快猫短视频

WHEN the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi river in Minneapolis collapsed last August, a media phenomenon ensued 鈥� but it went well beyond the expected gaggle of newspaper, radio and TV reporters. Scores of non-journalists also joined in, taking photos and videos to share with the world.

Their raced around the web and made their way into newspapers and onto TV screens. As with so many other newsworthy events of recent years, they became part of the record of a major world news event and demonstrated, once again, how technology is transforming the media.

The phenomenon goes by many names but the one I prefer is 鈥渃itizen media鈥�. People who used to consume media now create it, publish it and comment on it. More than 100 million people have started a blog; millions more publish video and pictures on the web, write and edit Wikipedia entries, create mashups, post comments on mainstream media sites, and so on. The change is profound.

鈥�54 per cent of US adults and teens edit their music, video or photos鈥�

Driving the change is the continuing, rapid development of technology (see 鈥淭he tools of citizen journalism鈥�). As digital gear becomes more powerful, ubiquitous and affordable, the tools of media creation are increasingly in everyone鈥檚 hands. Equipment that a generation ago required breathtaking investment now costs a relative pittance, while the tools of publishing, such as blogs and video sharing, are nearly free.

The media-technology collision is also changing the way we consume media. Traditional media companies think in terms of top-down distribution: create something, then pump it out to the world via constrained channels such as TV stations. Citizen media is profoundly different. We create something, then offer it up to a global audience for people to come and get as they wish.

鈥�69 per cent of US adults and teens consume citizen media content鈥�

Consumers are becoming creators. Creators are becoming collaborators. Where will this take us? We don鈥檛 know yet, but the outlines are starting to take shape.

The area where the transformation is being felt most keenly is journalism, as the 鈥渞ead-write web鈥� 鈥� the ability of anyone to publish material almost as easily as read it 鈥� races ahead. Blogging, commenting and so on are shifting the ground for the three major constituencies of journalism.

For professional journalists there are serious challenges, not least a crumbling business model, but also opportunities to create better journalism. Most important, the 鈥渓ecture鈥� mode is giving way to something more valuable: a conversation which all involved learn from.

For the newsmakers 鈥� the people and institutions journalists report on 鈥� the shift is just as disruptive. Newsmakers used to interact with their audiences via journalists but now increasingly find conversations happening around them, often with journalists out of the loop. Smart newsmakers are taking up the tools of citizen media and using them to better communicate with their constituencies, of which professional journalists are only one. The page used by a band to stay in touch with its fans is a good example.

The most important constituency of journalism is what I like to call the former audience 鈥� the people who once passively consumed media but can now actively participate in its creation. They can now talk back to the professionals 鈥� media criticism has become one of the best elements of blogging 鈥� and help media organisations report stories. Ordinary people have made huge contributions to the coverage of world events such as the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. Citizens can even compete directly with mainstream media, and there is a real possibility that they will kill parts of it off.

The passion people have for creating media and the low cost of doing it mean that great new ideas are coming to life outside the traditional media. I have been involved with a few, including , a collaboration between professionals and amateurs that is working to use the 鈥渨isdom of crowds鈥� to report big topics.

New York University鈥檚 , who has done some of the deepest thinking about the implications of the transformation, compares the wave of creativity to the open-source software movement. The overwhelming majority of open-source projects are failures, but each one costs very little and they set the stage for a few notable successes. 鈥淭he low cost of failure means that someone with a new idea doesn鈥檛 have to convince anyone else to let them try it,鈥� Shirky writes.

It also means that research into new forms of media 鈥� something the news industry should have done years ago but, fat and complacent, failed to 鈥� is now happening. Some will take place inside media companies, but most will not. It will happen in garages and at kitchen tables.

The new media age, however, brings many challenges. Perhaps the biggest is to sort through and evaluate the flood of information that is now available to us every minute of every day. Really Simple Syndication (RSS, see left) helps but it鈥檚 not nearly enough to sort the good from the bad, the useful from the trivial and, crucially, the trustworthy from the phoney. Indeed, it is here that critics of citizen media make their best case, pointing out that so much of what鈥檚 out there cannot be trusted.

Help is coming, slowly. News aggregators such as and have added something useful to the mix: popularity. They foster communities of users who vote stories up and down, and in the process help identify what鈥檚 important, interesting or merely quirky in current events.

Popularity alone is not remotely sufficient to make sense of the larger picture, however. We need to add something else to the evaluation process: reputation. That, of course, is easier said than done because reputation is a wide and multilayered concept, but the hope is that a mixture of human and machine intelligence will help us sort through the cacophony.

One important step will be to update traditional notions of media literacy. Media consumers will need to deploy heightened scepticism, but not be equally sceptical of everything. They will also need to understand media techniques, including how media are used to persuade and manipulate.

Meanwhile, citizens who become creators will need to learn some journalistic principles such as thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and independence. All journalists, professional and 鈥渁mateur鈥�, will need to appreciate a new principle of transparency, revealing biases, methods and other relevant facts to give readers a lens through which to refract their output. Audiences, voting with their mouse clicks, will be the best enforcers.

For all its promise, citizen media鈥檚 most significant impact to date is on the mainstream media鈥檚 business model 鈥� and the news is not good. Advertising, the principal means of support for newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, is being carved away by companies that serve advertisers better and at a lower cost. Ebay, for example, has siphoned off the classified ads that newspapers once relied on. The business model could crumble sufficiently to kill off traditional news organisations, which is worrying because valuable genres of journalism 鈥� notably the investigative work that requires deep pockets and time 鈥� will suffer.

鈥�32 per cent of consumers see themselves as a broadcaster鈥�

Still, the low cost of experimentation is leading to myriad tests of business models, and not every journalistic endeavour has to be profit-driven. The vast majority of projects are funded by the founder and run almost solely as labours of love. Some of the best new journalism comes from not-for-profit organisations 鈥� one dedicated to investigative journalism, , is launching soon.

The transition we are undergoing will be, at best, messy. But in the end, if we get this right, we will have a more diverse and robust media ecosystem, where we all play a role in a global conversation.

鈥�

Read more in our special issue on Home Entertainment:

The future of television is online

Next generation video games will be mental

Web 3.0: Playing it safe with our data