Thursday, November 13, 2008

Issue#3; In Wiki We Trust?

Dear readers,

How many of you, when given an assignment, head straight to http://www.wikipedia.org/? I’ll admit: the site’s clean-cut lines and neat layout are seductive. The matter-of-fact information is compelling. But hark: what of the cries regarding its inaccuracies?

A bit of background information for you readers: Wikipedia was founded in January of 2001 by employees of the American company, Bomis. The now-head of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, was the chief executive of Bomis. After developing Wikipedia, he created a non-profit organization to run it. Currently, the Wikipedia Foundation is fuelled by donations and has a paltry three employees: a software developer, an assistant for Mr. Wales, and an intern (Hickman & Roberts, 2006).

Alistair Coleman of the BBC wrote an article entitled Students ‘should use Wikipedia’ (click for the article!). In this article, he discusses Jimmy Wales’ viewpoint regarding teachers who ban students from using Wikipedia as a source, calling them “bad educators”. The article goes on to argue Wikipedia’s credibility and reliability as source; with Wale’s insisting that “there is no substitute for peer critique”.

On the flipside, however, Ian Allgar of Encyclopaedia Britannica maintains that thanks to its 239 years of service, it remains the best source to use: the basic argument of “of paid-for, thoroughly-reviewed content” versus peer-reviewed and prone-to-vandalism Wikipedia.

However, according to Terdiman (writing for CNET News, article here: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica), “is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica”. This fact was uncovered in a study by Nature journal, which found “eight serious errors (such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts) in the [selected] articles. Of those, four came from each site”.


(Cyanide & Happiness, Explosm.net, 2005.)

However, Britannica would definitely never have mistakes such as the following!:

- David Beckham was an 18th-century Chinese goalkeeper.
- The Duchess of Cornwall carries the title Her Royal Un-Lowness.
- Robbie Williams earns his living by eating pet hamsters in pubs “in and around Stoke”.
(Roberts & Hickman, The Independent, 2006.)

To conclude, despite the obvious credibility and reliability issues inherent in Wikipedia, I personally would still head there first when given a topic to research. Obviously, I would back it up with concrete facts later on: but to give me a vague, overall feel of a topic; it is the first stop on the information superhighway I’d make.

References
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Issue#2; New Media Publishing: Citizen Journalism


Dear readers,

Jeff Ooi, Raja Petra Kamarudin, Scott Thong – these are shining local examples of citizen journalism via blog. What is citizen journalism, you ask? According to Laura Riggio (2007), citizen journalism is the principle that “anyone can be a journalist – it doesn’t have to be left to the professionals. Blogging gives the amateur a chance to voice his or her opinions, ideas, and thoughts without an editor”. NYU Professor Jay Rosen writes in his blog PressThink that “the people formally known as the audience are taking a permanent seat in the changing world of journalism”.

Citizen journalism has several advantages over traditional journalism: they can cater to niche markets, or perhaps report on things that traditional newsrooms cannot do due to time or budget constraints (just run a Google search for the 2004 tsunami and see how many examples of citizen journalism there are!).

Korea currently leads the way in pioneering citizen journalism, being one of the most Internet-literate countries in the world, according to The Media Report’s show on Alternative Online Media (click the link for a transcript!). The news website OhMyNews, brainchild of Jean K. Min, has more than more than 45,000 people who act as journalists. Being a liberal and progressive media, we learn that despite tradition being dispensed with, principles such as credibility and accountability are still paramount.

According to Bentley (2008), citizen journalism in the form of blogs provides an outlet for those discontented with the everyday media. There are also the obvious, theoretical benefits of blogs and citizen journalism: with more and more Internet users each day, functionality increases. According to Penman (1998), “a document’s functionality is dependent on its structure matching readers’ habits, expectations, and context of use”. This is a highly pertinent point as more people are become accustomed to using the Internet for everything.

(Cartoonstock.com, Royston, 2005.)

As Bentley said, citizen journalism is improving journalism as a whole. I hold with this idea firmly: the future of traditional journalism and citizen journalism is the same, two paths to the same location. Journalism without a preface.

References

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Issue#1; Photojournalism: To Click or Not To Click?

Dear readers,

Why is a photograph of a dead child so much more upsetting than a dozen articles? They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and photojournalism is a brilliant example of this. In The Power of Photography, the speakers discuss the War Photo Gallery in Dubrovnik: a gallery dedicated to conflict zone photographs only. Here, wars from all over the globe are photographed and displayed for public consumption: to increase awareness. Suffering and pain are so more shocking when seen through images and with an impartial filter. Print/TV news tends to have a political agenda behind it, which can affect the news, compromising impartiality. According to Schriver, “memory for pictures tends to be better than memory for words” (1997).
However, people can also misuse the power of a photograph for their own ends. Take the case of Adnan Hajj, who used photomanipulation to subtly but significantly edit an image he snapped of Beirut after Israel had attacked. This photo caused public outcry, which increased dramatically when the photo was revealed to be a fake.

(Adnan Hajj/Reuters, 2006).

Not only this, but graphic images can lead to compassion fatigue. The ease with which pictures are taken can lead to compassion fatigue, wherein audiences are so numb to images of suffering as the media has become inundated with it. According to Moeller, compassion fatigue is a state of utter habituation to disasters, which "militates both against caring and action" and creates passivity. Do graphic photos of war, famine and turmoil truly educate the public, or do they just add to this overall fatigue?

To conclude, photographs can be used to expose expose poverty, famine, disease. But they are also able to showcase the hardiness of the human spirit, the small victories.

To inspire.

References
  • Moeller, S. (1999). Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. Routledge: New York.
  • Schriver, K. A. (1997). ‘Chapter 6: The Interplay of Words and Pictures’, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Reader, Wiley Computer Pub: New York.
  • The Media Report. (2007). The Power of Photography. Viewed 16 November 2008 from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.html
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