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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."
I read about 3 paragraphs of this story before I felt like puking. Mob-logging? It's sad watching these old, insecure guys like Rheingold (and lately, Tim O'Reilly) try to stay relevant. Pathetic. OK, mod me flamebait, but it's true.
I would think that after a while, there would also be a system that would separate the wheat from the chaff for you, based on a system whose preferences you yourself set. (Kinda like meta-moderations!)
Many blogging sites already tell you which have been updated recently, but more importantly, which are the most popular. They also will break them down based on content and/or channels. Google just bought blogger.com, and with their ranking system, it will only accelerate the trend.
Furthermore, there is also word of mouth. When the second Gulf War started, it didn't take long before someone pointed me to The Agnonist, and I got a lot of good news from that site. All without even looking - I merely heard about it.
libertarianswag.com
Your like a real Mob lackey.
-- "Why would you quote your self?" -Me.
Sure all these people will be bringing different perspectives to what's going on in the world, but along with it they may bring prejudices and narrow viewpoints along with it. These are things we try to avoid in accurate journalism. Not everyone is going to care about bringing every side of the story, they may just show their opinion (bias) in order to persuade others. This is already happening today and encouraging everyone, no matter if they lack experience, objectivity, proper reporting skills, to be a reporter may not be a good idea. So, the question is, is the future going to have news distribution in the hands of everyone, even considering how difficult it is at the moment to find accurate information on the internet? Everyone has the right to show their opinion, but I do not expect this type of journalism to become as revolutionary as the article implies.
I don't see this as a big revolution. There are allready millions of people who don't travel anywhere without their camcorder. For the sake of news worthiness video will still have to go through a review process to ensure authenticity, accuracy, whatever. Plus is the quality going to afford the images to be used for news events? Is the clarity and size even available from phones? If anything this will generate a whole boat-load of new short clips for the real-life-video shows that abound. Not that seeing people do stupid stuff isn't entertaining; there is just so much allready that I don't think another new media will make that much of a difference. -my $0.02
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Think about the indexing capablities of Google, which as another poster mentioned, just bought Blogger.com. You could search for exactly what you wanted news on. Now, combine that with a system that stores your personal preferences and/or most common searches, turns it into a portal, and voila! Instant, raw, uncut news from blogs and mob-blogs everwhere!
:)
OF course, then there wouldn't be some guy in the anchor desk to tell you what to think about the situation, and you'd have to *gasp* think for yourself. No, we wouldn't want people to do that.
Nope, we should just let Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings tell us what to think, because we're too stupid to do that for ourselves.
My journal has hot
What I want to see is video from the people involved in protests. That's what this is going to be good for. I don't give a crap what the guy holoding the phone/cam thinks, but it will give me a view of an event the mainstream media might have glossed over. Things are so whitewashed it's ridiculous. Try watching the BBC vs any of the US channels. The US won't show anything that might upset us. That's not really telling the truth, it's just partial truths.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Maybe I'm alone, maybe I'm not, but I've never visited a blog on a regular basis, unless the blog is in front of something else that I want, I probably wouldn't ever see one. So, maybe you can help me out? Where do I even begin looking for useful/meaningful blogs?
To me, I hear all about blogs, but have never ever found an interesting or useful one. Come to think of it, I haven't even seen that many. So maybe there's an index I'm missing? Or maybe I need to get more saavy friends?! whatever.
It seems like blogs and their importance are all hype.
But, since you're presumably talking about a different sort of protests -- I don't get this narcissistic protester mentality. A bunch of people stand around and hold signs. I've done it myself. You do what you can and hope people notice.
But this business of I'M WALKING ON STILTS AND PUTTING ON A PUPPET SHOW! I MUST BE OBEYED! And if society doesn't reorient itself around my views, THE MEDIA ARE SUPRESSING MY VIEWS! I MUST FIND A NEW OUTLET FOR MY VIDEO FOOTAGE!
Honestly, if the number of people already videoing protests and distributing them online (that was the primary purpose of Indymedia before it became a chat board for psychos, and never even mind that any major protest is shown full-length on C-SPAN) isn't enough, video from phones isn't going to change that. People need to realize that we don't live in a protestocracy, and that that's a good thing.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Ah, but that's why there are few journalists. You must pay them.
A single individual (or small group) will not need to do all the reporting. each story can come from anyone who happens to be around when it happens. Aggregators bring reports together from multitudes of varied sources. Reputation systems provide peer review. Someone else mentioned it, it could be OSJ (open source journalism), with the same advantages as OSS.
i don't like my old sig.
Well, I doubt if a bit of video from either side settles could settle things one way or the other.
Two things, though:
1) I crossed paths with the "anti-globalization" roadshow twice, in Quebec City and Los Angeles. In both cases, it was absolutely crystal clear that the demonstrators came into town spoiling for a fight.
2) It strikes me as extremely unlikely that in places where large demonstrations have been held for decades without incident -- by minority groups, the Nation of Islam, Maoists, Stalinists, what have you -- a bunch of middle-class white college students can't march down the street without being spontaneously assaulted by police.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The problem with the camera phones and such, as they presently exist, is interception. The government already has the infrastructure to monitor your mobile phone's calls and messages. When something happens, it'll be very easy to see which subversive free-thinkers are sending pictures of the event. Forget about having anything like the Zapruder film next time something big happens. Accounts of the event will be instantly censored for quick coverup by big brother.
For blogging to be useful for any news more controversial than your pet's latest chew-toy, we need a mechanism for censorship resistance. Communications between phones and internet hosts should be strongly encrypted, and users should be able to choose anonymity for publishing sensitive material.
Freenet is nearly perfect for this. It's a little too bulky for the current generation of Java-capable phones, but in a year or two we should see handsets with very powerful JVMs. Freenet 'blogs, or flogs, will become increasingly important as awareness of government eavesdropping increases. Being able to update a flog and instantly add pictures, right from your phone at the scene of an event, will vastly improve the reporting of important news. At the moment this would require carrying a laptop, which is not only bulky, it's conspicuous.
Bloggers need to embrace Freenet en masse, to secure their right to uncensored, optionally anonymous publication and communication. If you could say anything at all, what would you publish? You can, please do.
Howard got lucky with The WELL, and now he thinks he's a "visionary".
Anyone else remember Electric Minds? The most over-hyped, under-valued message board system in the history of the Internet?
That was Howard's still-born baby.
I wonder if Softbank ever got their money back for "investing" in that disaster.
While the panelists agreed that blogging and moblogging doesn't automatically qualify as journalism, they did say that it CAN be journalism if journalistic principles are applied.
One of the more interesting comments was from technology journalist David Akin, who said that experiments that enlist moblogging citizens with camera phones to send their photos to news sites may be cool and fun and interesting, but it's not news by longshot, mainly because they lack the professional journalistic skills to identify what qualifies as news.