For less than hundred years ago the average person had not seen a radio or a TV-screen. The media available were very limited and the information spread did not reach everybody. Today the amount of information available for anyone has increased enormously. Today the consumers can be creators because of the low costs of producing media (Pargman, lecture on KTH October 2008).
Some might argue that since it is easier for anyone to spread news around the world today the quality of the news cannot be as high as when the traditional media handles it. However, most of the traditional media is far from objective. Some newspapers have one reputation of being more right wing while other newspapers have the reputation of being more left wing. Newspapers that have the reputation of being objective might not take all aspects into account when presenting the news, simply because it is difficult to be objective in many cases. If we consider these news as facts we might miss out some perspectives. So, even if it might feel that everything is under control when a real journalist has written an article it might not be a hundred percent objective. The reader has to react to the information and make his/her own judgment of the information.
For me social media does not necessarily imply that the quality of the news is low. The information has to be seen in the light of the context that is presented. Who wrote the statements? Why did he/she write it? Do companies sponsor this blog? What is the purpose of the writings? Does the person adding this news to this forum gain something from saying this?
These questions are important when analyzing the traditional media as well. Why did the journalist write this text? What could he/she have gained from looking at the situation from this specific perspective? Who came up with the idea of writing about this topic? What are the consequences of this article?
There is always a reason why people produce media. Some might do it because they earn money and make a living on it. Others might do it just for fun; it is part of their pleasure and leisure time. Social media consist to a wide extent of the last-mentioned group. Since this group does not earn any money and consider the time spent as amusement-time they might not have much incentives to write something that will suit someone else. We only have to consider one actors incentives to judge what he/she writes. That could imply that it is easier to judge whether the information presented are true or false. On the other hand, it is not easy to know all people writing stuff on the Internet. Even if it becomes easier to evaluate the quality in a single situation the fact that there are so many of these situations makes it more complex to evaluate the content.
So far it seems to be more difficult to evaluate the quality of social media than the quality of the traditional media. But this is actually the time for social media to shine. The social media technologies give tools to evaluate every single content producer by other producer and readers. Benkler 2006 exemplifies this phenomenon with Slashdot, where the members can get comments and points, karma. The more positive comments the better your karma will get. This is one way to solve the problem. Wikipedia works in a similar way, moderators look through the content and you have to link to other pages.
But even if there are ways to control the quality of the content produced it is still up to the reader to look the sources up and control the quality. This goes for both social media and traditional media. I think it is very important that we don’t forget that the traditional media should also be viewed critical. The responsibility has to be on the reader. I think that Slashdot express it in a good way when they are asked how the content are verified: “We don’t. You do. If something seems outrageous, we might look for some corroboration, but as a rule, we regard this as the responsibility of the submitter and the audience. This is why it’s important to read comments. You might find something that refutes, or supports, the story in the main.”
2 comments:
I actually quite agree with you on the first part, which you wrote about both traditional and social media have the problems bring absolutely objective stuff to the audiences. This has something to do with not only the intension of author who provides the content, but also the traceability and transparency of material being brought up. On the internet, most of the content is presented in an anonymous way. Under this circumstance, it even deepens the difficulty of knowing the intension of the author who publishes their work. Moreover, the transparency of the material is even lower than the one in the traditional form and traceability is also much harder to investigate.
User participation in the quality-control process of social media is expected and should be encouraged as well. An effective mechanism should try its best to involve the end users or viewers into the system, but it doesn't logically mean that the responsibility of quality control should be attributed to the viewers. In the competitive market, whether a company that is employing social media could build up its own effective quality-control mechanism is vital to the success of its business. Whether the company should involve users in its quality securing process would be another story.
I'll pick up the transparency issue. I often try to think of traditional mass media and problems to view it critically. It can be so difficult to see and react to the news, although we know that it's not hundred percent objective, although the news materials are traceable. I don't try to argue with your claim that it's the reader's full responsibility to regard information critically. It's a condition for succesfully making any use of the information. But, we are only encouraged to think 'as critically as possible'. I just think it would be a helpful to have a chance expound. If the facts are presented in a way that it's appearant that certain motives/perspectives are prevailing, the medium might as well be feasable. I agree with you that comments are very important, and hopefully there are even more ways to increase transparency.
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