Week 10 Discussion

1. According to the group of codes of ethics discussed by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, the tenet that “journalism should be honest, fair, and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information,” is upheld the most because it defines the objective of the field of journalism itself. This is exemplified in any traditional news source in which news is delivered in an objective and neutral manner.

On the other hand, the tenet that describes journalists should “make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent.” This is more difficult to uphold in professional journalism because as we see in today’s news reporting, headlines are relied on to capture attention and today this depends on ones the sometimes mislead or skew the context of a story in order to get people to read news.

As the reading suggests, professional neutrality is one of the six moral values that speak to the core professional value of journalism. However, this is violated by the growing trend of eye-catching headlines trying to battle other news sources for readers’ attention. This is especially prevalent on Internet sources, whose captions demand an easy click to suck readers into the content of their articles.

 

2. The line between truth-bending narratives and responsibility to ethics is blurred because of sensationalism that comes with news these days. As Griner point out in his article, sports journalism is a specific field that is shaken by this approach to reporting that favors stories that sell rather than tell. Articles are produced with the intention to attract attention through narratives, which is bending the way we accept and understand information. As a result, people want to buy into narratives that spark interest “turning the fiction into a widely accepted reality.”

The impact of skewed stories can be illustrated in the realm of politics as well since the line between entertainment and news reporting is similarly being blurred. In the case of news entertainment, shows like Saturday Night Live frame stories with embedded comedy in order to attract the attention of viewers to their stories. For example, when Tina Fey portrayed Sarah Palin during a skit where she delivered the famous line, “I can see Russia from my house,” people genuinely believed that Palin had said this statement when in reality it was merely Fey’s representation of Palin.

This describes how sensationalizing stories can lead to repercussions on the masses that are exposed to such information. Moreover, with the fast-moving pace of the Internet and the potential for news to go viral, it is easy for truth bending narratives rather than factual information to makes its way to anyone on the World Wide Web. So, I believe that this kind of journalism is damaging to the reputation of journalism and defies the integrity of it, which is to deliver truthful and objective news to the public. 

Consuming/Producing Information: Profiting from Social Media

1. The relationship between willing participation and commercial exploitation as described in Andrejevic’s article is one that can be described as almost one in the same. First of all the article describes a new value placed on social networks as an important marketing tool. What is more is that those with a larger social network are now more desirable candidates to employers. As described in the article, “[…] the detail of employees’ social lives along with their observations and opinions they share with one another are treated as free resource.” This can definitely be viewed as commercial exploitation because employees are dipping in to the personal (online) lives of employees for recruiting, marketing, and sales. On the other hand, willing participation is voluntary and these employees choose to take action on marketing information that they found on social networking sites like Facebook. But as the saying goes, nothing is for free and many times the “willingness” put forth by employees to tap into this information is driven by an incentive from employers as demonstrated in the article. In this case, Appirio encouraged their employees to use their social networks as market research to inquire information to “contribute to their companies bottom line.” So, with this employees might feel as though their back is against the wall and feel inclined to exploit their friends online in order to be in the running for a potential bonus. So really how much of this is really willing participation? The relationship between the two concepts is separated by a very thin line as one can gather from the article since “an extended social network might come to function not just as a form of online social capital, but also online economic capital […].”

2. In Lanier’s article regarding “fixing the digital economy” the role of risk is apparent in the distribution and consumption of information. This risk stems from the rise of the Internet and the presence of technology overtaking people in the workplace, especially those jobs involving communication and expression since “information is now held to be free.” Although we are able to access information on the Internet or free, this information did not just appear out of thin air, but came from the minds of real people who expect to be compensated for contributing knowledge to be used by others. As Lanier puts it, “[t]he rise of inequality isn’t because of people not being needed, […] it’s because of an illusion that they aren’t even there.”

In Kendzior’s “internship” article the ones who are at risk are recent college graduates, those in pursuit of a job and ultimately, those outside of the upper class. This risk comes from the fact that companies set up internships in order for people to “gain skills” needed to be a valuable player in a company. However, these internships are unpaid and therefore only those of the upper class who can afford to work for free will be more willing to take on unpaid internships leaving the middle class without opportunity to build experience.

The relationship between digital economy, institutions and prestige reinforces class status because more opportunities at elite companies are available to the upper class. When it comes to a prestige economy, Kendzior explains that “success has nothing to do with employability [and] achievements are irrelevant in a system that rewards money over merit, brand over skills.”

Digital Information: Promises and Threats

Pavlik and McIntosh illustrate in their reading a number of consequences that come with the movement toward “convergence” and its factors that can impact both society and culture on different scales. To begin, technological convergence makes the activities that were once performed as separate tasks “now easier and folded into the media experience.” What once required us to take the time to execute tedious tasks is now available to us in one device. Of course, this comes with limitations, which Pavlik and McIntosh emphasize is the experience of such tasks such as purchasing, buying and reading a book on a Kindle versus a printed book. The experience attached to simple activities like flipping through the pages of a printed book is not the same as one when reading on a device.

This lends to another limitation, which Pavlik and McIntosh explains comes with economic convergence, which is better described as consolidation. When companies consolidate, a merge between Internet and telecommunications companies take place and in the process they continue to absorb other companies. The limitation is clearly in the fact that this eliminates competition and can lead to the formation of monopolies. Moreover, this can impact the way we understand and receive messages from the media if only large conglomerates were controlling the content.  Overall, convergence limits the way we understand information that we are presented with especially when mergers involve Internet and digital platforms where the realm of discussion is vast and endless.

Mass communication and interpersonal forms of communication has indeed blurred especially since the traditional ways of communicating are being challenged by new methods. When it comes to this blurred line that exists between the two terms, there is an emphasis on the idea that interpersonal communication usually occurs one-to-one and welcomes feedback from each party. When this concept gets carried over to a digital setting the line gets blurred into the idea of mass communication that refers to discourse between a large number of people. Pavlik and McIntosh use the example of a chat room to illustrate this line that is becoming increasingly indistinguishable since a chat room get involve thousands of participants.

In Jurgenson’s reading he makes interesting points that supports the idea that digital dualism is a fallacy. It can be clearly seen in our culture today that the digital and physical world are in a way meshing through the limitations presented in the Pavlik and McIntosh reading. The best example has to do with technological convergence mentioned above and the fact that we are able to communicate in various ways through one device. However, this device does not allow for face-to-face communication in the traditional sense, which relies on body language and social cues that can only be exchanged in a physical and traditional manner.

With this said, the relationship between a convergence culture and an augmented reality is the fact that people are starting to live in both in a way that their perception of actual reality becomes skewed. Since the Internet is like world of its own with it is easy to get lost in this augmented reality. With the online world being closely tied to the physical world since there is a heavy emphasis on communication that can expand throughout the world, it is easy to see where lines start to cross between augmented reality and convergence culture. However, I find it hard to believe that we will live in a world that will be completely dominated by the digital media.