Clay Shirky: End of audience

 Media Magazine reading

Media Magazine 55 has an overview of technology journalist Bill Thompson’s conference presentation on ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ It’s an excellent summary of the internet’s brief history and its impact on society. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 13 to read the article ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ Answer the following questions:

1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?

The network connects us to other people, it provides a great source of information, it can be used for campaigning and political action, to draw attention to abuses and fight for human rights. It’s a great place for gaming and education, which can also be used to make a lot of money (for a few people) as well as a place where you can meet your friends.

2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?

But the bad sides are also hard to ignore. A lot of bullying and abuse takes place there. There’s pornography that you don’t want to see, and illegal images of child abuse that you might come across. Extremists and radicals can use the network to try to influence people to join their cause, and fraud, scams, ripoffs

and malicious software are everywhere. Then there’s the dark web, made up of websites and online services accessed via specialised browsers and tools that make it very hard to identify who is using them, which is used to sell drugs and for other illegal activity.

3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?

The idea of ‘openness’ lies at the centre of this debate: I believe that if we want an open society based around principles of equality of opportunity, social justice and free expression, we need to build it on technologies which are themselves ‘open’, and that this is the only way to encourage a diverse online culture that allows all voices to be heard. i agree but i think it may be able to lead later on to problems. 

4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?

• Does it mean an internet built around the ‘end-to-end’ principle, where any connected computer can exchange data with any other computer, while the network itself is unaware of the ‘meaning’ of the bits exchanged?

• Does it mean computers that will run any program written for them, rather than requiring them to be vetted and approved by gateway companies?

• Does it mean free software that can be used, changed and redistributed by anyone without payment or permission?

In some respects, today’s internet is a vast, unregulated, worldwide experiment in openness. It is already having significant impact because of the largely unanticipated consequences of the global adoption of a set of technologies that were built around an assumption of openness without any real concern for the broader implications. We cannot simply pull down the walls to the unimpeded flow of information and expect no consequences, so while I continue to think   that the real benefits of the network will only

be seen if we make it as open as possible, I know that openness carries a price. And of course we could decide to do things differently.

5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?

I think it should be more regulated as now the internet is very dangerous and too open for any kind of age and everyone can access everything but I also want everyone to be able to speak respectfully and be open because nowadays you can only share the truth and your opinion on the internet as now news share false and inject any false and racist information into the audience. 

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:

1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?

A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that re-quires some sort of specialization. 

To label something a profession means to define the ways in which it is more than just a job. In the case of newspapers, professional behavior is guided both by the commercial im- perative and by an additional set of norms about what news-papers are, how they should be staffed and run, what constitutes good journalism, and so forth. These norms are enforced not by the customers but by other professionals in the same business.

2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?

What holds a newspaper together is primarily the cost of paper, ink, and distribution; a newspaper is what-ever group of printed items a publisher can bundle together

and deliver profitably. The corollary is also true: what doesn'tgo into a newspaper is whatever is too expensive to print and deliver. The old bargain of the newspaper-world news lumped in with horoscopes and ads from the pizza parlor- has now ended. The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from "Why publish this ?" to "Why not?"

3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?

Two weeks later, having been rebuked by President Bush and by politicians and the press on both the right and the left for his comment, Lott announced that he would not seek to remain majority leader in the new Congress.

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the printing press five centuries ago.

5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?

The change isn't a shift from one kind of news institution to another, but rather in the definition of news: from news as an institutional prerogative to news as part of a communications ecosystem, occupied by a mix of formal organizations, informal collectives, and individuals.

6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?

Real revolutions dont involve an orderly transition from point A to point B. Rather, they go from A through a long period of chaos and only then reach B. In that chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones become stable. In the late 1400s scribes existed side by side with publishers but no longer performed an irreplaceable service. Despite the replacement of their core function, however, the scribes' sense of themselves as essential remained undiminished.

7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?

There is never going to be a moment when we as a society ask ourselves, "Do we want this? Do we want the changes that the new flood of production and access and spread of information is going to bring about?"

Journalistic privilege suddenly becomes a loophole too large to be borne by society. Journalistic privilege has to be applied to a minority of people, in order to preserve the law's ability to uncover and prosecute wrongdoing while allowing a safety valve for investigative reporting.

8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?

The printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the I600s.

9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?

The amateurization of the photographers' profession began with the spread of digital cameras generally, but it really took off with the creation of online photo hosting sites. The threat to professional photographers came from a change not just in the way photographs were created but in the way they were distributed. In contrast to the situation a few years ago.

10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed? 

 I do not think it necessarily is a positive thing  as the people like photographers worked hard for their career and profession anyone can go and take a picture and publish it this however could be positive for those audience who are publishing those photographs without any profession so now everyone can do everything even if they are professionals or not so i think its more negative than positive however people are able to take an advantage of it.