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Rheingold Preaches Mob-Logging
drjparker writes "Howard Rheingold author of Smart Mobs and The Virtual Community among other works has an article in the Online Journalism Review in which he ponders the effects of video over cell phones and adding video to blogs on the future of journalism. The article is titled Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism."
It seems like a good thing without giving too much thought at the moment.
This is a good thing for places where media censorship occurs regularly. The SARS crisis could not be contained by the Chinese government because of people sending SMS's to others with tales of a disease spreading in certain areas. The news of course didn't cover it, and when China finally acknowledged it, the news down played it. But the SMS's continued, and it gave people a way to do first hand accounts of an event in progress.
If this can prevent media censorship, I'm all for it.
But then... who's to say some group won't stage some sort of event in the future and use/force people to blog this to mislead others...
In case you can't be bothered to click the link...
... Because the winners and losers of the era of mobile media aren't decided yet ... the uncertainty of the situation presents an opportunity: Informed action in the near future could influence the way this nascent media culture develops -- or fails to develop -- for decades to come."
... Putting video cameras and high-speed Net connections in telephones, however, moves blogging into the streets. By the time this book is published, I'm confident that street bloggers will have constructed a worldwide culture."
Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism
But futurist Howard Rheingold says the ultimate democratization of the media will not be about technological advances; rather, it will entail upholding old-fashioned standards to earn viewers' trust.
Howard Rheingold
Posted: 2003-07-09
Editor's Note: On July 5, a few dozen mobile bloggers -- Web publishers who post photos, video and text to the Web from cell phones and other mobile devices -- gathered in Tokyo for the First International Moblogging Conference. The event was particularly resonant for author Howard Rheingold, who predicted in his book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" that advances in technology would soon give everyone the tools they need to publish independent reports of news events as they are happening directly to the Web and other platforms.
"The moblogging conference is evidence that the culture of street bloggers I anticipated has sprouted in the real world," Rheingold writes. "I love watching a preposterous prediction materialize with baffling swiftness, especially when I was the fool who put the forecast in writing in the first place."
We asked Rheingold to pull together his thoughts on moblogging and how it will change journalism: Does the nascent moblogging movement mean journalism will eventually become more democratized, or is moblogging a fad destined to only ever be chic among a geeky minority?
Will the next Tiananmen Square uprising, the next shuttle crash or Rodney King beating be broadcast from thousands of citizen reporters' phones? Will average citizens eventually be part of the media machine, regularly contributing to and creating their own news reports, instead of just consuming them?
Rheingold's prediction: The answer is being formed today, and moblogging "is one of the leading indicators to watch as the shape of the new mediasphere becomes visible
Smart Mobs Revisited
By Howard Rheingold
Although I could not be physically present at the First International Moblogging Conference, I was happy that it happened and delighted that it happened in Tokyo, if only because it vividly conjured the reality I had conjectured in "Smart Mobs" in October 2002: "What if smart mobs could empower entire populations to engage in peer-to-peer journalism? Imagine the power of the Rodney King video multiplied by the power of Napster.
I quoted Justin Hall in "Smart Mobs" regarding the scenario that became technically possible in 2001, when one of the first mobile videophones fell into our hands and we wandered Tokyo, wondering what, exactly to do with it.
Hall, who was one of the conference attendees, wrote in 2002: "With the technology in place, it's only a matter of time before an amateur news video is directly distributed to the Web, or to 10 friends in video mail in a news chain letter. When that happens, this new form of news distribution will become the news, and then, ultimately, it will be no big deal."
As I write this, the world is in transition from my prediction and Justin's -- a moment when it is obvious that a new social phenomenon is emerging but it is not yet clear whether we are seeing a fad that is destined to be assimilated, commoditized, and/or disinformated, or whether we are witnessing the emergence of a powerful new medium for collective action, like the literacy that was enabled by the printing press
Slashdot is a real big success story. The moderation system makes sure I see only at least remotely relevant or funny stuff.
Now checkout tv.oneworld.net
that already does quite cool stuff with short videos uploaded by virtually anyone.If both are combined I could really imagine this to be useful. Imagine something like slashdot where editors select stories. Everybody would then sortof upload their clips that would get moderated. I dont see why this should not be possible.
Googlefight "Slashdot Troll" against "BSD is dying" 303:229. BSD thus cant die.
Jesus, people, get a clue. The whole frickin' article is about the emergent problem of journalistic credibility vs. moblogging.
Blogs, RSS syndication, RSS aggregators, metablogs and reputation systems like Technorati and NewsMonster now offer a dynamic and rapidly evolving collective editorial filtering system.
His entire thesis is that the emerging moblogging culture will need to put safeguards into place, like reputation systems. He's not talking about aggregating rumor or mobthought, but the need for mechanisms to sift the wheat from the chaff so that you have rapidly emerging, true information without a paid editorial staff.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds alot like Open Source Journalism, collectively written and peer-reviewed.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I think the term is moblogging ("moe-blogging") as in mobile weblogging. It's a little confusing in that it talks about mobs of people using mobile devices. You can follow the link to the origin of the word.
Indymedia has been doing this kind of stuff for years. Its a network of websites where people upload multimedia news content. It started off as an event based thing around protests (Seattle '99) but has grown into a network of over 100 sites worldwide, that try to provide community news coverage on an ongoing basis.
For most of the coverage is not done live, ie people take pictures, video, etc and then go back home or to a community media center and then upload it. There have been a wide variety of live wireless strategies used including:
- internet radio stream with live callins via cellphone (most popular)
- phone cams
- sms gateway
- onsite kiosk provided via 3G phone, for picture upload, live chat
- live 802.11b video streaming
Since Seattle '99 thousands of a/v clips, tens of thousands of photos and hundreds of thousands of text articles have been contributed to this collaborative news platform.
We've done some stuff with syndication of our content but the protocols don't exist yet to fully exchange multimedia content.
One thing that I think Indymedia has that blog culture doesn't is that its not "just a website". The websites function to allow anyone to participate but that's generally not thought to be sufficient. Each of the 100+ nodes in the network has a group of people that work to cultivate a liberated media space by doing things like provide training on how to do multimedia and reporting, holds film showings, provides technical support, publish newspapers, etc.
I work with DC Indymedia.
it's a riff on Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner. The four parts are Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdammerung.
sulli
RTFJ.