Community Media
This article was a very well written and touched on a lot of important issues dealing with our communication and sense of democracy. The first main point I picked out of this reading was that community media allowed everyone to participate. The author stated that people have created so much of their own media with the use of the Internet. The next step would be to allow an avenue of participation for everyone to take place in the decision making process.
An Oxford professor named Stephen Coleman created a model called E-democracy which does just that. Allowing participants to utilize technology and fully become a part of the democracy process would be amazing.
For now, as the article states, media is used for a variety of other purposes. One such purpose is political slander. A lot of media attention and effort is focused on exploiting the actions of politicians. A great recent example would be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new child. He received a lot of bashing and ridicule as that story became public.
The more important concept I received from the article is that community media shows us that not everyone thinks the same. Hopefully with more implementation of community media, people will become more exposed and tolerant of different ideas. Then maybe finally, people can put their pride aside and agree to disagree, and finally work together as a true democracy.
I rather liked the coining of the term “read-write” media. It really demonstrates how media has evolved in the past two decades, having gone from read-only to read-write. I’ve dabbled in blogging here and there for a few years now and before then I had a livejournal. (Though, I admit, I mostly had it because girls thought it was cute when you said you had one. I rarely posted.) I gotta’ say it’s empowering to know that your blog—anyone’s blog—has the potential to become a pop-culture beacon that can really influence culture. That sounds a bit hyperbolic, I know, but look at “The Sartorialist.” Scott Schumann went from being this obscure New York photographer to this famous blogger within a few short years. I don’t know that I want to be famous for anything, but this sort of democratizing of the media landscape is just what Elle Rennie is talking about. It’s really exciting.
ReplyDeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your comment about the media focusing its energy on public slander. There are more serious things that we can focus on that what year Barry Bonds took steroids. I was like really, you are spending thousands of dollars and time prosecuting this athlete, with our tax dollars, and when we are in a huge school budget crisis! :) SMH. Not to mention, there are other very important things happening in our community and our world that we could be discussing. (I must admit, that Arnold S. news was pretty entertaining though! Lol)
I also like your comment about people learning to agree to disagree. I’m also hoping that people will feel more comfortable voicing their opinion but this would also mean that they hear others and I’m excited to see that outcome.
Hi Jossshhuaa,
ReplyDeleteI really like the way you summarized some of the points in the Community Media chapter. It makes sense to me that media and democracy have two facets. One part of relates to our access to communication and participation in political media. The second piece of democracy and media relates to how this communication can be used to make decisions.
I think the implications of new media and democratic participation are huge and probably not yet obvious to us. In my undergrad program about six years ago, I studied “click through” campaigns and the US congress. At that time elected officials were receiving thousands of petition style emails each day but had never hired more staff to read or make sense of their constituents’ messages. I think we’ve got a way to go before our media access truly affects our political processes.