Faith in networks (or, how do you know what you need to know?)
Thanks to Mathew Ingram for highlighting an article by Brian Stelter about networked information, in which Stelter illustrates ways in which younger voters act as conduits of news and current events. Their networks are not the old top-down networks of mass media — they resemble more the interpersonal networks of the bazaar, the coffee shop, and the barbershop or beauty salon, where communication is a social act and not a business proposition.
Ingram pulls out this quote: “If the news is that important, it will find me.” A college student said it, according to a market researcher, who repeated it to Stelter.
Your personal network, in other words, will make sure you know what you need to know.
No need to check Page One or the nightly newscast.
Young people also identify online discussions with friends and videos as important sources of election information. The habits suggest that younger readers find themselves going straight to the source, bypassing the context and analysis that seasoned journalists provide. … Rather than treating video-sharing Web sites as traditional news sources, young people use them as tools and act as editors themselves. (Stelter)
Stelter makes much of young Americans’ interest in the presidential campaign, but Ingram zeros in on a question for the peddlers of information:
Are most websites designed with this kind of principle in mind? Not really. Most of them are still designed as though people read the news the same way they do in the paper — starting at the front and moving page by page towards the back …
Stories and sources for stories will be stripped out of their packaging and passed from in-box to in-box, from e-mail to “wall,” via Twitter and RSS, through the private spaces of loosely knit groups of friends, or so-called friends.
Where do the journalists fit in?
I picked up on the same quote, Mindy, when I spoke to a group of budding journalists at UNC. Addressed here.
April 4, 2008 at 8:33 amWhere do journalists fit in? By understanding we provide a service and not a product, by understanding our community that we purport to serve (but are so disconnected from) is one of users and not readers, by operating more as a hub and less of a destination, by helping users in their exchange of information.
Thats where I’d start, at least.
April 4, 2008 at 10:51 am