Posts Tagged ‘Media’

In Tim Wu’s new review of Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, the Columbia Law professor spends considerable time explaining how the economics of media have historically led to a consolidation that many would see as anathema to the diverse marketplace of ideas that we want. His discussion is well worth a read, but what I thought was most important from the piece was his mention of the many threats to the generative Internet:

“But I must part company with Zittrain over his main and more somber argument: that security crises will form the driving narrative of the Internet’s future. I do not doubt that there will be never-ending security problems and reactions. But the question is not whether cybersecurity will matter, but whether it will matter most. Zittrain’s security saga does not look to me like a full account of the future. He is leaving out many of the external forces that will change the Internet. One is the power of government, which, especially overseas, has begun reshaping the network to fit its obsessions. Another is the combined forces of language and culture, which are driving a once-global Internet into something more like a series of national ones: a Japanese Internet, a Spanish Internet, and so on.

But most important, the real story may lie in the power of industry structure and the long trend toward centralized control in the media industries. Over the last decade, the Internet has become interwoven with media and communications industries collectively worth trillions, with economics all of their own. Unlike Zittrain, I think that industry dynamics, more than a demand for safe appliances, will determine the future of this strange and extraordinary medium.”

A Typology of Threats to the ‘Net

So which threat is the most disconcerting? He points to four:

1. Zittrain‘s security-driven adoption of sterile devices,
2. Wu‘s economic-driven centralization,
3. Zuckerman‘s culture- and language-driven splintered Internet, or
4. Barlow‘s government intervention

Personally, I’m inclined to think a splintered net is the most troublesome because it destroys the forum for international conversation and deliberation we wanted the Internet to become. But what macro trend concerns you?

If you’re interested in media trends, the connection between cognition and the Internet, or are simply a fan of Clay Shirky, then you’ll want to check out Columbia Journalism Review’s recent interview with him. Some key points:

On literacy in an Internet age:

Many, many more people are reading and writing now as part of their daily experience. But, because the reading and writing has come back without bringing Tolstoy along with it, the enormity of the historical loss to the literary landscape caused by television is now becoming manifested to everybody. And I think as people are surveying the Internet, a lot of what they’re doing is just shooting the messenger.

On the effects of abundance:

If you want to point to more proximate harms, it would be very hard to argue, for example, that innovation, inventiveness, new intellectual discoveries had slowed as a result of the Internet, and so people are left with these kind of mealy-mouth cultural critiques, because nostalgia becomes the only bulwark against change. The actual effects of making more information available to more people have been enormously beneficial to society, yet not to the intellectual gatekeepers in the generation in which that change happened.

On information overload:

The reason we think that there’s not an information overload problem in a Barnes and Noble or a library is that we’re actually used to the cataloging system. On the Web, we’re just not used to the filters yet, and so it seems like “Oh, there’s so much more information.” But, in fact, from the 1500s on, that’s been the normal case.

It’s a great interview and well worth your time. And, just found, is part II of the interview.

Years ago, The Economist ran a special report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo which described the country as “the bleeding heart of Africa.” The description has stuck with me, even if it hasn’t resonated with Western media which typically pays very little attention to the enormous African nation which has seen civil war take more than 5 million lives in the past ten years. The scale of this conflict – more deaths than any other conflict since WWII – defies comprehension and the lack of reporting coming out of the DRC doesn’t help. In fact, because this conflict is so intractable, it makes it difficult for the media to pay any attention to it; it would simply take longer than CNN can afford to sufficiently explain.

Which is what made the recent attention paid to the DRC even more interesting. You see, the DRC is home to one of the largest National Parks in the world. Virunga National Park is a 2 million acre area in the eastern half of the country which borders Rwanda and Uganda. The park is home to many of the remaining mountain gorillas. The park also houses a number of rebel factions, including the FDLR which came about when fleeing Hutu militias from Rwanda teamed up with disaffected members of the Congolese army. In response, a Tutsi Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda, formed the CNDP which has fought, with the backing of Rwanda, the FDLR, turning the south of Virunga National Park into a bloody battlefield. Add to the mix a Congolese army which is known to commit atrocities as frequently as the CNDP and FDLR, and you can begin to understand the horror of the situation.

A situation which went mostly unreported for years. Then, last year, someone killed seven of the mountain gorillas in cold blood. It wasn’t poachers because the animals’ bodies were left untouched. The animals and humans had lived for years in cohabitation, so why were they killed? The answer, as you might expect, involved many rebels, black-market economies and the politics of a failed state.

Western media jumped on the case. The striking photographs of the magnificent slain animals and the desperate people of the Congo were splashed across TV screens and newspapers. Suddenly, America cared about the DR Congo.

As much as the death of those seven creatures is tragic, no one could think it is more tragic than the millions of displaced or murdered Congolese over the past ten years. Shouldn’t that have created an uproar? Shouldn’t that lead to lengthy investigative journalism or talk shows centered around the DRC?

Normatively, very few people, I think, would disagree. But the answer as to why it doesn’t happen is complicated, but I think it comes down to a “circle of not-caring”. David Weinberger, in his recent newsletter, took a look at this issue with the help of Ethan Zuckerman who spends much of his time working to correct media miscoverage. David’s question was why are Nigeria and Japan, countries whose populations are roughly equal, so disproportionately represented in Western media. His answer comes down to ninjas.

“One reason we care about Japan more than Nigeria (generally) is that Japan has a cool culture. We’ve heard about that culture because some Westerners wrote bestselling books about ninjas, and then Hollywood made ninja movies. Love them ninjas! Nigeria undoubtedly has something as cool as ninjas. Ok, something almost as cool as ninjas. If we had some blockblusters about the Nigerian equivalent of ninjas, we’d start to be interested Nigeria.”

Generally, the DR Congo suffers from the same problem that Nigeria does – it doesn’t have ninjas. To resonate with an audience, news must be reified. Ninjas make Japan concrete. Gorillas made the Congo concrete. We’ve all seen gorillas in movies, zoos or on the Discovery Channel. We’ve stood in awe of their size and power. The murder of a gorilla is shocking, both because they are huge animals and because it is unique. Uncomfortable as it is, rebel warfare and African strife are hard for the average American to separate or distinguish. Gorillas? Murdered? Well, that’s something everyone can understand.

The story was understandable. As Ethan wrote in his response to the Ninja Gap theory, in order to break the “circle of not-caring,” “tell good stories in a compelling way. And it wouldn’t hurt to throw a ninja or two in there while you’re at it.”

Mark Jenkins, one of my favorite journalists, did that in the most recent issue of National Geographic. His article, “Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas” is part war-journalism, part environmental exposé. But more than anything, it is a compelling story about the often overlooked conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Charlie Rose, too, takes the time to understand the conflict and tells the story (albeit in a slightly less compelling manner).

However, has the creation of compelling stories (thanks to ninjas) helped? Has outside attention on the DRC resulted in progress towards stability and peace? Understandably, helping the Congo would be a lengthy journey involving many peace talks and much healing, but has this happened? It may be too soon, but it doesn’t seem like it. Does this mean the Ninja Gap theory is bunk? I don’t think so – the net effect is still probably positive. More people now know that the DRC is in trouble (and knowing it exists is probably new for some). This is a step in the right direction and hopefully the right people are paying attention now more than before.

[For a skeptical look at the Ninja Gap, check this out.]

Continuing through Paul Starr’s “The Creation of the Media,” his explanation of the growth of the motion picture industry included an in-depth description of the political disputes over the new medium. Facing strong opposition from the self-appointed guardians of morality, the movie makers created internal guidelines of censorship. However, they didn’t always follow them to the level of Puritanical morality which some wanted. In addition, the Supreme Court had created legal precedents which weakened the level of First Amendment protection offered to movies as opposed to newspapers and other print media.

“The differences in outcomes between print and screen reflected the different legal and economic conditions of the two media. Not only did the Constitution and the courts afford stronger protection to the press; the far more fragmented publishing industry had no central organization comparable to the Hays Office that could have carried out a neocorporatist form of censorship. The movies became the target of Catholic pressure in the 1930s because key figures in the movement understood that the industry was vulnerable to pressure and because moral reformers, both Catholic and Protestant, had come to believe that the movies were singularly important as a destructive influence.”

Is today’s media environment more like print or screen? An explosion of online publication and distribution may serve to counteract mainstream media consolidation, but do new media sources really mirror the fragmentation of nineteenth-century news? With the oligopolistic market status of ISPs, no. In fact, Usenet might once have been thought to be fragmented and resilient to censorship, but in recent weeks, it has been severely filtered. The source of control: ISPs who are “voluntarily” censoring Usenet to stop certain child pornographers, just like the Hays Office which was heavy handed and overbearing.

[Other posts in this series here and here.]

I’m currently reading Paul Starr’s “The Creation of the Media” and have run across some great quotes which I thought I’d share.

“In regard to the critical issues of monopoly, free expression, and individual privacy, the advent of the telegraph posed new problems for which nineteenth century American thought and institutions were unprepared. Americans had typically conceived of monopoly as originating in political and legal privilege. They did not have established legal principles and policies for dealing with monopolies such as Western Union that emerged in the market and by the time that framework emerged during the Progressive era, the diffusion of the telephone was already eroding the telegraph’s monopoly position. Similarly, Americans had generally believed that the way to preserve freedom of the press was to protect the press from the federal government; their ideas and experience had not prepared them to deal with a private monopolist and a new medium of communication. As newspapers and other businesses came to depend on the telegraph, state and federal law at first offered them only limited protection against discrimination by Western Union. In 1894, the Supreme Court declared that telegraph companies were “bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination,” but the Court refused to categorize the companies as “common carriers,” like railroads. It was only in 1910, in amendments to the Interstate Commerce Act, that Congress defined telegraph and telephone companies unambiguously as common carriers, required to accept messages from any customer willing and able to pay. American concerns about individual privacy, reflected in the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure, had also focused on infringements by government, not by private corporation. Nineteenth-century law did not extend to the telegraph either the protection of individual privacy or the commitment to popular access to service that postal policy had provided.

In short, while Americans developed the telegraph early and fast, they did so without translating into a new technological context the underlying principles embodied in the First and Fourth Amendments and the postal system. The popular movements that upheld these principles did not have the political power in the late nineteenth century to overcome the institutional interests that early decisions about the telegraph had allowed to develop.”

More than a decade into the Internet age, are we updating our institutions and legal framework to embrace the potential? Or are incumbent interests going to continue to decide the future? More than a century since the telegraph showed that private corporations have the same abilities as government, do we recognize that the intermediaries of the net exert incredible amounts of control over our basic rights, freedoms and actions?

I’m currently reading Paul Starr’s “The Creation of the Media” and have run across some great quotes which I thought I’d share.

“In regard to the critical issues of monopoly, free expression, and individual privacy, the advent of the telegraph posed new problems for which nineteenth century American thought and institutions were unprepared. Americans had typically conceived of monopoly as originating in political and legal privilege. They did not have established legal principles and policies for dealing with monopolies such as Western Union that emerged in the market and by the time that framework emerged during the Progressive era, the diffusion of the telephone was already eroding the telegraph’s monopoly position. Similarly, Americans had generally believed that the way to preserve freedom of the press was to protect the press from the federal government; their ideas and experience had not prepared them to deal with a private monopolist and a new medium of communication. As newspapers and other businesses came to depend on the telegraph, state and federal law at first offered them only limited protection against discrimination by Western Union. In 1894, the Supreme Court declared that telegraph companies were “bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination,” but the Court refused to categorize the companies as “common carriers,” like railroads. It was only in 1910, in amendments to the Interstate Commerce Act, that Congress defined telegraph and telephone companies unambiguously as common carriers, required to accept messages from any customer willing and able to pay. American concerns about individual privacy, reflected in the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure, had also focused on infringements by government, not by private corporation. Nineteenth-century law did not extend to the telegraph either the protection of individual privacy or the commitment to popular access to service that postal policy had provided.

In short, while Americans developed the telegraph early and fast, they did so without translating into a new technological context the underlying principles embodied in the First and Fourth Amendments and the postal system. The popular movements that upheld these principles did not have the political power in the late nineteenth century to overcome the institutional interests that early decisions about the telegraph had allowed to develop.”

More than a decade into the Internet age, are we updating our institutions and legal framework to embrace the potential? Or are incumbent interests going to continue to decide the future? More than a century since the telegraph showed that private corporations have the same abilities as government, do we recognize that the intermediaries of the net exert incredible amounts of control over our basic rights, freedoms and actions?

Two days ago I was with a friend who enjoys watching Fox News. Where I get angry at the inanity and ignorance of the programming, he laughs at the foolish topics discussed. To me, the cycle of misinformation is dangerous and needs to be addressed. Whatever the cause, insidious or innocent, this election has been marred by numerous rumours, particularly concerning Barack Obama.

As these memes gain traction online, sensationalist television news gives both creedence and additional adherents to the rumors. In turn, the speculation survives. To cloud important political decisions with innuedo, rumor and outright lies is dangerous and needs to be fought.

What, then, are the solutions? Barack Obama’s campaign thinks the answer consists of presenting verifiable truth. Their site, Fight the Smears, disproves many of the more popular myths including Obama’s “secret Muslim childhood.” It also allows supporters to email their contacts with the truth and claims to identify three political operatives who are to blame. In effect, it is a social Snopes for the campaign.

This is imperfect at best. My gut tells me that those who believe the emails they receive about Obama’s lack of patriotism will not use or trust Obama’s site. Perhaps third-party sites like Snopes could serve to convince others of their impartial truths, but it still lacks the saliency of political smears which are more likely to be forwarded than the bland truths. A real solution would have to slightly raise the cost of forwarding misinformation and lower the cost of checking the truth. Fight the Smears serves to lower the cost of fact-checking. A Firefox plugin which contextually searched for misinformation on a page could do similarly. How could we raise the costs of spreading disinformation? Some sort of karma system could rank sites but would it be biased or gamed?

What do you think would be the best way to fight disinformation?

Update: Louis Gray has noticed a similar trend populating Twitter. Some insightful thoughts in the post and comments.