the Internet go to our heads? As McLuhan foresaw:
“[As] our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”
Does McLuhan refer to the internalization of a dreaded États-Unis Big Brother or the object formation of Big Brother within ourselves?
The Internet has certainly made us more opinionated. It turns bloggers into instant subject matter experts, justified or not. It has transformed us into pundits, self-appointed guardians of the public trust, snoops and voyeurs, saboteurs and trolls. It amplifies narcissism and reduces humility to obsolescence. As the Internet connects the Global Village, it has not necessarily homogenized and unified us. Sometimes it leaves us more fractured than before.
I should talk. Your intrepid Octopus has been as opinionated and predatory as any creature above or below the waves. Nevertheless, with a hat tip to Leslie, I think we owe ourselves an honest conversation.
Agreed, except for one quibble.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes it leaves us more fractured than before." I don't think so. I just think that the bigger frame brings attention to the cracks that were already there. (Easier to ignore 'em if you can't see them, right?)
Excellent and most thoughtful post Octo (with tip of the hat to Leslie, yes?)
ReplyDeleteAs to bloggers as 'citizen journalists' this reminds me of the transition from analog graphics to computer graphics in which an entire generation became, in effect, citizen publishers. It took a while to re-establish the amateur-professional sightlines. But in the meantime, new, more expressive techniques emerged, sort of like the emergence of Hip Hop street poetry/street music.
Most of all, your post reminds me of a video that went viral on Facebook a month or so ago. It was a murmuration of a large flock of starlings. It looked like a vast school of swirling fish in the sky. Was there a leader, one wondered? It appeared that there could have been many leaders operating independently within the mass...
And this brings us to the Christakis and Fowlers' "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks," which adds the scientific data to back up and expand earlier media theories.
It's all very McLuhanesque for sure.
Octo,
ReplyDeleteIt's a good question to ask, but of course any answers are bound to be complex and anything but final. That's usually the case with good questions, unless they're mathematical in nature.
Wilde wrote in an otherwise not very good poem ("Reading Gaol") that "Each man carries heaven and hell within him," and I suppose he got that from William Blake. The Renaissance humanists said the same in their Renaissancey way: "man the microcosm," and all that stuff, don't you know.
Same applies to blogging, which activity is hardly a radical departure from the past, at least in its essentials: I mean, a person (or critter, like me) sitting down at a desk or keyboard to set down some thoughts.
In my own comments and posts, I'm not aiming to be a journalist -- I have too much regard for the importance and standards of journalism to call myself any such thing. It's a very specific career path, is another way to put it. Journalists need to do all sorts of multiple sourcing; they CAN express an opinion (or at least they ought to be able to, though the current climate runs against it and in favor of sham objectivity), but it needs to be based on a firm grasp of "the facts" as best they can be established. I've seen some very good work here on SWASH that would probably meet that standard easily.
What I do is not that -- I offer what I hope is an informed view or perspective on various matters, politics included. I have a certain amount of life experience (including some gen-u-wine suffering of the sort that beats all of us into the ground if we live long enough) and have supplemented it with a great deal of reading, about which I try not to be heavy-handed, though there will always be some who think that quoting like Wilde or like Joyce or like Milton or Shakespeare or Homer, O my brothers and sisters, is nothing more than snobbery. Of them, I say nothing. They had better not diss Ludwig van, is all your 'umble narrator has to say.
Anyhow, in terms of responsibility, for me here's what that comes down to: you don't need to be a full-on journalist to have some regard for other people -- making wild claims and stereotyping others, etc. is not cool. For the most part, it's best to deal with policies and ideas rather than with persons, unless you can make it clear that your rant is just that -- a rant, a piece of satire, or whatever. That's okay: people in the public arena are big boys and girls and should be able to deal with that sort of thing. Savaging them in earnest and in a humorless, highly personal way isn't proper. We see far too much of that these days. Witness the hateful stuff said about the president, for instance.
By the way,
ReplyDeleteA case in point -- was reading a few HuffPo comments for the fun of it, and I came across this chap who responded to the news that American Airlines has filed for bankruptcy. Know what he said? He said something like, "Well, there's ANOTHER business that's failed under Obama!" Okay, that's a sneaky factual claim: he's suggesting, apparently in deadly earnest, that poor ole O'Bummer is the CAUSE of this and oh, so many other business failures. And his evidence? Uh, he didn't see fit even to explain his rationale, much less cough up some searching articles or damning pie charts. Nope -- just insinuated it outright. Now that is irresponsible and even cruel. When we say the Internets are a bane, I think it's that sort of move we are often referencing, and it's not such a great step from such nonsense to dehumanizing one's opponent altogether.
Nameless,
ReplyDeletePerhaps the Internet unleashes our inner ‘control freak.’ To borrow another idea from McLuhan, media can be hot or cold - which leads me to another thought. Do we treat people on the Internet differently from those whom we meet face-to-face? Is cool verbal abuse on the Internet safer than a hot slap in the face?
Edge,
Swirling birds are not within my immediate frame of reference - I’m a sea creature. But I do know a thing or two about swirling ‘fish balls.’ When large predators gather for a feeding frenzy, the smaller baitfish form huge rotating balls to increase their survival chances. This survival strategy perplexes the Octopus. Instead of forming an obviously large and scrumptious target, why not simply scatter? After all, if a predator were hell bent on having you for lunch, wouldn’t it be better to make them work harder for every mouthful? Perhaps this odd behavior is something human beings have in common with fish.
Dino,
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I have been preparing for our eventual Noah’s Ark departure when the End Time comes (assuming our good Captain gets his act together and has Blue Moon outfitted in time for this dreadful, inevitable and catastrophic event – hint, hint). As yet, however, there remains an unresolved problem.
When Noah filed the welkin-eyed critters of the Earth two-by-two aboard the original Ark (Version 1, Release 1), how did he manage to prevent the wolves from devouring the sheep and keep the cheetahs off the beautiful and alluring Gisele Thomson? The Good Book doesn’t say. Did Noah use tranquilizers? Saltpeter? Even within our uniform elitist community, there have been some pretty heated squabbles.
How will we keep the critters of the Swash Zone docile enough through the long voyage until we reach at our promised Progressive Land beyond the blue horizon?
I have a foreboding feeling: Even the critters of the Zone, within a generation or two, will eventually fragment into the Moonbats and Wingnuts of the future. After all, as Bertolt Brecht once said: “The history of the human condition is one of chicanery and corruption.”
Octo,
ReplyDeleteI was on that Ark -- seems like yesterday! -- and it was pretty straightforward. And Lo! the Lord of Lizard Hosts spake, "Peace be upon ye and upon the waters! -- and you over there in cabin 73, BEHAVE YOURSELF THIS VERY MINUTE!" and it was so. Straight from the Book of the Dinosaur Gods.
Dear Octopus:
ReplyDeleteI strive for professionalism and it's not my fucking fault that there are so many assholes out there that wanna argue allatime!/S
"Citizen journalism", to me, means that one would exercise the same rigors as those practiced by professional journalists (although it's damned hard to see where most of them have any training OR ethics). Blogging, otot, is more like "cracker barrel" talk to me.
democommie
Dear democommie,
ReplyDeleteI know it’s not your fault, and no one here is blaming you. My simple Cephalopod hypothesis: Wingnuts and Asshats have too much junk DNA resulting in a net brain drain. Their amino acids are too wrapped up in themselves. When undergoing mitosis, they can’t give you their undivided attention. Sometimes I wish they would act like a melanogaster and just buzz off. Là, où il y a des génes, il n'y a pas de plaisir!
I heard a piece on NPR yesterday that actually corporate legal counsels for Facebook, Twitter, Google... etc. exert more 1st amendment control over free speech than the government. Depending on who the personality is sitting in that corner office, content can be removed from any site with impunity just because "someone" objects to it and the content managers agree.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine why anyone would expect the Internet to unite us. It's a medium. It will be used by good people for good purposes and by bad people for bad purposes, just as all media are used.
ReplyDeleteMaybe moreso than past media, the Internet gives people the chance to reach out to more other people, for better or for worse, and do so anonymously. That, obviously, will encourage some to do their worst.