Open Doors or Close Minds?

On-demand Generation

I am an product of my environment, and I am inpatient. Today we live in an on-demand world. We don't wait to hear our favorite song of the week on the radio, we download it and play it on our Ipods. We don't rush home to watch the latest episode of Rock of Love, we Tivo it and watch it at our convenience. Or, if the first 5 minutes don't grab out attention, we delete it and move on to whatever captures our attention next.

What does this do to our relationship with News? Do our centralist attitude and limitless sources open doors to a plethora of information the wealth of which the world has never seen? Or do our futile and picky attitudes hamper our ability to expand our views beyond those which are convenient, attractive and self-assuring?

The Village Green

WZLX in Boston is a classic rock FM station that I would listen to at work back in high school. The bands I would hear would inspire me to download a collection of music ranging from Led Zeppelin to Elton John to The Beatles. Through a variety of sources, I did research of the bands I liked, took recommendations, and downloaded other artists I had never heard. Somewhere along the line I discovered The Kinks (and you should too). Now, their 1968 album " The Village Green Preservation Society" is one of my all time favorite albums.

My point is that although we have discriminatory tastes, they can help us reach places we would otherwise have never found, and that can be a good thing. Perhaps by recognizing these different tastes, while acknowledging our lack of online patience, we could intelligently face the future of online news.

Trails and Tribulations

Earlier in this class we talked about the notion of trails and paths, which allow us to follow one idea to the next, researching and expanding our way to a better understanding of that which interests us (this was also the inspiration for hyperlinks found across the web today).

If there could be a central, neutral hub as a starting point - a user friendly, reliable and dependable website that presents equally different viewpoints on subjects and encourages the reader/user to form their own opinions, instead of conglomerating with someone else. As with me finding The Kinks, I believe the best approach is not to present two, completely different viewpoints in contradiction to each other (classic rock mixed with today's pop for example) but rather to present two or more similar, yet different viewpoints, (70s rock with the British invasion) to allow for a more comfortable, subtle shift for the user.

Is this possible? Maybe. But several problems immediately come to mind.

• There is no neutral. What we write about, (and what we don't write about), how we write about it, when and why all affect our ability to be and present ourselves as neutral. People, families, businesses and countries all have agendas that influence how the feel about the world, and how they express themselves. Understanding this is key to understanding that there can never be a truly neutral news provider.
• As mentioned above, we are the on-demand generations. We don't like to wait, we don't like to sift, we know what we want and we go for it. If there's a short cut, a way to circumnavigate around something we don't find to be of pressing importance, we'll find it.
• Peer pressure. Depending on who you are and who you associate with, asking certain questions and seeking information on a subject may be technically possible, but socially not. Imagine for example a story producer at Fox News raising his or her hand and asking "You know, maybe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has some good points, should we do a story on the positive things he has done for his country?" Not going to happen.
• Group polarization, as described in Sunstein's article, could be argued is inevitable. Is it a result of people being more informed or manipulated? We should also remember that this is nothing new, that this is nothing new - people have been furthering their ideas and agendas for as long as human communication itself.

Full Circle

In undergrad I had two communication professors with different views on journalism.

One felt that journalists stood for truth, justice and the American way. They were stewards of the people, enabling and furthering democracy the way the Founding Fathers of this country envisioned.

The other felt journalism was another tool for generating the all mighty dollar. "The business of creating desirable audiences and leasing them out advertisers," a powerful quote from Dr. Marshall.

Perhaps with the advent of personalized news, and the "power to the people" we can start to move away from the latter and towards the first, but as discussed there are still several hurdles along the way.

This blog was inspired by this week's ICM 501 readings:

Bender, W. (2002). Twenty years of personalization: All about the “Daily Me.” Educause Review, 37(5), 21-29.
Sunstein, C. (2004). Democracy and filtering. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 57-59.
Bruns, A. (2006) Wikinews: The next generation of alternative online news? Scan: Journal of Media Arts and Culture, 3(1).