When living in Boston, and even now, my favorite news resource was Universal Hub. News that's locally produced and reported by the site owner and a whole network of bloggers. I was able to learn about events going on locally that the Boston Globe or the television news didn't cover, and all in one spot. UHub is one of the best examples of a grassroots information network that I can think of, and I wish that more cities had this sort of independent news outlet/blog aggregator.
Everyone talks about Facebook, Twitter, and circa-2004, Myspace as social media networks through which information and news spreads rapidly. Since my group's case study focuses on Twitter and Iran, I've been thinking a lot about the micro-blogging site and how I use it, and its network structure. The trending topics on the sidebar are often filled with inane hashtags such as #wheniruletheworld and others, but also valuable news topics...or so we'd like to think. If a celebrity's name pops up as a trending topic for no apparent reason, the "Twitterverse" tends to think that they've died. Case in point: a few months ago "Uncle Phil" was trending, and rumors flew about the death of the actor who played Uncle Phil on the classic 90s sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Luckily, Uncle Phil (aka actor James Avery) is still alive and kicking, but it took longer for that rumor to calm down than it did for news of his "death" to spread. My point is, networks spread information so quickly nowadays, and when news is widespread, people are more likely to believe it. I think there is a greater social responsibility to watch the information that anyone can produce - because interpersonal networks are now so vast, and so fast-moving, that a joke can become a massive hoax in a matter of minutes.
Of course, my favorite example of modern networking is the meme. In 2008, I was rick-rolled (also known as being misdirected to this video instead of a link's intended destination) countless times. I could go on and on about my favorite memes and viral videos that have provided countless...er, minutes of entertainment, and while these things aren't exactly news, their spread proves just how powerful networks can be. I presume that most people with Internet access have heard about sad Keanu Reeves - but if they haven't, someone on their Facebook friends page, or an acquaintance who is overly fond of the "forward" button in their email will fill them in on the joke soon.
So, I'll wrap up my overdue post here, by noting that the network is a social phenomenon, and that more and more people are getting their information - serious and humorous - from other individuals in their social or professional networks, and traditional forms of media are working hard to integrate themselves in this newer (in terms of ease and speed of use) networking form.
I think it's really great that you try to find news sources the way you do. Today SO much of our media is from the same extreme perspectives that I think it must be extremely refreshing and enlightening to hear from someplace different. I wonder though, how influenced are your bloggers on your website you read by the mass media? How much do they personally listen to CNN or FOX or BBC and how much have those rhetorics creeped into their own coverage?
ReplyDeleteIs it even possible to tell anymore where messages come from if they are so common and gloablized in the ways we have been discussing in class?
I have to admit that often network studies bore me, but the way you pulled that into your post actually peeked my interest as well. I think that networks are definitely a huge reason for why certain messages, such as memes, get out the way they do. I'm interested to see how, as we become increasingly interconnected (I can't tell you how many people's moms I'm friends with on Facebook...) information exchanges are shifted. Maybe over time our online world of information exchange will become dulled down in the same way the mass media has over the ages.
Food for thought.
Great post! I on the other hand love network and the network society, to find out how everything relates and why!
ReplyDeleteI would say that it's a great thing that we are able to share news on a different level today - all of the sudden we are informing each other and the question is if the news that we give each other are less true and less subjective to the "regular" news that we get from BBC and CNN (won't even include FOX). I would say that because of this shift we are able to get information from a wider spectra of people and their view of things.
To remember is that we do call it net-work!