Clay Shirky: End of Audience

Media Magazine reading

What are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?

• It allows freedom of speech, audience and above all it is an easily navigated and accessible source of information. It can also be utilised for education and political campaigns and gaming, as well as to aid small businesses in making money and helping survive in a growing market. 

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

• Fraud, Scams, malicious software and the 'dark web' exposing people to inappropriate or traumatising content. It also has become so saturated with information it is difficult to decipher which information is valid or not. 

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

• Open technology refers to the distribution of data and technological connections without payments, permissions or censorship. I disagree with the concept of 'open technology', there is always a digital footprint, as well as an increasingly stricter response to copyrighted materials, I think that the recent years has seen a clear change in this concept with people becoming more technologically savvy and less ignorant to the dangers of digital distribution.

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

• Whether the internet is sustainable in it's current form, whether we as a society are utilising the internet in an appropriate way and whether networks are private, safe and just for everyone around the world. 

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

• I personally believe that internet use can hold some detriment to the development of opinions and moral formulations of a digital generation. Heavy reliance on information that is not always reliable, can have impacts on the way people interact, which could be prevented through some regulation. However, regulation is a catch 22, whilst regulation is arguably beneficial- it also halts the freedom of speech and distribution aspect of the internet and in a time of political uproar it is completely subjective whether taking peoples online voices away could be considered ethical or not. However, in my opinion, I believe regulation could be more beneficial if regulated in an ethical way- which would allow younger generations to be able to navigate online material without as many fears. 

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

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

• According to Shirky, a profession is something that requires 'special training' or an aspect of specialisation; similar to the way that traditional journalists had to have expertise in specific areas in order to be able to write pieces about them. 

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

• Instead of asking 'Why? [publish a story]' they're asking 'Why not?' - the influx of information from the internet and sources is leading to a different perspective on journalism.

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

• There was an overwhelming lack of news coverage by traditional mediums; they had deemed it unimportant prior to the night and therefore the lack of uproar and media reaction caused the speech to become news since the comments caused him to lose support and his job but was covered spectacularly late.

What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

• Mass amateurisation is the movement of the media from the hands of the professionals to the majority. 

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 current media climate is extremely hostile regarding truths- if you publish something that is 70% true it will be seen as a fact, this means that a lot of information spread online is continuously distributed despite it being false because we associate the mass with reliability, which is not always the case. 

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?

• He suggests that social changes 'lag behind' technological changes, and rather than being a linear process from A to B it's closer to a long period of chaos and then a stable change; this mirrors the erasure of traditional mediums far before the internet as a source has been stabilised within society. The lack of establishment reinforces the idea of chaos, which can be seen through the mass amateurisation of news outlets and citizen journalism through social media.

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 no longer a requirement for professionalism to be able to make and distribute content within the media sphere. With the rise of vloggers, bloggers and citizen journalists online, the statement summarises how the media 'elite' no longer hold the power within the spread of news but its rather the 'audiences' and their opinion pieces and their utilisation of social media that control how successful or how relevant a story is- and this isn't black and white at all; For example, for one digital echo chamber, a story can be the upmost important but it could pass by the traditional news and digital mainstream. 

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?

• He suggests that it essentially caused more problems than it fixed- this can be seen in recent global events with the mentioned Josh Wolf case, the rise in 'internet horror stories' and an introduction of complexity regarding the law and the digital age- we no longer know who is a journalist or who to hold accountable since the internet introduced a new layer to social interaction and all of a sudden someone's one point is now being replicated by thousands at once, such as piracy.

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

• With the introduction of social media sites such as Instagram, people don't need to be professionally trained to take good photos, or be a 'photographer', you can create a portfolio and take professional quality photos without needing an education on the topic. This is an example of how photography has become a saturated market on social media- with amateur photographers gaining audiences through social media. 

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 think that it is a happy medium between the positive connotations of no longer being below a handful of elite controllers who have ultimate control over the perpetuation of ideologies in order to uphold hegemonic values and a lack of control, which leads to a hostile social climate and intellectual conflicts between the elite and the masses. Shirky's theory mirrors the apprehensions that come with social media- and the connotations of uncensored media coverage however I believe that both sides of the spectrum are an extremist statement on the reality of the period we are in. We are navigating in a post-revolutionised world, which is taking time to adapt from a traditional centric society to a less filtered, but heavily saturated amateur media sphere- this has heavy consequences but also is extremely beneficial for a digital generation to become accustomed to, therefore in the next few years the normalisation of the majority-majority audience model will lead to a far less chaotic political and intellectual state.