Monday, May 16, 2011

3.2 Networks of information: blogging, citizen journalism & collective intelligence

In preparation for this week we read   Melissa Wall, (2005). Blogs of war: weblogs as news. Journalism 6 (2), 153-72. (Electronic databases)

Wall analyses the cultural conditions that gave rise to blogging, situates it with regard to “old media” and then analyses the ways in which blogs reconfigure journalistic discourse, specifically in relation to blog coverage of the Iraq war. 

Gordon, J. (2007). The mobile phone and the public sphere: mobile phone usage in three critical situations. Convergence 13(3), 307-319. (electronic databases)

Watch:   
TED talk – Jimmy Wales on the
creation of Wikipedia

Learning Portfolio entry:
1.    Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2.    Make note of the blogs you visit and the features of this blogs that attract you


Discussion
Topic Themes / keywords: 
participatory culture, ethics, credibility

learning goals:
Thinking about how notions of credibility, editorship, control and open source operate in the new media scape.

Group work:

  • Share examples of your favoured sites for news / information.
  • Discuss how credible you find it – do you cross check with other sources? Why?
  • Look at de-identified articles on same topic from different sources and decide which are professionally edited, which are more credible etc

Discussion Questions:
  • What do new forms of information / journalism such as Indymedia, citizen journalism / blogging mean for traditional news media?
  • Is this the death of the editor?
  • If so how important is this for the credibility of the new/ information we source?
  • What do we mean by collective intelligence?
  • What are the risks to the blogger?

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