Old and New Media
2004-04-15 21:24![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asher553OLD AND NEW MEDIA
(a 1,000-character essay)
The centrally-managed and -edited traditional media (including radio, TV, print periodicals, and books) have nothing to fear from the internet ... provided they do not contribute to their own irrelevance by ignoring it.
The internet is anarchical, and therefore makes great demands on the individual user in terms of critical thinking skills. How do we know to trust a site? We compare information from multiple sources, listen to different analyses, learn to weed out irrelevant input and compare the picture with what we know from our own previous experience.
With the traditional media, this is all delegated to the editor, publisher, producer, or university. Often we have to do this, because the material is specialized or technical in nature, or because individual contributors don't have the credibility to reliably provide the information we need.
But centralized media can serve their own agendas at the expense of accuracy. That's where the supremely democratic world of blogging comes in.
Traditional media still play a valuable role. But they risk abdicating this role if they fail to recognize the democratizing effects of electronic communications.
(a 1,000-character essay)
The centrally-managed and -edited traditional media (including radio, TV, print periodicals, and books) have nothing to fear from the internet ... provided they do not contribute to their own irrelevance by ignoring it.
The internet is anarchical, and therefore makes great demands on the individual user in terms of critical thinking skills. How do we know to trust a site? We compare information from multiple sources, listen to different analyses, learn to weed out irrelevant input and compare the picture with what we know from our own previous experience.
With the traditional media, this is all delegated to the editor, publisher, producer, or university. Often we have to do this, because the material is specialized or technical in nature, or because individual contributors don't have the credibility to reliably provide the information we need.
But centralized media can serve their own agendas at the expense of accuracy. That's where the supremely democratic world of blogging comes in.
Traditional media still play a valuable role. But they risk abdicating this role if they fail to recognize the democratizing effects of electronic communications.
