The advent of technological advancement has led to the intensified and dramatic fragmentation of the mass media. In other words the more technology advances, the more choice we have as a participant – choosing exactly what we want to ingest.
This ultimately makes the listener/viewer a customer – and importantly making the onlooker a contributor.
If you like a certain brand or a certain organisation, arguably you are more likely to have an affinity with it and therefore, you will use it again. This can extend from your favourite washing powder right through to your favourite news medium, i.e. if you like to mull over what you're ingesting in the news and take it at your own pace, you may prefer to read the news in a newspaper, or online.
As such, I think it's fair to say that users generally wish to contribute to such organisations they have this affinity with. The interactive nature that news has now acquired, i.e. the 'Have your say' parts of the BBC website, provides a large incentive for people to contribute. Remember at this point in time, the viewer/reader of the news has ostensibly become a customer. If a customer of news does not want to experience information being transmitted in a one-way manner, namely, watching someone tell you what's going on in the world through a 14" by 9" screen (or 5ft by 5ft plazma as it seems now!) with no vehicle to respond, they don't have to.
As with the BBC, the more forward looking organisations have invested in and experimented with their online news products including blogs. As my learned colleague discovered; Guardian Unlimited now records 10 million users ever month, compared to a print circulation of 360,000.
It could be considered therefore, commercial suicide for any news organisation to dismiss the potential of an online audience. Does this mean then the audience have become more powerful than the editor/news organisation?
Through new technology, new trends and cultures are continuously bred which have come to defy the usual order of things in print and broadcast journalism. I think you could definitely say there’s an increasing trend of people grabbing their cameras and becoming generators and captors of news. And this 'anthropology' is being encouraged.
But, is encouragement such a good thing?
In the aftermath of the July 7th bombings in London, mobile phones, blogs etc. allowed citizens to share their experiences, not just on personal websites but on major television and media websites which prominently used these images.
Though citizen participation in mainstream media offers many advantages, it also entails risks, such as the verification of authenticity and invasion of privacy by ‘citizen paparazzi’. Also, could this not be possibly considered as merely a forum for mutual off-loading or group therapy?
Is it a healthy thing that absolutely anyone can access the news
agenda and make it their own? Obviously, the user-generated information flooding into news organisations is still being governed by the editor, at the moment at least.
What is important to one person however, is not necessarily as important to someone else. At the end of the day, the viewer has become much more a customer of the news. This puts more pressure on the job of the editor to ensure that his/her programme is catering to the needs of their audience.
As the audience is now one of the links in the chain of news gathering, if an editor decides not to go down the route that the customers wish, because he/she's adhering to traditional broadcasting techniques for example, could he not upset his customer?
It must be considered at this point that citizens do not necessarily have an in-depth comprehension of traditional broadcasting rules, regulations and techniques. As a result, we're looking at the battle between the initiated and the uninitiated. What the initiated news broadcaster may not include in a programme for reasons of taste/decency, or by law he/she's prohibited; an uninitiated citizen journalist may not realise and/or "realise" these reasons.
With the 'commoditising' of news however, the constant feed of user-generated content, linking the user with the production of the news, therefore makes the user tangibly integrated into said production of the news, could this be making the job of bone fide journalists more difficult?
Now, I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but think about this. Arguably, news editors and journalists must now consider not just informing the people what's going on fairly, accurately and in a balanced and contemporaneous manner, and deciding what to inform the audience, what they're interested in most/least , but now, more weight could be given to how the audiences' contribution will be used in a pleasing manner to the user/generators.
If they offend their audience, the oh-so-fickle thing that it is, viewers/readers now have so many choices as to where they get their news/information, they'll skip to another channel in a blink of an eye.
So, yes, more choice means more voice for the audience, they can say what they want to say in response to the news. They can contribute in a plethora of ways what they want to say/portray/show/share. The question is, with the increasing power of the customer in the world, is the emancipation of the user-voice, reining in that of the journalist?
I'd like to continue this idea in my next blog, so please do read on...!
This ultimately makes the listener/viewer a customer – and importantly making the onlooker a contributor.
If you like a certain brand or a certain organisation, arguably you are more likely to have an affinity with it and therefore, you will use it again. This can extend from your favourite washing powder right through to your favourite news medium, i.e. if you like to mull over what you're ingesting in the news and take it at your own pace, you may prefer to read the news in a newspaper, or online.
As such, I think it's fair to say that users generally wish to contribute to such organisations they have this affinity with. The interactive nature that news has now acquired, i.e. the 'Have your say' parts of the BBC website, provides a large incentive for people to contribute. Remember at this point in time, the viewer/reader of the news has ostensibly become a customer. If a customer of news does not want to experience information being transmitted in a one-way manner, namely, watching someone tell you what's going on in the world through a 14" by 9" screen (or 5ft by 5ft plazma as it seems now!) with no vehicle to respond, they don't have to.
As with the BBC, the more forward looking organisations have invested in and experimented with their online news products including blogs. As my learned colleague discovered; Guardian Unlimited now records 10 million users ever month, compared to a print circulation of 360,000.
It could be considered therefore, commercial suicide for any news organisation to dismiss the potential of an online audience. Does this mean then the audience have become more powerful than the editor/news organisation?
Through new technology, new trends and cultures are continuously bred which have come to defy the usual order of things in print and broadcast journalism. I think you could definitely say there’s an increasing trend of people grabbing their cameras and becoming generators and captors of news. And this 'anthropology' is being encouraged.
But, is encouragement such a good thing?
In the aftermath of the July 7th bombings in London, mobile phones, blogs etc. allowed citizens to share their experiences, not just on personal websites but on major television and media websites which prominently used these images.
Though citizen participation in mainstream media offers many advantages, it also entails risks, such as the verification of authenticity and invasion of privacy by ‘citizen paparazzi’. Also, could this not be possibly considered as merely a forum for mutual off-loading or group therapy?
Is it a healthy thing that absolutely anyone can access the news
agenda and make it their own? Obviously, the user-generated information flooding into news organisations is still being governed by the editor, at the moment at least.What is important to one person however, is not necessarily as important to someone else. At the end of the day, the viewer has become much more a customer of the news. This puts more pressure on the job of the editor to ensure that his/her programme is catering to the needs of their audience.
As the audience is now one of the links in the chain of news gathering, if an editor decides not to go down the route that the customers wish, because he/she's adhering to traditional broadcasting techniques for example, could he not upset his customer?
It must be considered at this point that citizens do not necessarily have an in-depth comprehension of traditional broadcasting rules, regulations and techniques. As a result, we're looking at the battle between the initiated and the uninitiated. What the initiated news broadcaster may not include in a programme for reasons of taste/decency, or by law he/she's prohibited; an uninitiated citizen journalist may not realise and/or "realise" these reasons.
With the 'commoditising' of news however, the constant feed of user-generated content, linking the user with the production of the news, therefore makes the user tangibly integrated into said production of the news, could this be making the job of bone fide journalists more difficult?
Now, I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but think about this. Arguably, news editors and journalists must now consider not just informing the people what's going on fairly, accurately and in a balanced and contemporaneous manner, and deciding what to inform the audience, what they're interested in most/least , but now, more weight could be given to how the audiences' contribution will be used in a pleasing manner to the user/generators.
If they offend their audience, the oh-so-fickle thing that it is, viewers/readers now have so many choices as to where they get their news/information, they'll skip to another channel in a blink of an eye.
So, yes, more choice means more voice for the audience, they can say what they want to say in response to the news. They can contribute in a plethora of ways what they want to say/portray/show/share. The question is, with the increasing power of the customer in the world, is the emancipation of the user-voice, reining in that of the journalist?
I'd like to continue this idea in my next blog, so please do read on...!
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