Pity the journalism students of the first decade of the twenty-first century. With our feet barely on the ground, we're constantly threatened by the possibility of swept away by the current of changing technology. Almost all of us walked through the doors on the first day of university with a pristine picture of our future selves in mind. Covering hard news, analyzing politics, maybe writing sports stories; some of us writing for newspapers, others choosing broadcasting to present ourselves to the public. Our options were comforting without making our lives too complicated.
But things have changed this past decade, and our situation is overwhelmingly complicated. Audiences are turning away from print, and refusing to wait on broadcasters for their news. Yes, the audience still wants to read, and broadcasting personalities are still trusted. However, the audience is living at a faster pace, therefore information, arguably the journalist's main commodity, must flow even faster to compensate. Kevin hit the shark on the nose when he observed that people expect their news to be provided at light-speed. Alfred Hermida, a journalism educator, has coined, in my opinion, the best moniker for the emerging solution: ambient journalism, which is better than "Journalism 2.0" or "Journalism Plus" because it specifically describes the attributes of the new systems.
To as briefly but as accurately summarize the theory as possible, ambient journalism is a method of gathering and distributing information based around awareness systems. Alfred Hermida defines an awareness system as "a computer-mediated communication system intended to help people construct and maintain awareness of each others' activities, context, or status, even when participants are not co-located." The ideal of ambient journalism is rooted in the same truth as Journalism 2.0, that Internet tools like Facebook and Twitter are indispensable to the new age journalist, but expands upon it. No more will consumers be hanging on our broadcasts or printed stories as they once did: instead, they will call up the most recent information on any topic they desire practically at will, a few keystrokes aside. By taking advantage of networking tools (Facebook), micro-blogging (Twitter), and mobile technology, journalists spare audiences the struggle of finding information, instead allowing it to flow freely as a part of the audience's environment, hence the term "ambient".
So for the audience, life is only to get easier. For us, the journalists, life is bound to get even more complicated. Even Mr. Hermida acknowledges that the new methods "present challenges to the established practice of relying on the journalist as the filter of information," and openly acknowledges that the validity of information using such open mediums can be questionable. "What I am suggesting is that another approach is needed to unlock the potential of collective intelligence of (awareness systems like) Twitter." When the industry itself doesn't know the best approach, I can safely say they can't teach it to us in university.
To as briefly but as accurately summarize the theory as possible, ambient journalism is a method of gathering and distributing information based around awareness systems. Alfred Hermida defines an awareness system as "a computer-mediated communication system intended to help people construct and maintain awareness of each others' activities, context, or status, even when participants are not co-located." The ideal of ambient journalism is rooted in the same truth as Journalism 2.0, that Internet tools like Facebook and Twitter are indispensable to the new age journalist, but expands upon it. No more will consumers be hanging on our broadcasts or printed stories as they once did: instead, they will call up the most recent information on any topic they desire practically at will, a few keystrokes aside. By taking advantage of networking tools (Facebook), micro-blogging (Twitter), and mobile technology, journalists spare audiences the struggle of finding information, instead allowing it to flow freely as a part of the audience's environment, hence the term "ambient".
So for the audience, life is only to get easier. For us, the journalists, life is bound to get even more complicated. Even Mr. Hermida acknowledges that the new methods "present challenges to the established practice of relying on the journalist as the filter of information," and openly acknowledges that the validity of information using such open mediums can be questionable. "What I am suggesting is that another approach is needed to unlock the potential of collective intelligence of (awareness systems like) Twitter." When the industry itself doesn't know the best approach, I can safely say they can't teach it to us in university.
You've made very strong points. I enjoy your observation that we cannot learn in university what the industry itself has not pinned down. It really makes one stop and think.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a small grammatical error in your first paragraph. Your sentence "threatened by the possibility of swept away" I think you missed the word "being" before "swept away". But otherwise well written!