For those of you who scoff at the role of social media such as twitter and facebook in our lives and question how it’s transforming mainstream media generally, have a look at this. The Media140 Sydney event is an international collaboration and discussion which asks “What is the future of journalism in the Social Media Age?”
Direct engagement between people and those making the news. Red Alert is a clear example of this.
This is important stuff, and it heartens me that so many in the mainstream media (in Australia) are wanting to discuss it. Is that discussion happening here?
That looks pretty cool.
Interesting post Ms Curran, and on a side note do you really think that many people who read your blog will scoff at Facebook or twitter?
@ Tim. Read my last post. It’s a funny thing social media. Seems like a bit of a waste of time before you do it, but there are many doors that open once you take the plunge. Tell me, do you tweat Tim? And you can call me Clare if you like.
No I don’t tweet Ms Curran and I wouldn’t know where to start. My daughter does though.
And Radio was going to change everything too!. For the first time people could hear Dame Nellie or Michael Savage live without being there.
But we ended up with Michael Lhaws ‘live’
Guess who controls the radio or TV as well as the old media
( Newspapers) now. The same people.
Social media is going the same way allready
Clare, the more media, and anything digital becomes direct, the more it becomes fragmented.
Think books, once upon a time if I wanted a book I had to go to, say Whitcouls, to see what they had in their selection, and buy something that met the best of my needs. Now days, I research online, and find and order the book I want from what is available in the world.
The result of this fragmentation is people can personalise their media of choice, and the news that is provided will have the associated bias on it. Gone are, or will soon be soon for the educated classes, mass media.
It then, or has already for the mass media become, a race to the bottom for the lowest common denominator. Less about hard news, more Paris Hilton.
@Tim That your daughter does should tell you something. You should not feel obliged. Good that you comment on blogs. My point is that it’s a new, and (somewhat) borderless world where new doors are opened. And it’s a part of the future.
@Sweet D. I’m a book worm. Mainly novels. Always have been. Wrriten word. Hold it in your hands. Smell it (yes ok that’s weird) Nothing can beat that. Social media is not a replacement. Though for some it will be. It’s evolution. Beyond borders. Searching each other out. On our own terms.
Fragmentation yes. But there’s enormous unity too. On the things we care about.
Clare, the book is just the media, in the same way as LP, tape, CD and DVD are. What we want are what is on the media, not the media itself. Who, of Gen Y actually buys CD’s anymore? Would you recommend buying into a CD retail business? Real Groovy anyone? What is limiting is the bandwidth speeds and caps on our internet.
Finally we are seeing a viable replacement for the book, the Kimble. 100’s of books available at your fingertips. Yes, I understand the tactile experience of the book (and the smell, no, its not weird), but fast forward 10-20 years, what then? What happens to library’s? Who thought we would read our daily news from computer screens? It must be years since I last bought a newspaper but I still read the herald everyday.
Yes, fragmentation into camps of similar people I guess who seek each other out. But, as I say, only for the educated. The rest will continue on Paris Hilton TV.
same with Tim .. no tweeting, face book or the other one .. wouldn’t know where to start or why .. just getting used to the Internet.
Paris Hilton. Ok. Educated, thinking people have lots of different interests. The huge variety of things on the Internet only feeds those hungers.
Kimble is fine, but Google will soon have millions of books to read online. People have been talking about an Internet library since the beginning of the web. Google is being the entrepreneur and actually doing it. Google was also involved in some digitisation at the Library of Congress.
Authors can complain about not getting permission, but I have to ask whether the small inconsideration to them is worth stopping a child (even adult) in Mali from getting access to all the books with a mere laptop and Internet connection. Most of those authors were getting nothing–nada–from their out-of-print and orphaned books. Now, when Google makes some money from ads on those books’ pages, the author gets a cut.
This is bigger than Carnegie libraries, folks.
Dunedin had one of those, if I recall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_Africa,_the_Caribbean,_and_Oceania
All the books, everywhere.
The ocean of the Internet and its interactivity make radio seem like tin cans and a bit of wire.
The one use I have for radio is using the spectrum to provide wireless Internet hotspots everywhere. Then you can have your car connected to the Internet and choose whatever you want to listen to, not just the 10 channels you can pick up on local radio.
My generation had rock&roll. This generation twitter. I know allready who got the better deal.
I well remember the first hard drive I saw, and if it failed the bus drivers didnt get paid and would go on strike. The computer had little ferrite doughnuts for memory. The walkman was a far greater innovation than the ipod
Some people think FB is a fad. Hm. The word “Google” probably made people roll their eyes at first, but now they make the mighty Microsoft quake in their boots.
I guess FB is a niche market. A niche of 300 million, and 1.2 million people in NZ.
They still make the walkman. Only it is better made and can hold like a million songs on it.
The fuddy duddy folks will always criticise any change. I wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education back in the 1990s about the *absolute necessity* of university professors having email. There actually was debate about it. Email “takes too much time” and disturbs academics.
I said it was akin to rejecting having a phone, since all students were using email.
Everything is a fad until it isn’t.
Tim says: No I don’t tweet Ms Curran and I wouldn’t know where to start.
A tongue in beak comment,surely?
@SweetD
There’s another argument that says that most of the message is actually in the media. Take a light bulb for example. It has no message but it’s media changes spaces otherwise not used in dark conditions.
Reading a book is a lot different from hearing a presentation on the radio. Given the fact that you can go back in a book and re-read words as you’re reading makes it a very different messsage.
Turning the page on a book, and smelling (as Clare mentioned) a book, straightening out the corners may do more for relaxation than holding an electronic box.
That’s not to say that a Kindle is a bad idea, I just don’t see it (or want it to) replace the joy of reading a good book. They’ve made some great strides in this area such as not having the backlight, but it still lacks something. Even the mass of a book that you’re excited about is an experience.
It’s much the same reason I still buy cd’s. I like the ritual of taking a cd out of the cd player and putting it in it’s right case and putting another one in there. There’s something to be said for a tactile experience.
@Clare
I don’t think we scoff at the idea as much as the implementation. In a world where more content is online and the ownership of that content is coming into question, it’s best we keep questioning whether the cost of putting content on social networks is worth the convenience.
Using your own Linux server with something like Wordpress for a blog has no issues if you own that Linux server as you’ve got ownership of that content – if you decide to remove that content, you can. If you want to move the content, again, you can.
Things aren’t that clear cut in the world of social networking sites.
(I also have a problem with the word social in this context – get out in the sun and talk to people. Shed yourself of that Vitamin D deficiency and just do it).
@Sweet D 6.04. I disagree with you, not because I am blindly captured by the concepts of social media, but because I see evolution in progress and it can’t be stopped, and nor should it, unless it was harming the planet and leading to the destruction of our species (burning of fossil fuels etc leading to climate change) and other species.
One of the exciting things about social media is that it crosses so many boundaries. Of course there is a divide, a digital divide. If you don’t have access to a mobile phone or the internet, then you can’t access social media. In this country those boundaries are less pronounced, becasue many kids have a mobile phone, if not access tot he internet.
The boundaries are still there and it’s one of Labour’s tasks to ensure that the roll out of broadband is truly equitable between urban and rural NZ and acrosss the socio-economic divides. That means making it really accessible to poorer households and ensuring there is content driven by government investment that will be truly useful to all NZers, and not just entertainment-based. Such as the ability to acccess health and education services online, easily. More to say on this in due course.
@ Nevyn. You make good points. Nothing beats the tactile experience of a book. I still like using a CD player. I also have an i-pod. I like the transister radio too. But then, my first car was a 1948 Morris 10 called Maurice! Cost me $125. (I digress).
And of course nothing should replace getting out in the sun, rain and wind and interacting face to face with people. Best way to communicate. Always will be. Eyeball to eyeball.
I probably shouldn’t have used the word scoff with regard to social media, and I didn’t mean everyone who reads this blog scoffs. But some do. I find that when people diss something, it’s often because they fear it, or don’t understand it.
My main point is that social media isn’t necessarily a replacement for other media, though for the upcoming generations it appears it may become so. Which does raise many concerns I agree.
But it can be additional, and that makes life much more interesting, because it’s adding dimensiosn to our media. Instead of expereinceing media as a receiver of information, you can experience it as a participant and a creator. And develop new networks that you could never have dreamed of.
Seems like they have facebook and Utube but what they need is more serotonin
Serotonin?wheres that.
I’m no sure I like being called a fuddy duddy .. even if I am
Sweet D … The Kimble is okay, but the price of e-books is still too high, given that you can’t hold them, stack them in your library, or given them to friends, or have them returned.
Clare … I’m interested that social media for NZ politicians is only truly possible for opposition MPs. Government MPs — whether they be Ministers or backbenchers — still have great problems doing the proper ’social’ bit of social media. Evidently, that was as much the case for Labour-led government MPs as it is today under National. Do you think that’s a shame, and — if so — what’s the solution? Time?
I was intrigued by an early comment on media for the masses leading the race to the bottom.
Back around the time of George 111, maybe even before, scurrilous broadsheets were published in England attacking all manner of things. Segments of the media have long dwelt in the gutter so to speak. The rush to the lowest common denominator is not knew.
The unkind, indeed cynical might argue that in the main we get the media we deserve.