New world order

Media as an industry is growing in size, in effectivity and competitivness everyday. From newspapers, to radio, to television, the internet, now online newspapers, blogging, digital television and mobile phone technology, it seems that the media industry is not and should not stop innovating the way we receive news and information on the world anytime soon.

As I discussed in a previous blog journalism and particulary newspapers have been affected immensly by the conception of internet news and advertising. Most papers now have corresponding websites featuring news blogs, interactive surveys, picture galleries, video and audio. It seems that the old image of people reading the paper at breakfast before work is now people checking their iphones for news bulletins.

Something that i think is important when considering how personalised we can make our online news reading is that if we continue to only receive news that interests us, we will end up with a population with limited knowledge of issues outside their niche market of interests. This is why i think that broader news options like the newspaper and television news to some extent will always be popular. The main reason being that we can generally rely on them as a credible news source which covers a large range of issues. It is a responsibility i think of the media to keep people informed and to keep big business and politics in check, although we may not always be able to rely on some press to do so it is important to me that we can use the media as a tool for democracy and that in the future we will have mastered the art of all new forms of media to create a much more effective and respectable way of reporting the news and to provide advertising.

Something like a phenomenon...

Blogging has come to be one of the major expressions of our lives, opinions, news and interests online. However, blogs have revolutionised one profession in particular. Journalism has never been more interactive than it has become over the last few years. With the introduction of online news bulletins and news blogs, the average journo whether on TV or writing for a paper will have a corresponding blog.

Almost all major newspapers now have an online version of themselves and “from 2004 to 2005, the number of online newspapers that hosted blogs nearly doubled (Lowrey & Mackay, 2006). Many journalists have their own blogs, which emphasize local issues. Some journalist blogs are more opinionated that others, but regardless of how they are worded, they often provide readers a more personal account of the news (Singer 2005).” (Mackay, Wilson 2008)

From professional blogs has come citizen journalism where anyone who had access to the internet donned a press hat and people were reporting on the political situation in their country where they could not rely on the media to do so. Citizen journalists form Uganda and Afghanistan have been some of the most radical and revealing communicating with the world from war zones. “Uganda has had blogs for some years now (over 200) on various topics raging from day-to-day life to sports, political commentary, religion and technology. During the Mabira Forest give-away chaos, a young Ugandan with offices in the city centre was posting updates every hour of what he saw from his window” (New Vision 2008) and during the post election violence in Nairobi, the conventional media focussed on the fighting in the streets and villages, bloggers told us about the silent homes, supermarkets, kiosks and bars.

References

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/7/3/2/6/p173266_index.html

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/651502

The First Instalment

Why Blog?

Today blogging can be considered as the ultimate realization of publishing democracy, or, a place for everyone to air their very own 'professional opinions'. Blogging is fast becoming an integral part of modern media and is bringing forth new ways of communicating news, opinions and events to the masses found on line all day, all night all year round. With this in mind it seems natural for an opinionated and soon to be educated young member of society such as myself to write a blog voicing my opinions on our wonderful world. And yet it is only now since I have been asked to do so for an assignment that I had thought to blog on anything other than my break up with my ex boyfriend , bitching about my heavy workload or the guy I met at Rocket Bar last weekend.

So now I have found myself searching the bubbling mass inside my skull for some worthy material, and yes, it is all around us. But before I delve too deeply into my lefty views on the media and the manipulation of the masses through our daily newspapers, news readers and newly, online news bulletins. I'd like to talk about who blogs and who we should take seriously.

Who Blogs?

Yes, believe it or not, the paranoid white guy is no longer the main demographic of the blogging world. In all seriousness though, it is important to think about whose blog you're reading.Credibility is something that should play a part in our consumption of news. When considering material to be credible we have to look at the two main components which define credibility; trustworthiness and expertise (Rubin, VL & Liddy, ED, n.d.).This is where blogging as a form of reporting comes under fire. As a lone blogger, you have no ties to any organisation or corporation; you are able to say whatever you like. There is no need for fact checking, unbiased reporting or even political correctness. As a blogger you are free to publish an account of news and current affairs with relatively no consequence. It is with this uncensored ability that blogs can both gain and lose credibility in the eyes of the reader. There are some blogs however, with which this doesn't matter. We have our News blogs or Special Interest blogs like blogs on gardening or cooking, which demand a certain level of credibility and accuracy form the writer, blogs like Holiday blogs and Dear Diary blogs are a recount of personal experience and therefore require little to no demand for research or credibility to be happily read by other bloggers.

Some Examples of Blogs

EMO LAMENT BLOG: This is much like a dear diary blog except there is much more eyeliner and complaining.

WIND SURFING BLOG: this is a blog by Lano which details his keen interest in and experience with wind surfing.

JOURNALIST BLOG: Mark Day is a senior journalist at The Australian this is his blog which features stories he’s written for The Australian and ones he’s written strictly for his blog. It also features reader comments and feedback and can sometimes get a bit catty... reow.

References

Rubin, VL & Liddy, ED (n.d.) ‘Assessing Credibility of Weblogs’ Syracuse University, accessed online www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Spring/2006/SS-06-03/SS06-03-038.pdf