Because the best knowledge is rarely your own.

The Economist’s news Is Social

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:42:39 +1000

The Economist's persuasive summary of the issues facing news and media spreads insights across 5 articles that investigate the modern ecology of news and is worth a quick review.

The first two articles remind readers that global news media is changing not dying, and changing differently around the world: print subscriptions are sharply up in BRIC countries; the basic advertising based revenue model brings a smaller fraction of cash to (subscription dependent) papers in Britain, Germany and Japan compared to (failing) counterparts in the United States; and pay walls, walled gardens and many other innovative money making schemes are afloat.

The last three articles link the digital changes brought to consumption, production and the sociality of news to forecast a return to plain and simple plurality. Generally, history sees the printing press as a bastion of freedom, spreading new ideas across nations. Oppressive religions and political regimes fell to printed bibles and pamphleteers. The Economist opines otherwise, calling on 'media gurus' of New York, including Jay Rosen, to point out that mass printing and distribution, also broke the traditional social link of media distribution that existed before the 19th Century.

Steam powered printing presses put broad-casting power in the hands of few. These few entered a grand bargain to bring the greatest audience possible to their advertisers with 'objective' news that had mass appeal. The opinionated, partisan and polarized were relegated from the story to literal margin if the page in 'op-ed' columns. In place of the overtly political, a new system of control through mass media was born.
The fallacy of an objectivity consensus, or the control inherent in deciding which knowledge system is viewed as objective, rational or true is well documented. We do not need to turn to Chomsky (video!) or Derrida to remember 'the media's’ treatment of WMDs in Iraq.

New media returns the social graph to the forefront of social impact - your friends tell you what's important and when. Digital distribution and the related decentralized production of media flow in social networks - much as they did before the industrial age invented mass media. So before new terms like neo-plurality or post-neutrality are bandied about to describe socially connected news communities, we should remember the opinionated, partisan and polarized coffee houses, and town criers of old.

Not to mention the letter clubs, 18th Century viral political media networks, 16th Century ‘friend books’ that were very social ways of sharing news and enacting social political relationships.

To replace the tenacity of trust that objectivity holds in knowledge, The Economist points to transparency. "Transparency is the new Objectivity" to quote Weinberger. Laying bare motivations, affiliations and biases while holding reporting to accuracy and intellectual honesty opens a new dialogue, and a much sharper discourse than a position-less telling of objective facts that allows no conclusions. Or responsibility.

How far to take this idea of transparency is the battle that can be seen being waged by mass media producers and groups such as WikiLeaks as well as other less anarchistic media organizations. NGOs, internet communities, for profit companies and your twitter friends, are all players in the ecology of a socially built plurality of media.

Whether The Economist’s market ever clears and social plurality reigns is a contentious and liberal hope that is outweighed by ever new schemes of control that creep from the networks. But hey, at least it will be our friends telling us so.

(cross-posted @ heemsbergen.org)

Title image: History News: The Roman News, Andrew Langley

Framing Obama

Sat, 7 May 2011 20:48:58 +1000

It’s not surprising CNN knows a lot about images. Launching the 24 hour Cable News Network as an idea gave them ample opportunity to learn how to broadcast impactful visuals.

Fitting then, that John Blake of CNN dissects the O-bama-sama zeitgeist through image via the “iconic” Situation Room photo that a week after being uploaded, has become the most viewed photo ever on Flickr.

Framing Framing

Blake’s article is striking as it offers a discussion on framing in more ways than one. First, drawing from ‘the experts’ Blake attributes adroit commentary on the frames of the stories we are telling ourselves about the progression of “presidential swagger,” race, and gender. Second, and possibly instrumental to the first, is the unmentioned literal device that may contribute or allow such re-assessment to take place: a subtle change to the visual frame of the image itself allows, if you can stand the cliche, the picture to speak a thousand words.

First, the performance of presidential bravado, believe it or not, was invented before a Texan rancher/oilman named Bush strutted into the White House and landed a jet on a carrier. Roosevelt went on Safari with guns big enough to down elephants. Lincoln’s run for the White House hinged on re-alignment to a serious beard. Reagan actually was an actor before president. Clarence Lusane comments that images of Kennedy and Roosevelt were denied a frame of disease (Polio and various assortments respectively) out of respect for the office as much as the man. If we accept the need, or at least acknowledge the existence, of ‘presidential swagger’, Blake suggests that it is evolving to a more subtle frame of self-assured leadership. For Obama, the frame of ‘quiet confidence’ displays not only openness to the opinions of his advisors and in collaboration in general, but possibly also can shift the black-man-in-america frame from ‘angry’ to ‘protector’. As Contee expands:

In pop culture, black men are too often seen as dangerous criminals not as guardians. Even good guys like Crispus Attucks, Shaft and Worf are not uncomplicated: Attucks is mainly known for being the first person shot by the British in the Revolutionary War, Shaft is hardly the most clean cut guy ever and Worf is not actually human, coming from a race of “savage” Klingons. Ahem.

Historian Jerald Podair puts it more bluntly, noting that Obama was always careful to avoid the angry black male stereotype in his public persona, stating, as ‘protector’ he can “now appear strong without being threatening.” A ‘protector in chief’ also supplants the images of detachment, and over analysis Obama was previously criticized for.

The frame of protector for Obama doesn’t need to stop at Race. Blake pulls on political scientist Saladin Amblar to point out the novel inclusion of women in America’s novel ‘nexus of power’ / situation room. However, confusion over Clinton’s ‘cough’ as a ‘gasp’ or ‘gasp’ as a ‘cough’ seems to suggest our discourse of gender roles are here to stay, even when the ladies are invited into the room. Amblar’s generous analysis of Clinton’s portrayal is unwittingly comical in its conflicting messages:

"God only knows what she's seeing on the screen," (Clinton has since said she was trying not to cough.) CNN

It’s the Frame Stupid!

As commentators poured over the situation room image for visual clues of, body language, stature, position, height, facial expressions and even uncontrolled female exhalations, they referenced these attributes as being within ‘the image’. Defining the representation of the situation room as still life and singular, ‘the image’ was an object that commentators could put meaning to, or interpret meaning from, but a static thing that was objectively the same. A perfect digital, bit by bit copy, was experienced across millions of screens.

Of course, electronic images of ‘digital light’ are hard pressed to be compared to still life of oils and paint; even the most simple visual editorial decisions opens up the the re-configurement of meaning for the situation room. We put genealogies of ‘digital light’ aside for now, to focus on a very simple editorial crop that literally opened up new frames of meaning.

The image directly below portrays the president and his team as first supplied by the White House (see watermark in corner). This was what was shared with millions via CNN and other news outlets - you probably remember seeing it.

Although Obama is not front and centre, he is squarely centred in the ‘rule of thirds’ space that our eyes focus on in photography. This presents him as the subject of the photo - we focus in on him in and his relation to the other actors in the situation room.

But let’s look again: The below image is closer to how the Canon Mark 5D camera used by White House Photographer Pete Souza captured the moment - similar to what was seen in the viewfinder. (And was the one shared with the experts and reproduced in Blake’s CNN article about the image)

The objective difference? Merely a slight, slight crop in the White House version. No different than what we’d consider in iPhoto or Facebook to help (literally) frame our photo. Note that Getty thinks the crop is important enough to watermark ‘their’ version of this US government licensed work of public domain.

What is the interpretive result? While the closer crop placed Obama ‘self assuredly’ in the rule of thirds of photography, making him principle subject of the shot regardless of other elements, the full crop version removes that privilege. Suddenly his relative size, position, and posture become more apparent against other actors in the room, and the room itself. This literal frame diminishes not only his stature and 'presidential swagger' but the coherence of the image itself. In short, it’s not about him anymore. Visually the frame opens up possibilities of Obama as smaller and metaphorically weak, even reluctant but stuck in the corner of the shot and room, hemmed in by 8-9 larger staff with only Joe on his side. Who are these other people then? What are their perspectives? What is the photo now about? Interestingly, The full resolution version actually reveals that Clinton is the ‘subject’ in focus.

The literal loss of coherence around Obama as privileged subject, and coherence of the image as a whole opens up new interpretations or metaphorical frames of what is happening. What these frames can mean as we look at the players in the room we leave to the punditry.

One last word for those wondering whether the Osama KIA photos will ever be released. The cooky internets already give a few hints to why that answer will be negative:

Pay or Jump the Hedge: How the $NYT$ garden works.

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:25:46 +1000

$NYT$

The New York Times has not put up a paywall. Instead, they invite you through a gate of convenience into their beautifully hedged garden. And hope you don’t jump the hedge. Whomever set up the new scheme was not without inspiration; Apple’s iTunes serves a similar social contract to its users as business model, even though the media experience (of content) and flow (for ownership) is quite different. Simply put, the experiences of iTunes and the NYT are ours for the taking, but their publishers are betting the bothers of continually jumping the hedge to experience the lovely gardens is just enough to ask us through the pay gate.

For mainstream music (and audiences), iTunes offers to let you pay. Very conveniently. Or, if you are so bothered, you can find your content elsewhere, and then re-integrate it to iTunes to consume or experience at your leisure. That process however is tiresome. You must search for music you like on the web (or in iTunes), then pirate search for that music again, download it through a third (probably bitTorrent) program that hogs your resources and someones bandwidth. Then you must find the file, reload it into iTunes so that it can play nice with all your devices, giving the experience these devices and software are made for; Don’t forget to steal the album art of Amazon!

Too bothered to follow that regime for every new album? iTunes removes the cognitive dissonance for the small fee of $9.99. And ensures your media are perfectly integrated in your digital lifestyle (experience).

Bothers to Entry

Turns out the NYT’s nefarious paywall is not actually a paywall. Their business model relies on the exact same ‘bothers to entry’ principle that iTunes does. It shouldn't be thought of as a barrier to entry, as there are none, it’s actually a bother to entry choice about the hassle of getting the news and NYT reading experience. The NYT seems to be of the camp that thinks a paywall that restricts content from being found on the omnicopy internets probably wont work; the facts on the ground make cost of content = cost of storage.

Now and forevermore, all of NYT’s content is searchable and usable, via any of the big search providers, regardless of article caps ‘imposed’ on users. When NYT darkens to show that you can no longer read a full article, If you are so bothered, you can open a new Google tab, type in the article headline, add “ NYT” and then click that you feel lucky - as in this case you are. The somewhat bothersome googleit method will allow you access to the full content that finds itself in the New York Times, whether or not you pay. Further, it lets you enter into the NYT experience with each page displayed as it should, links, diagrams, and the rest - rendered active and enticing. For your bother, you are in the garden of the NYT experience again - if ever so temporarily.

So let’s think back to iTunes for a second. When previewing music in the inbuilt store, and iTunes tells you can’t hear the full version, if you are so bothered, you can find it for free the long way, or simply click buy. There is some evidence of market consensus that the iTunes experience works.

For the NYT, relief from ‘bother to entry’, is by onetime subscription - you never have to think about it again. Click to your heart’s content. The internal journey you’ll take in their garden of content is the experience the NYT is hoping that you will be happy to pay for - just as people enjoy finding (and paying) for new music in iTunes. Note that the ‘bother to entry’ for NYT is pretty ephemeral - a new tab, a short phrase, a couple clicks - but the pay off experience of reading that article fits within the ephemeral model; iTunes bother is higher, but so is the reward of full album experience in iOS land. Tellingly, both companies will be happy to sell you the $NYT$ experience across iOS land.

$$$

As a last note for those about to protest content ownership and halo effects. Although iTunes is only (monetarily) successful because of its tied hardware sales, Apple only takes a small percentage profit from revenue. The rest flows back to the rights holders. The NYT however retains all profits. For the time being. One can’t help imagining journalists implementing a similar profit percentage scheme to iTunes for a NYT like experience. Maybe Apple will get on this. Maybe NYT writers should first.

Designing and controlling experience for what used to be called ‘stickiness’ on the web is what will make these models successful. They both realize the cost of content is synchronous with the cost of storage, and that the experience is the differentiator.* Thus both companies have built some pretty beautiful gardens for us to consume content in. Regardless of whether we open the gate or jump over the hedge.

*that might be two knocks against The Daily - content is unknown and the experience, on iPad1 anyway, sucks.

Big Red Button

Tue, 1 Feb 2011 17:48:53 +1100

Chinese (PRC) Media have a button that, upon occasion, they employ. Whether lip-synching little olympic girls and computer assisted fireworks, or calling on the everlasting powers of Tom Cruise, the rig red “sensationalize” button is tap tap tap tapped!! in PRC media in obtrusive and sometimes hilarious fashion.

Looking to MTV and Hollywood as groundbreakers, it’s a valid reading of what Media can be about, and ultimately has to be about in its purest form - sensation and experience.

CCTV makes news.

However, when news coverage is given The Button, we cry special fowl, about the sanctity of what is real and not. But it’s not just simple photoshop propaganda in the worst sense. It seems to speak to a more in depth, post-modern understanding of the world, audiences and production; what’s a good ‘purely factual’ news montage if not the Eisenstein effect? Eg. US troops running around Iraq, dead babies and crying mothers - do we really expect to know whose dead babies? And Which troops were running around, delineating some scientific cause and effect as we soak in news footage and the sensation of war?

CCTV knows this and guns it to the next level - the top gun level apparently. Without regard for copyright or discerning film critique, the latest big red tap tap tap! of The Button is helping show just how awesome missiles blowing up planes can be. Audiences already know this to be awesome, so how do we remind them? with the biggest stick possible. When you need the money shot, look no further than what is already the awesomest-blow-up-jetfighter-pow embedded in popular culture: 1.08 in the below CCTV news segment is really Top Gun.

From the Department of irony

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:45:44 +1000

Top military official: WikiLeaks founder may have "blood" on his hands

"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference at the Pentagon.
FULL STORY

Long live the ipadded internet...

Thu, 1 Apr 2010 13:20:54 +1100

Jonathan Zittrain wrote a book about the internet, and its emancipating generativity going off a cliff.

Wikipedia (and wikileaks) are dying. Mobile applications are in a touchy walled apple garden. Tinkering is outlawed. Is this what makes the future of internet communication?

In the coming weeks we’ll review chunks of Zittrain’s “the future of the internet and how to stop it” by comparing his warnings and solutions to the history currently being writ. First, iPad:

Zittrain defines generativity as a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from
broad and varied audiences.

Because it’s timely, and because it probably will change everything, we begin looking at generativity through iPad.

How everyone is going to use iPad started with apple’s first software-hardware-phone: An information appliance that did some things very well, and locked the rest out. The logic seemed sound enough:

For reasons of pure commerce, pure creativity, market ecology and the so called ‘intersection of liberal arts and technology’, slowly, some barriers to creating new experiences online and in your hand with the new tech were lifted.

Fringe tinkerers could get applications onto the platform (iPhone OS 1.0, 2007), but then this was put on hold (1.1.1 2007) for the big reveal of a walled app garden, with only specific programming techniques (APIs) available to unlock the actual technology (2.0 2008). With a few more APIs and features thrown to developers to explore - like copy and paste - the next major upgrade (3.0 2009) solidified what our new technological and communicative experiences were going to (literally) feel like.

The approval process of Apple’s Appstore, the abstracted layers to programability of 3rd party applications and the fact that you can’t create new apps and experiences directly within iPhone OS do not make it a generative platform.

It would be remiss to not highlight points of a (soft) generative iFuture. Apple’s own iWork software allows powerful creation of the content layer of communication. Other offerings from OmniGraffle and Brushes show the new types of creativity that will be possible with touch interface. From a medium that is so aesthetically aware, it is not surprising that slowly, beautifully creative content creation tools will begin to appear en mass.

And indeed, the 185,000 apps on the Appstore seem to speak to virtually endless creativity and utilization of this new tech - a somewhat abstracted but nonetheless generative family of technology devices. As in use today, they share the features of a generative system (Zittrain):

• Simple Adaptability to new uses seems high @ 185,000 and counting
• Ease of mastery by broad audiences in understanding and adapting,
• Transferability of thoughts, process and applications as instant and global
• High leverage of the processes and problems the device is solving for you: keep it simple stupid.

But’s let break down those 185,000 new uses.

Appsfire’s analytics suggest the design of the gate Apple uses to govern how and what we communicate with digitally, is not conducive to the spirit of generativity nor reaping many of its positive effects. The tinkering, or as our proxy, the ability to discover within abundance, is not built into the experience of finding methods to communicate (apps!). Nor is that ability to change experiences open to the extent of ‘traditional’ online or PC generative systems.

Of course the rebuttal is that the long tail curve as seen above has always been indicative of ‘prosumers’ and that generativity, while important, is not actually common place. That is to say, how many people write blogs as opposed to read them, or read wikipedia but rarely contribute?

Are flashes of generativity - seen in new technologies and paradigmatic shifts of communication - sustainable?

Next week we’ll look at wikipedia, wikileaks and other more strictly generative systems to shed some light on these questions.

However to first, we introduce simple degrees of control that seems to be tightening generativity online as explored above and in Zittrain’s book. This frame’s scale is conceptual, and there are numerous examples of companies from amazon to apple to Unix (SCO) tapping certain levels to control their interests and our content when needed.

Degrees of Control to Generativity:
0. Open source. No licence other than keeping it open.
1. Licensing. Programmable computing and installable software. Changing terms is a physical affair (old boxed software model).
2. Gate keeping. Controls on what is allowed in and what we can do once there (new software ‘app’ model).
3. Active removal. Kill things on device or in the cloud, arbitrarily, without user decision (Web Services and appliances?).

These levels of control represent a reversal or stagnation of the generative nature of internet communications. They also represent the future of such innovators as Steve Jobs via his iPad; Gone are open machines that appeal to ‘the rebels, the misfits and the crazy ones’, replaced by closed machines for the soccer moms who he encourages to “grab that iPad from the kitchen counter”. It’s how the west was won. And how we lost the west.

ACTA! (Time for Moral Panic)

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:44:27 +1100

Web’s in a bit of a panic.
An international cabal named ACTA, is gearing up to smash our
machines under a veil of secrecy in the orient. Really. Many webwonks™ seem to think it’s a pretty big (and bad) deal.

Geist points us to sampling of the shocked tubes:

Not so ironically, at the same time comes a metaphorical lightning storm of name calling from one of two people in the world who has the Cred to Zeus it up. Patry’s Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars charges the copyright debate with bolts of upended morality - discrediting rhetoric of ‘moral panics‘ as a tactic of content luddites. He stoops to their game, comparing the current copyright regime - and trajectory - to cancer, barbarian guillotine and chastity belt, to call out out the copyright industry's own ravenous use of moral bating to frame the debate and promote content owners interest.

Take note, a sizeable moral panic, involving democratic governance, free speech, fair use, and for some countries, their own legislated rights is upon us. If it weren’t for the crowdsourced nature of voices that are ringing the panic bell, ACTA would be easy to write off as copy-bait. However, the apparent fundamental challenges to not only common (cultural) practice but criminality and communication rights seems worth noting. Watch this space before people decide to unplug from the criminalized grid and float into an altocumulus free for all.

Mini Update

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:00:27 +1100

1) The Data says Sean Cubitt might be right. "Hyper Giants rule Today's Internet" - NYT/Readitwriteweb
1) However, hardware gives me (us) hope? "Direct Connect" Wifi.

Two intersting pieces of context for a new kind of Web 3.0 to (re)vive the internet. Check the last post for general idea. Or, how else did you think you are going to dial into augmented reality dependent on where you are?

Web 3.0 gets physical?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:33:05 +1000

The little brown shack, located on unremarkable corner in Weimar Germany, may herald the start of something new; With the pending closure of the PirateBay.org, enterprising individuals have set up an ‘offline’ copy of the pirate bay torrents, that are wirelessly available to the public. A darknet of one, with an bright open door.

The shack offers a cursory glance of a new web of not only user created content, but user created structure. Web 3.0 may be a bigger change than we saw coming.

The Internet
Active participation in the web’s apps, pages and feeds, although currently branded as web 2.0, has always been the essential characteristic (at least for Tim Berners-Lee) of what makes these media new. Once online, the low barrier to create content in the ether and often the reciprocity built into the code of that content, have enabled the web to grow as we know it.

What’s often taken for granted is the ‘once online’, and exactly what and where that ‘ether’ is. Talk of digital divides and net neutrality usually anchor the debates surrounding assumptions of digital ubiquity.

However, content creation for the average prosumer involves piggybacking our content on the ‘already there web’. Climbing the google ladder, registering hits, closing transactions, all happen on someone else's web of network connections and (usually) servers that are there and waiting. The current web, mostly open to the public, is inherently private. AT&T, Global Crossing, Quest, and Google largely enable, facilitate, and own our pipes and dreams in ever expanding bandwidth, storage and access.

This leads media scholars such as Sean Cubitt to pop pet theories, like that although the 1990s to early 2000s saw the web grow into one of the more robust temporary autonomous zones yet seen, that era is closing. First through regulation of actual content (larger firms are learning how to monetize the flows) and second through regulation of physical infrastructure (governments and firms who own pipe are blocking out addresses on grounds of copyright, legality, politics, etc.).

The Internet is dead. Long live the internet.
(The reports of her death are mildly exaggerated)

Although current definitions of Web 3.0 surround the semantic web, the next big step for cyberspace, revolving again to Berners-Lee’s call for participation and creation, may ironically be rooted in physical infrastructure.

A new definition of what Web 3.0 could evolve into, takes the reflexive and participatory nature from content (software) to structure (hardware). As use of bandwidth is increasingly mobile and personal, and storage costs continue to trend to zero, information sources will continue to multiply and diversify. Along the same trajectory of storage capacity, the constraints of wireless bandwidth also continue to be creatively defied (see 802.11 a/b/d/g/?). These trends could mash up and manifest in ways past predictions of central clouds and many ‘thin clients’.

Why not have your own personal cloud? System on a Chip is huge now, why not a personal Cloud on a Chip tomorrow (pCoC)? With prosumers using your services. The resulting diversification and ever increasing ease of production may bring about a web 3.0 that means ubiquitous creation of content and structure.

That means that every user creates his own content in is his own node, wirelessly identifying, connecting to and forwarding to the next node. The net as we know it without a backbone.

The idea is not that far-fetched. The FAA, currently dependent on a backbone of human ground routers to track and communicate positions of flights to the next router as well as other planes, realizes the next generation of air traffic control requires the planes to talk to each other directly. The aggregate network of plane position is physically viral, decentralized or in another parlance, truly social; dependant on the sum independent connections of the whole. Although this is how we like to view the current web, the view is probably not accurate. For example, even the disruptive technology of bit-torrent, via ‘P2P’ connections, traverse the corporate Private web (p2P2p) at many points between the two file sharers.

UPDATE: And we’re there. or here. just us.

Web 3.0 clouds are Altocumulus.

For now, the little brown shack, stuck in Germany, offers possibly the first truly pre-meditated fully P2P portal. One could envision these physical manifestations of our connectivity to include bricks and mortar hackerspaces as well possibly shifting and ephemeral nodes and nets in our own multi-cloud. A third web, living in hybrid with the the current backbone, would offer not only more connections, but another layer of connecting. And like the semantic web, it could not be the same for everyone everywhere. That Web 3.0 must assume privacy is antediluvian, and probably even an inverse notion to growth, relying on the ever accelerating magnitude of signal(s), storage and speed.

If the shack in Weimar offers a cursory glance of a new web of not only user created content, but user created structure, Web 3.0 exist in a different, if whispy-er, domain.

Ends of the Open Spectrum

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:16:48 +1100

Rissiter’s adage that political spectrums may be circular - as opposed to thought of along one dimension (i.e. left to right) - could also apply to social media. More than just measured on ‘ends’, the ‘means’ of disparate political new media projects are closer than you’d think.

WikiLeaks, a collaborative experiment in transparent anarchy, strives to uncover, expose and disseminate secrets. The wiki relies on unnerving and unpaid volunteers to share, decipher and make palatable, information destined to be news stories that will reveal unethical behaviour in governments and institutions. The open model is based on the normative values of the public good being interpreted in a radical collaborative trajectory. people should share what needs to be told.

Globalpost, is a newly branded online news network (sic) of journalists that will also strive to up-end old notions of media by inviting members to “join us in reinventing the media equation, empowering members for the Web 2.0 era. Instead of the old top-down model where editors decide what you need to read...you play an unprecedented role in shaping the stories that get covered”. You can present story ideas, participate in correspondent conference calls, and even get your questions spliced into upcoming interviews. Well you can’t exactly, unless you’re willing to pay $199 for the privilege to shape the news.

Globalpost is explicitly a ”for-profit enterprise”. This significantly juxtaposes the incentive schemes of most ‘open’ media (meritocracy). Branding social media as an exclusive club is nothing new, but explicitly setting the news agenda by price of admission is. One could argue that the ‘openness’ of this clearly market driven journalism is a step up from back-room boardrooms, and even that the crowd’s market entry decisions will produce more reasoned focus than the ironically opaque agenda setting that wikileaks is tied to (i.e. who leaks what why?). Further, barriers to digital media in general and questions of inclusion are far more complex than a $199 entry barrier.

However, in paying to create news, or leaking to expose news, both these ventures provide example of what is happening to our information as its sources become (mas o menos) more open. Information is no longer static or impenetrable. Its authority is more malleable. Those on the far left might decry Globalpost as blatantly defaming the fifth estate’s independence, while those on the right may look at wikileaks’ anonymous postings as Liable. However, both initiatives are doing the same thing to information, and communication authority as we knew them - disrupting the status quo through new media that change the message in quite a mcluhian sense.