The Delicate Balance - Group Lead by Josh

Consider your favorite movies or television shows or even novels for a moment. What is the common thread in them all that elevates them to be worthy of ranking on your personal list? Is it the style? Is it the medium? Or is it the arc of the characters and their involvement with the storyline?

The over arching sense from chapters 10, 11 and 12 –in my interpretation– was that in order to gain traction with an audience and effectively spread a message, be it a tactical media, a blog, established media or an aggregator of several forms of media the audience must be able to engage in the storyline and information. The ability to capture not only the mind but also the emotions of a person that will then also engage in the resulting dialogue is key to instill the potential of democracy in media and the expanded potential of digital media.

Traditionally media has been based on the notion that one entity creates content while another consumes said content. This notion is even apparent in Gans’ two-tier model of a central media and a secondary level of media reinterpreting and reanalyzing the first tier despite its goal of multiperpspectival coverage. This new content is still just re-digested and presented to be consumed all over again.

As advances in digital media and the Internet have grown exponentially, so too have challenges for effective use of media. Does the platform or type of media change the impact on a particular social group or community?

As we have already discussed in class, the notion of objectivity –despite being actually buried beneath bureaucracy and cronyism in many instances– and be “fair and balanced” permeates most established journalism outlets. There is also an unfounded principal of needed conflict that generates useless shouting and finger pointing on display in forms like CNN’s Crossfire or even the long standing NBC’s Meet the Press. This tension of two dominant opposites is broadcast under the flag of unprejudiced coverage, yet neglects the remaining 358 degrees of a particular issue.

Watch Jon Stewart's famous plea for the senseless debate to stop. "You're hurting America," he states.

Meanwhile, bloggers lose sight of accomplishment goals by injecting self-righteousness and catharsis leading the failed re-hashing of particular issues that do not advance dialogue. These new forms of sharing and discussing topics at times becomes more of a celebration of technology and less about the ability Ohmynews.com to get people to become participants in the evolution of our society. This can even be said about social networking sites.

Bruns highlights the unique blend of professional journalists co-oping with citizen journalists on the South Korean website . This evolution from a tactical media to a possible “renaissance” journalism model is no doubt intriguing. But is the social environment of South Korea too dissimilar to the United States? Or are the essential foundations of a new and more effective journalism model present to carry into the complex ream of the world’s original democracy?

Bruns asks: “How can new forms of journalism grow beyond their beginnings as tactical media linked to specific causes and temporary actions, and move to establish themselves as a permanent fixture in the news mediascape?”

The ability of people to gatecrash and gatewatch in the digital era has opened up several possibilities to make journalism more successful. Alternative media sources have been able to employ the concept of gatecrashing by force, producing as much content as possible in the DIY media realm in hopes that eventually some of that content will bubble up to the top and be accepted by traditional media sources. Is this attempt to get messages out in mass volume, knowing there will be attrition, reasonable in the process of expanding the scope of what is disseminated by the established media sources? Or will the heart of the message be lost by constantly putting the establishment under siege?

With the expansion of Web2.0 and other social networking tools opening up avenues to spread information, and more importantly engaging storylines, the difficulty is once again not losing sight of the goal, social improvement and discourse, for the allure of technofetishism.

As Twitter, Facebook and new citizen journalism sites like Spot.us begin to take shape, it will be their ability to become stable in the constant digital seas of change and innovation. (Read the Tweet Congress post.) Another aspect will be the ability of established journalism outlets to harness the potential power of these sties to combine the efforts of professional journalism with those of citizen-powered journalism. It was only recently that mainstream media websites allowed reader commenting. A long-standing aspect of the now common blog that incited discussion, if at times also devolved the conversation. This begs the question, can constructive deliberation happen on these platforms or is merely having the option available the bigger concern?

That debate is of serious consequence as the commenting tools on mainstream media outlets are still limited to some extent for fear of rogue commenters and freight of libel in addition to the lack of resources to “police” the playground. If these traditional outlets are eventually able to overcome the “adoption lag” there may be something that resembles the power of Ohmynews. But coming from the industry of dead trees and deep-rooted institutionalized journalism, there will be very few able to bridge the gap and evolve. These new iterations of news outlets will act more as a filter to all the perspectives in content being generated, running the risk of once again quashing the potential of democratic media. This reinforces the potential power of these tactical media becoming more than owners to a specific action.

An example of the potential power was illustrated in the Memogate example, if also held up as an anomaly at the same time. The influence of bloggers, though also powerful and connected to establishments, to call into question and reverse the reportage of established media source is of serious note. Even more so when taking into account that shortly after the debunking of the falsified documents only 38 percent of Internet users knew what a blog was. This relatively new media was able to take on and alter the course of a well-established industry.

The ability to have a mediated public sphere will require that moderation of both narrative elements and emotional elements together be enacted in media in order to preserve the evolution of the creators, who are also the characters of these storylines.