THE NET CHALLENGES JOURNALISM CONVENTION The Net challenges journalism convention

THE NET CHALLENGES JOURNALISM CONVENTION

The Net challenges journalism convention

Raidah Intizar Yusuf, 137645

Department of Communication and Information Sciences,

Tilburg University, P. O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands,

[email protected]


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Preface

People conventions are continuously challenged. Habits and relevancy that exist several years

ago might not be relevant as of today. One instance that will be discussed in the following

chapters is journalism convention. People used to be dependent on mainstream media as the only

source, but due to resource distribution and the most important is the Net development, anyone

can do journalism. This phenomenon of ordinary people doing journalism called citizen

journalism. Nowadays, citizen journalism is dominating the circulation of news. People retrieve

and relinquish information at the same time easily, for the Net is bidirectional. Subsequently,

people begin to blur between their role as consumer and producer, namely “prosumer”, a term

introduced by Alvin Toffler (Gerhardt, 2008). This essay will be discussing citizen journalism

with regard to prosumer behavior, and concluded that just as many other perished convention,

journalism is going to the direction as well.


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Table of contents

Preface ......................................................................................................................................... ii

Table of contents ........................................................................................................................ iii

Summary .................................................................................................................................... iii

Problem statement ....................................................................................................................... 1

The Net challenges journalism convention ................................................................................. 2

Analysis ....................................................................................................................................... 5

What will happen in 2030?.......................................................................................................... 7

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 9

References ................................................................................................................................. 10


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Summary

This essay divided into four parts. The first part is problem statement, discussing about the topic

that will be raised throughout the essay, which is the Net and journalism convention. As the Net

expands and strengthen its power, people start to question relevancy in their convention,

including journalism convention. This essay continues to elaborate with journalism case in the

second part which is the main part of this essay “The Net and journalism convention”. It

elaborates the rising of citizen journalism and how it is supported by the Net, and how

journalism convention challenged due to current phenomenon. Analysis follows the previous

cases and unfolds the fact that the Net has changed the way people read, think, and remember

(Carr, 2010), and this influence citizen journalism both from the producer and consumer sides. In

this part, this essay also gives a prediction of what to come in 2030. It is revealed that in fact,

what makes someone journalist and non-journalist is resource ownership and access. In

foreseeable future, resource will be evenly distributed, and anyone can gain access, citizen

journalism will become widespread that it will be conventionalized and the term “journalism” is

no more relevant. The last part is conclusion, containing synthesis of the essay.


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Problem statement

The way we live is undergoing a radical change because of the Net. We are skeptical about our

convention and questioning about relevancy of how we’re living. Is it relevant to rent a DVD if

you can have movies to your computer right away and is cheaper? Is it relevant to do cash

transaction with all the risk when you could do it from your cellphone instantly? Is it relevant to

commute to your school every day when you can have your lecture from your laptop? Is it

relevant to buy and carry three books in your bag when you can have it all on your iPad? These

are questions the Net generates. Recently, another convention is being challenged by the Net, the

fight is still ongoing, and we’re eager to know what will be the ultimate winner: the Net is

challenging journalism convention.


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The Net challenges journalism convention

It was early summer 2012 in Cairo when a silent man in beige uniform brought to the middle of a

court. As tough as a rock, he sat inside a solid cage. His remaining pride might scattered due to

his situation, but endure it he must, he continued to listen to the verdict from the judge. For all

the crimes he committed, the jury sentenced him a life in prison. Both antis and pros of the man

were overwhelmed by the outcome. The former expected that it was a dream, while the latter

wished that it was a reality. No one would ever believe that he, who had been a ruler, the most

powerful man for three decades was imprisoned by his own people (Kirkpatrick, 2012; Meo,

2012). People rejoiced their victory by setting their foot in the history. They named it Arab

spring, to depict a revolutionary wave that happens in Arab countries, exactly when spring is in

the corner.

Arab spring began with a simple “tweet”, seems metaphorical but it was literally started

with tweets. As many mainstream media have posited, social network such as Twitter was a

highly essential contributive aspect to the revolution (Olorunnisola & Martin, 2012). Tunisian

was the first to make use of social network to mobilize mass. Under the tyranny regime for years,

Tunisian and Egyptian found a way to resist, which is through social network. Empire (2011), a

program in Aljazeera TV station covers the story, search the chain of the revolution, and suggest

that social network has become the new weapon for mass mobilization, for social network offers

them to see differences, imagine alternatives, and organize for a better future (Empire, 2011).

With social network, people could easily retrieve and relinquish the most current information.

Specifically Twitter has been stipulated as a perfect platform to mobilize movement as it is

second-based (faster) due to its micro-blogging function (140 characters), it allows meta/tagging

to users which in turn is useful to filter information (Nauts, 2013).


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After the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, there have been demonstrations everywhere

following Tunisia and Egypt, using the Net to mobilize movement. These phenomenon attracted

global attention on social network role. Mainstream media coined the phenomenon of social

network role assisting the freedom as Facebook or Twitter revolution, they perceive social

networksis necessary to the freedom obtained, some others express that this is an extreme result

for citizen journalism practice (Olorunnisola & Martin, 2012).

The phenomenon of ordinary people reporting news and substituting for professional has

long been known as citizen journalism, and with the role of social network citizen journalism

becomes increasingly prolific. Shirky (2010) predicts that the development in the Net would

result in people invent more ad hoc ways to use the Net, including voluntarily sharing what

happened in their surroundings. Even though unintended, people practice citizen journalism. It

blows everyone mind that citizen journalism power is tremendous, by practicing citizen

journalism people could counter mainstream media information because citizen journalist cover

a broader sense and offer alternative view to the mainstream media generalization (Wall, 2009;

Zayyan& Carter, 2009); citizen journalism gives propensity to affect the global public opinion,

which explained by a tendency of citizen journalist in east hemisphere to use English in their

reports (Allan, 2009; Wall, 2009; Zayyan& Carter, 2009); citizen journalism is a fertile land for

alternative surveillance account, as mainstream media oftentimes are unaware of an incident, if

not ignoring, citizen journalism media provides means to the citizens to retrieve the most current

condition in times of crisis or disaster (Shirky, 2010; Zayyan& Carter, 2009; Zuckerman, 2009);

citizen journalism also a mean to elicit a perfect validation, as citizen journalism is a

collaborative work (Shirky, 2010; Zayyan& Carter 2009; Vis, 2009; Bradshaw, 2009) and this is

a salient feature that belongs to citizen journalism.


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When people themselves could bring the truth to foreground, one subject that needs to take

careful measures is traditional journalist. Journalism will never be the same, and it’s all due to

the Net (Naughton, 1999; Goode, 2009; Worley, 2011). The Net is an essential aspect in the

practice of citizen journalism. Long ago, the Net was non-recognizable to the radar of

mainstream media. It was in 1995, the mainstream media realized that something was up

(Naughton, 1999). Indeed 1995, Allan (2009) outlines from historical accounts, was the starting

year of internet age in United States, “The release of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system

in August was front-page news around the world,” (p.21) and this, he adds, was a vivid indicator

that personal computing was shifting to be highly predominant. Inevitably, the Net brought

radical shifts to many conventions, including journalism convention.

Once, journalism practice was a limited realm of the minority yet powerful group (Worley,

2011). News circulation was under total control of professional journalist within a media

corporation, given that news production resources embedded only to mainstream media. They

were the minority that had the technology of recording, publishing, and distributing news. Hence,

naturally people became consumers. With technology and internet development, resources

distributed widespread, people become “prosumer” as Alvin Toffler proposes in 1980. The term

contends that people start to blur their “consumer” and “producer” role (Gerhardt, 2008).

Resources the Net provides allow people to be independent reporters, without being bound to

any norm, filter, and rule. Those who used to be excluded from the coverage could emerge to

surface. With many source of information, including people themselves, people dependence on

traditional journalism is being reduced. Traditional journalism is in crisis, its realm is collapsing

as people start to question: if one could either produce or consume news easily through the

internet, why rely on old convention?


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Analysis

People always skeptical about changes they face. If people perceive superficially, changes will

affect conventions in a negative way, to the level of deprivation. When Plato introduced literacy

culture, Socrates as an orator critically assessed that the new culture will decrease human ability

to memorize (Carr, 2010). In a purely oral culture, thinking is governed by the capacity of

memorizing, “knowledge is what you recall and what you recall is limited to what you can hold

in mind” (Carr, 2010, p.56). Socrates indirectly predicted that any advance in technology would

result in the decrease of human brain quality, namely, it will make us a shallower thinker. He

believed that dependence of alphabet during the invention of writing would make thinking lost

its in-depth (Carr, 2010, p.55). However, Plato moved on with his ‘poetry’ and started his

literacy movement, and it turned out to be a positive changes. Followed the literacy development

is Gutenberg invention, which was press machine. This in turn supported the expansion of

literacy culture worldwide.

After the Net introduced to the world, John Naughton (1999) reminisces that it’s regarded

as “The agent of satan, the conduit for pornography, political extremist and subversion”

(Naughton, 1999, p.30). But the rapid development of the Net did not stop because of the

underestimation, in fact compare to literacy culture that was established for hundreds of years,

the Net development occurred within a short time. Its existence is ubiquitous and penetrates all

aspect of our life, especially communication and information aspect. Information accelerates, if

we used to have several gates to obtain information, nowadays one gate is sufficient to get what

we want to know. The same is true to how we communicate. The term six degrees of separation

that was presented by John Le Guarre (Blackwell, 1996) might be familiar to us. It conveys that

in the planet of 6.6 billion inhabitants, we are only six steps away from each other (Smith, 2008).


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Currently with the role of the Net, the six narrows down to one degree of separation; we can

reach anyone in the world with a single introduction (Blackwell, 1996). Theories and

conventions that applied thirty years ago would no more apply to nowadays life.

It is as Nicholas Carr (2010) predicts, that the Net gradually changes the way we read,

think, and remember. The ease to access information affects how people act. People start to

eliminate unnecessary process to get to the main objective. How we read, think and remember

which was influenced by the Net would in turn support the increasing trend in citizen journalism

practice. As we know from previous description people come to blur their role as prosumer,

producer as well as consumer. Borrowing this term, citizen journalism and the role of the Net

shall be outlined.

Prosumer behavior in citizen journalism could be explained as two side of the same coin.

One side is producer side. It is regarding how people produce citizen journalism. There are

several motivations in people utilize citizen journalism, there are people in crisis event that were

encouraged to report what they saw as they need to substitute for traditional journalism or

mainstream media, mastermind demonstration, and function it as a surveillance account for their

likes, in this regard it is tempting to categorize citizen journalism as a movement (Goode, 2009).

Meanwhile there are people who utilize citizen journalism with less ideological purposes, they

voluntarily and comfortably share what happened around them, or re-posting, sharing link of the

previous regard (meta-journalism) for instance if they attend some football match, stuck in the

middle of a traffic jam, or run into an information of their interest they are compelled to share

information about it. Both cases require the Net, but in the near feature, the latter proposed to be

the future of citizen journalism practice, people voluntarily share things because the Net provide

this mean, the beginning of web 2.0 and the acceleration of publishing is gaining popularity


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during 2005 onwards (Carr, 2010), with convergence in information and communication

technology, people tend to naturally share when come across incident and events.

Another side is consumer side. It is regarding how people read, listen, or watch citizen

journalism practice. Without the support of this side, citizen journalism would never arrive to

this level. People fond of citizen journalism as it is giving them a broader sense, and more

coverage compare to what traditional journalism used to offer them. However, this should be

examined critically. Is it true that people prefer to read a tweet just because it gives them new

insight? Or is it because the Net has changed the way of people reading? People begin to leave

behind their book. Some even think reading such a long prose is a waste of time, similar to that

of sewing your own shirt or butchering your own meat (Carr, 2010). This is related to how

people give up lengthy news and turn to some 140 characters of information.

Both producer and consumer side in citizen journalism, as explained above, should not be

separated as it is coming from the same user. Both sides are intertwined as the Net is

bidirectional, one can send message as well as receive it (Carr, 2010). The aforementioned

rationales explained the increasing trend of citizen journalism, and decreasing in journalism old

convention.

What will happen in 2030?

Mainstream media start to adjust its position in times of Net’s attack. They share their realm with

citizen journalist by creating special platform in their websites. True that journalism is a work

that the more people doing it, the better it gets (Rosen in Ingram, 2011). Hence, collaboration is

central to its practice. However this is only the beginning of its gradual extinction, social

network development has not arrived to its utmost. A perfect platform and device for sharing and


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networking is yet to be discovered (Perez, 2013). The difference between journalist and non-

journalist nowadays is whether one has resource or not, when in the 2013 resource and access is

distributed evenly worldwide, anyone really can practice journalism. Hence the term journalism

itself would be irrelevant as of 2030.

Not only in journalism convention, a lot more conventions being challenged by the

presence and expansion of the Net. Observing the current trend in people independency; the

phenomenon of “anyone can do anything” that offered by the Net, it is foreseeable the so-called

profession will disappear. It is in fact, merely a term to represent boundaries between what a

person can or cannot do.


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Conclusion

This essay has elaborated how the Net challenges people convention, zooming on journalism

convention. The rise of citizen journalism that is due to the Net gradually obscuring the

relevancy of traditional journalism. This essay hypothesized that the victory in the end belongs to

the Net, for actually the difference between who is journalist and who is not is based on

resources and access. In 2030, resources and access will be allocated everywhere. Subsequently,

the term “journalism” will be no longer relevant as it gets conventionalized overtime. However,

it remains unclear what changes in people behavior will be when people do not have the so-

called journalism filter anymore. This is an intriguing question to assess, and it is expected to be

answered by reliable research.


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THE NET CHALLENGES JOURNALISM CONVENTION The Net challenges journalism convention