QotW9: STOMP

Enabled by the increasing popularity of web-based easy-publishing technologies, the vibrant rise of participatory publishing – which could be ideally understood as “the act of a citizen, or a group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information (Wikipedia)” in order to “provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (Nguyen, 2006) – in the past five or six years, has such a significant journalistic implication, that many critics have even declared it to be the future of journalism (Nguyen, 2006).

“Personal publishing”, “self- publishing”, “do-it-yourself journalism”, “participatory journalism”, “deliberative journalism”, “alternative media/publishing”, “collaborative publishing”, “open publishing”, “social media”, and “community publishing” are some terms used for the commonly used “citizen journalism.” It was seen that with the weblog community that suddenly sprung up and the extensive use of handheld devices such as digital cameras and mobile phone with built in cameras, online posting and blogs immediately took off (2006).

Every citizen is a reporter. Citizen Journalism refers to a movement of independent- usually individual- news reporters delivering their reports to the Internet. It also refers to many people who, in the midst of a disaster or a tragedy, think to capture the moment in photographs, video, and film. The citizen journalists present during the 2004 Tsunami made history when they posted video clips to the Internet for the world to see what damage a tsunami could inflict. Similarly, photos from rescuers in areas afflicted by Hurricane Katrina helped shape public awareness of the real situation in New Orleans and the Gulf area (2006). Apart from the above-mentioned coverage, Citizen journalists are often also political activists in one way or another, and covering activist events and viewpoints is frequently the purpose of their blog.

It is seen that, “More and more, journalism is going to be owned by the audience,” said Jeff Jarvis, a prolific Blogger who heads Advance Publications’ Advance.net online operation. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for pro-journalists, who will always be there— who need to be there—to gather the facts, ask questions with some measure of discipline and pull together a larger audience. What I’ve learned is that the audience, given half a chance, has a lot to say. The Internet is the first medium owned by the audi­ence, the first medium to give the audience a voice (2004).”


STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile Print) is a Singapore-based online portal by Singapore Press Holdings. Through the three platforms of online, mobile and print, STOMP enables Singaporeans to interact and engage in current affairs of Singapore. After going through STOMP and reading some of the articles in Singapore Seen, Star Blogs, etc, I feel that STOMP is a highly interactive forum, which is an ideal form of citizen journalism for Singapore. It gives the Singaporean public, an opportunity to post comments on how they feel about certain issues and allows them to actively participate in the discussions posted there.

STOMP has a wide variety of subjects covered in an informally written way, which makes it unique, and something that the Singaporeans can relate to. I feel their tagline “You Generate the Content, You Write the Reports, You Take the Photos, You Shoot the Videos,” elaborates on the fact that they are interactive and promote citizens to come forward and spread the information. I feel this is also a good example of a gift economy as people share and spread information without any ulterior motive and keep everyone around them informed.

Even though STOMP is a great platform for citizen journalists, I feel it has some room for improvement. I feel freedom of expression is curtailed and people should be aware of what to say and how much to say, so they do not get into any trouble, politically. I also feel STOMP should be advertised more as it is a great platform to share information and people should take advantage of it. However, since STOMP is by the people and for the people, it is more relevant and expresses exactly what the public feels. Hence, I feel this is seen as a major reason for the success and growth of this type of media.

Reference:

Nguyen, A. (2006). Journalism in the wake of participatory publishing. Australian Journalism Review, 28(1), pp. 47-59.

Gillmor, D. (2004). We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html#chap3

Citizen Journalism. (2007). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Citizen_journalism&diff=118429022&oldid=116903986

STOMP (2006). From: Singapore Press Holdings. Retrieved March 28, 2007 from http://www.stomp.com.sg/

QotW7: Twitter

An online/virtual community encompasses the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of community. As defined by Rheingold’s (1993), virtual communities are "social aggregations that emerge from the [Internet] when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” (Fernback, 2007)

Virtual communities may resemble "real life" communities in the sense that support is available, often in specialized relationships. However, virtual communities also, differ from "real life" communities, in the basis upon which participants perceive their relationships to be intimate. People on the Net have a greater tendency to base their feelings of closeness on the basis of shared interests rather than on the basis of shared social characteristics such as gender and socioeconomic status. So they are probably relatively homogeneous in their interests and attitudes just as they are probably relatively heterogeneous in the participants' age, social class, ethnicity, life cycle stage and other aspects of their social backgrounds. The homogeneous interests of virtual community participants may be fostering relatively high levels of empathetic understanding and mutual support. (1996)

Thus, after discussing the characteristics of a virtual community and the reasons for people to look for friends online, I feel that Twitter qualifies for an upcoming and exceptional, online community. To join Twitter, one simply needs to fill the online form with personal details and information, like interests, hobbies etc. Doing so, I realized it was very basic and easy to follow the instructions needed, to set it up and start conversations by adding my classmates.

People in virtual communities, like Twitter, use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk. (Fernback, 2007)

Twitter, for instance, is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. (Twitter, 2007) One can invite one’s friends to Twitter to keep in touch and for groups. The topics of conversation on such virtual communities can range from the political (feminist groups etc), technical (computer hardware and software groups), to the social (abuse recovery groups, singles groups) and recreational (book reviews, hobby groups, sexual fantasy groups). (1996) The use of anonymity and pseudonymity is common when one makes new friends or adds old ones on Twitter. These nicknames are used purely for privacy reasons.


I feel that, there are several things that make Twitter unique from other virtual communities. For instance, when you send in a mobile text (SMS), Twitter sends it out to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page. Also, if your friends do not have phone alerts turned on, they may check the message on your web page instead. Likewise, you receive your friend’s mobile updates on your phone. Another thing I found interesting, differing from other communities like Friendster was, Twitter’s live updates. “Updating live every two minutes or right now,” is what is mentioned as you open the Twitter page, which is very fascinating and it can result in instant conversations. (Twitter, 2007)

In conclusion, personally, I would just like to add, that Twitter is an excellent online community and I feel that with its unique features, it will surely overtake the other virtual communities in terms of popularity and frequent usage. However, one should be careful and should protect their personal information online as identity deception is growing steadily and caution is better than regret.

Reference:


Fernback, J., & Thompson, B. (n. d.). “Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?” [On-line]. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html


Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1996). “Net Surfers don’t ride alone” [On-line]. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html

Twitter. (2007). [On-line]. Retrieved March 15, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://twitter.com/faq

QotW6: Privacy...Where??!!

‘Privacy is an elusive concept (2006).’ It is the ‘ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of public view, or to control the flow of information about themselves (Privacy, 2007).’ However, this is nearly impossible in today’s day and age with the advancement and progress of technology. ‘In the contemporary age of the internet, we are experiencing something that might be called the 'Omnipticon' in which the many are watching the many, even though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time (Naked Crowd).’

I believe that "information is power" and personal information in whatever form, or of whatever nature, confers power to the owner of that information, (Privacy, 2007) which is why I suppose that privacy should be maintained at all cost unless for something which is a necessity, like i-banking. When it comes to dating services and other match making services, I feel that these services recommend people to divulge their personal details. These services make one feel that, “It's impossible to know someone on the basis of snippets of information; genuine knowledge is something that can only be achieved slowly, over time, behind a shield of privacy, with the handful of people to whom we've chosen to reveal ourselves whole.”(Naked Crowd) Even though this maybe true to an extent, I feel that people should be more cautious about their details, and should probably wait and meet the person a couple of times before revealing intimate details.

In earlier days, people believed in "surveillance." It denoted the "eye-in-the-sky," the concept of watching from above. However, describing the modern times, "sousveillance" has become a concept, which denotes ‘watchful vigilance from underneath’ using gadgets and other technology like the camera phone or other means of observation down to human level, either physically or hierarchically (Sousveillance, 2007).

As we have seen, it is now commonplace on a website to reveal hobbies, favorite foods and music, and pictures of children, in an effort to create an illusion of intimacy. Even the most intimate moments of life, such as a wedding, are now being posted on the web for public consumption (Naked Crowd). Personally, the closest I’ve gone to revealing information about myself, is on the blog for this class, or the other virtual communities I’m a part of, for instance, Orkut and Friendster. For me, topics like name, age and place of residence are the general topics that are covered under the ‘allowed to reveal’ heading. More information than this, according to me, is an encouragement to identity theft or online stalking! We have heard so many horrifying stories about trusting strangers that with time, we have become more careful with what should or should not be disclosed online. For example, even in last week’s deception blog, I mentioned how people can invade others space and privacy without the original person being aware of it or its consequences.


I feel that the risk of being exposed and making ourselves vulnerable to others is simply too high a price to pay for disclosing our personal details. Therefore, in conclusion, I want to say that, ‘privacy does matter – at least sometimes. But it’s like health: When you have it, you don’t notice it. Only when it’s gone do you wish you’d done more to protect it (2006)!’

Reference:

Rosen, Jeffery (2004). "The Naked Crowd" Retrieved March 9, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm

Sullivan, B. (2006). Privacy Lost: Does Anybody Care? Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Privacy. (2007). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy&oldid=113024808

Sousveillance. (2007, February 7). [On-line]. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 7, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Sousveillance&oldid=106389703