Obama on new media • Telecom Trends

In my post yesterday, I included a quote from Barack Obama that merits further attention.

Obama is arguably the most net-savvy world leader, having leveraged new media tools to energize voters and donors in the last election. But, even he has expressed concerns about the impact of new media on the quality of information being delivered and discussed by the public.

I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding.

This remark seems to tie into a posting I wrote last May, when I referred to Twitter as Coffee Crisp. That posting in turn provided a link to Nick Carr’s piece in Atlantic Monthly called “Is Google Making Us Stupid“.

For a generation raised on-line, how does in-depth analysis and solid information get funded? How can “serious” writing, news, stories hope to be heard above the noise?

rob

October 8, 2009 at 7:29 am

Mark,

Your post reminded me of a book my father read a while back, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture (Hardcover) http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Amateur-Internet-Killing-Culture/dp/0385520808

Interesting thesis. The key problem is that we can't say the cause of the "noise" is inherently, on the whole, bad for society.

There is a social loss caused by the increased flow of information: culture of quick/free means less incentives for the few reputable new gathering authorities to conduct rigorous investigation and have accountability in writing.

Yet that loss is part and parcel of a major boon to society: public en mass has free/immediate access to information from many sources.

Two conclusions:
(1) It's too simple to call the rise of cheap (i.e., nearly cost-less) media production as an unmitigated societal loss
(2) If it looks like market forces won't protect against this social loss, is there legislative will to compensate, via subsidies, grants, etc. to the news gathering agencies?

I doubt the legislative will. I see all sorts of groups arguing that a social loss doesn't exist; that the internet has "democratized" media. The common netizen view seems to be that those who think they ought to be paid for their content must get with the times, and maybe find a new business model (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all)

As a final point, we can't say this lack of depth is truly a new phenomenon. How long have politicians complained about the [expensive, fact-checking, in-depth] established news organizations' use of "sound bites"?

1 thought on “Obama on new media”

rob
October 8, 2009 at 7:29 am

Mark,

Your post reminded me of a book my father read a while back, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture (Hardcover) http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Amateur-Internet-Killing-Culture/dp/0385520808

Interesting thesis. The key problem is that we can't say the cause of the "noise" is inherently, on the whole, bad for society.

There is a social loss caused by the increased flow of information: culture of quick/free means less incentives for the few reputable new gathering authorities to conduct rigorous investigation and have accountability in writing.

Yet that loss is part and parcel of a major boon to society: public en mass has free/immediate access to information from many sources.

Two conclusions:
(1) It's too simple to call the rise of cheap (i.e., nearly cost-less) media production as an unmitigated societal loss
(2) If it looks like market forces won't protect against this social loss, is there legislative will to compensate, via subsidies, grants, etc. to the news gathering agencies?

I doubt the legislative will. I see all sorts of groups arguing that a social loss doesn't exist; that the internet has "democratized" media. The common netizen view seems to be that those who think they ought to be paid for their content must get with the times, and maybe find a new business model (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all)

As a final point, we can't say this lack of depth is truly a new phenomenon. How long have politicians complained about the [expensive, fact-checking, in-depth] established news organizations' use of "sound bites"?

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