Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

Media Magazine reading

Bill Thompson highlights some positive developments due to the internet. Bill agrees with the statement 'The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection.' He adds to this stating that the internet allows connection between people and how it is also a great source for acquiring information. Additionally, he mentions that the internet allows people to unveil and document injustices and tragedies that happen in our world. It allows people to fight for their rights and other things that they are entitled to. 

Bill Thompson also addresses the negatives and dangers linked to the development of the internet. He touches on bullying and how the internet and social media can be a toxic place. Thompson also acknowledges the unsolicited pornography that appears and illegal images that you did not intend to see. He also touches on the issue of extremist that use social media to indoctrinate individuals and lead them down a negative path. 

Open technology refers to a place built for an 'open society' based around principles of equality of opportunity, social justice and free expression. I agree with the idea of open technology. however, open technology can allow for unethical behaviour in which people may manipulate things to their advantage.

Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. Thompson questions whether our internet will become regulated like China or Libya. He also questions how the internet can help us with the things we value the most as individuals such as privacy. 

I feel like there should be certain regulations that tackle the abuse and bullying that some people face online in the comments on their posts. However, apart from what I have mentioned, I feel that the internet should be open to everyone 

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

A profession is something that exists to solve a hard problem one that requires some sort of specialization.

In the newspaper industry, this idea of professionalism can be applied to the concept of having "good journalism." Journalists traditionally needed to be trained in order to know how to seek out newsworthy stories.

The newspaper industry now asks different questions regarding publishing as a result of the development of the internet and its "new ecosystem". The questions have changed from "why publish this?" to "why not?" Another question is "what happens when there's nothing unique about publishing anymore because users can do it for themselves?"

Trent Lott's speech in 2002 became news as he praised an old republican president for his actions. Two weeks later he was then condemned and stood down for having a role in congress.

The growth in the amount of self-published content found on the internet. The idea of everyone being able to produce and publish content as well as consume it.

Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” This can be applied to media currently. A professional news outlet can produce news but at a small quantity but that can be ignored as people will focus on the mass quantities of distorted and untrue information. This is prevalent in the media today. 

The internet enables us to encourage significant changes, it gives us a chance to speak on things that can impact our future. We are currently in the midst of the internet revolution. However, this can also be viewed as chaos because the changes that come about as a result of the internet cannot always be controlled and sometimes they are not always changing in the way that we wanted/anticipated.

Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist” This means that audiences are no longer just the people that consume/watch the content but they are now able to create it too. it is no longer a 'one to many' way of communication, it is now many to many. This also means that people do not need to be trained to a high standard in order to create news stories. News can be shared just from the press of a button. 

Around the printing press revolution, many scribes feared for their jobs and their livelihood as there was a faster and efficient way to print words and they prided themselves in being scribes. 

Photography was usually produced by people with high grade, expensive cameras that weren't owned by many people. Photography was seen as a high profession as not many people acquire the level of skill or equipment. However, nowadays, phones with high-quality camera lenses are being reduced. Your every day, typical person can take a professional level photo with ease. 

I believe that Shirky's ideas on the end of the audience perfectly depicts what is happening in the times that we are living in. Mass amateurism is partially a positive thing as it allows everyday people to pick up new hobbies and develop new skills. It also allows people to document 'news' that would not be publically addressed on TV. However, that does create room for people to spread fake news, unfortunately.