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Disruption and Crowdsourcing in New Media

The disruptive powers of new technologies are rarely acknowledged by the persons in the trade, more often than not and unfortunately they are the last persons on the horizon who realize the change has happened.



Since these technologies are having massive impact on media it is imperative that first ripples and waves are felt in traditional media and its archaic business models. The powerful advantages that made new media a very powerful and some what unstoppable tide is the ability to enable millions of people to contribute on never-ending range of subjects without any limitation of physical borders and publish these views, opinions, content at almost absolutely no cost. In other words, media will become the playground for these disruptive to play out. People either ride the wave or get hit by them.



Photography



Cameras were a luxury a decade ago, today everybody has several of them. The Photographers, in good old times, carved out a niche for themselves because they were able to master the esoteric art light and shades; the dark room and its mysterious knowledge gave them halo of enlightened platform and no competition. Hence the institutions like publications and media needed them to give them the 'content' and therefore relied heavily on them to get it for them. The image that comes up is that of Peter Parker who has the sole access to something that everybody wants to see, Spiderman. The only difference in the current technology is that there are so many people at the scene of event that it is difficult, if not impossible to maintain any exclusivity of the event.



For instance, when the airplane crash landed on the Hudson River, the first frames came out not from seasoned photographers by but by the bystanders and other people who just happened to be there with some form of camera – and instantly donned the hat of amateur photographer.



Some level of photography will still remain an art but its use in general and mass media consumption is pretty much dead. It will continue and flourish as art because even though pretty much every literate knows English, not everybody writes or can write a sonnet. Even though every body would have cameras not many will have dedication and time to pursue it as full time creative pursuit.



Journalism



If you were to look at 1970's and 1980's movies or even movies into 90's, you will see how journalists were regarded highly for being in right place at the right time. It was the scoop that mattered, and more unexpected and eventful the scoop more the regard for the journalist.



What internet enabled is that, the lead time between the 'scoop' exclusiveness and mass knowledge is very short. Actually, just a tweet away.



This has put pressure on the journalists actually working on scoops and it is effectively ruled out, and even if somebody comes up with one it would be replicated so soon across the internet that the scoop was never a scoop at all. In past scoop 'sold' and meant 'profits', today it means 'survival'.



The journalism is switching more from "Breaking News" to more analysis and opinions; street reporters would be people who just happen to be there and have an interest in publishing their thoughts, reporters would perhaps metamorphose into editors and managers of information chaos.



Columnists



The news papers today are filled with columnists and every time I look at them, I feel like I am looking at endangered species. The numerous Opinion platforms that exist today whether it is a Wiki, blog, forums, comments, platforms or group are enough to lay them rest sometime in future.



The only reason, I think they will exist for some more time is because the advertisement or its 'assumed certified goodness' will give them a leader role and mileage in opinion-market but as more and more people start their contributions to their media, the authority held by present publishers will cease to exist. The newspapers, if at all they are offline, will be happy to be a platform for these opinions than air opinions of just a select few. The newspapers where they are offline now will have more liberty in choosing the articles they would like to publish than rely on handful of writers.



Columnist is dead, long live the columnist.





Other related posts:



Insights into Internet exponents



A thought on future of transportation



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