Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press.
Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole “sphere of consensus.” Call the middle region “sphere of legitimate debate,” and the outer region “sphere of deviance.”
[…]
In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.
In the past there was nowhere for this kind of sentiment to go. Now it collects, solidifies and expresses itself online. Bloggers tap into it to gain a following and serve demand. Journalists call this the “echo chamber,” which is their way of downgrading it as a reliable source. But what’s really happening is that the authority of the press to assume consensus, define deviance and set the terms for legitimate debate is weaker when people can connect horizontally around and about the news.
h/t
A commentor notes – “Journalists “draw a circle” and label it a sphere. How fitting somehow.”
Flashback to the 2007 SDA reader occupation survey (of the first 630+ respondants)
engineers: 61
computer programmers/consultants/systems analysts: 47
management: 46
military: 36
educators: 31
scientists: 28
small business: 28
technicians/technologists: 27
accountants/bookkeepers/economists/taxation/insurance: 24
construction/electricians/plumbers/carpenters/contractors: 23
financiers/brokers/bankers: 21
farmer/rancher/cowboy/agriculture/veterinary: 19
stay-at-home parents: 18
consultants: 18
sales: 16
pilots/air traffic control: 15
lawyers/legal assistants/advocates: 14
doctors/nurses/healthcare: 14
pastors/priests/missionaries/social workers/psychologists/counselors: 13
civil servants: 12
artists/musicians/photographers: 12
manufacturing/machinists: 10
writers/journalists/reporters: 10
police/corrections/security/investigation: 8
students: 8
truckers/railroad workers: 8
statisticians/actuaries/data analysts/librarians: 8
architects/draftsmen/urban planners: 8
radio/television/telecom: 7
mechanics/heavy equipment operators: 6
oil workers: 6
real estate: 4
forestry: 3
purchasing/logistics/warehousing: 3
secretary/administrative assistant:3
quality assurance: 2
map maker/surveyor: 2
human resources: 2
other: 12
The problems besetting journalism today aren’t just the consequence of the liberal left’s lopsided representation within their ranks – it’s that there seems to be a fundamental inability to understand that on any given topic, someone is likely to get something wrong.
The internet didn’t just connect politically like-minded people whose views are under-served. It connected the highly trained and knowledgeable across geographic regions and fields of expertise, enabling them to compare notes and realize “it’s not just us”. That by and large, journalism is perhaps the only profession where the utterly unqualified are given the privilege of writing to a mass audience on topics that they really not ought to.
At one time, the error in basic chemistry or math might only be spotted by a few trained individuals in the field. A messed up report on the Canadian Wheat Board would raise the ire of ag producers but not much more. Misidentifying a weapons system would pass unnoticed by all but the military.
Today the chemists, ag producers and military talk to each other, and the conclusion they’re coming to is that an uncomfortably large percentage of journalists are not merely tainted by political assumptions – they’re lazy, stupid, or both.
The phenomenon is so widespread that a phrase has been coined to mock it – “Google is your friend.”
They’re asking themselves, “Why should we buy your papers? Why should I trust your network”? If you can’t get these basic facts right, if you can’t bother to balance your staff politically, of what possible value is your product to me? To anyone?
The crumbling authority of media is a problem that cannot be solved within the current top-down framework, because the framework itself is the problem. It’s the wrong model for the times.
The environment has been altered forever, and what the industry is faced with isn’t reorganization – it’s evolution. Change or die. Or change, and die anyway.
I have my money on both.
Update. I no sooner finished writing this when reader Michael S. sent along this case in point, courtesy the Associated Press.
Change -and- die. Faster with the dying part, please.
Shaken also pierces to the core of the carbuncle that is the MSM. The quality is low. So low that if the news business were the food business we’d all be dead of salmonella. Or growing our own in the back yard.
Which is really what this is all about. Growing your own.
Sorry – late to the thread – in my opinion you can compare MSM to a game of “telephone” – where the person saying something has his/her information passed down the line through reporters, editors, etc etc – whereas with the blogosphere experts can speak directly to their audience.
This is possibly the best post, and series of follow up comments I have ever seen.
Thank you Kate for the succinct, and bang-on post regarding the MSM
There have been many objective and knowledgeable suppliments to the original post.
I agree, this should be spread around, this is great.
Sorry to rain on your parade…
but…
In my humble opinion, the internet will only cut in half ( at best ) the efficiency of the liberal brainwashing machine.
when you look at what is posted at sites like Huffington Post and Daily Kos, you have to conclude that if the main stream media as we know it dies, it will have a second life on the internet trough sites such as those two.
One half of internet sites/blogs will be doing what Small Dead Animals, Gateway Pundit and many other conservative sites have been doing; providing the facts the liberal MSM is concealing, providing full context, informing instead of brainwashing and generally exposing the left for what it is etc…
but the other half will be working hard to make sure liberal propaganda/brainwashing will go on and on and on…
Friend of USA,
Sorry I don’t agree, it’s been my experience that lefty bloggers are not as good with the info-flow as us.
Further, the point Kate was making was that regardless of where the information starts, it’ll be reviewed, chopped up, googled, etc., by anyone who finds it.
The ability to ‘see for yourself’, has removed this power from a small ideologically driven MSM.
If the NYT or the Globe & Mail go under this year, it really dosn’t matter.
We can still watch the world through our screens, and make our own opinions.
KOS & Huffy-toon are just the other side of the same picture, correction: the bottom of our picture
Warwick….I don’t think Zim came out with a 500 Billion banknote. I know they came out with 500 million and I heard that after the issuance of the 100 Billion notes, the German company that was printing them said they would not print any more. Would be interested, however, if they really did come out with a 500 Billion note. Not that it matters now because they are starting all over again…..those Marxists…they are economic geniuses, aren’t they? Makes you really want clowns like Layton and his Marxist buddy, Duceppe, in charge of the Canadian economy.
You mean to tell me that all this time I was living in Winnipeg I was actually in Saskatchewan?
Holy crap…
All those documents I certified that were true and correct?
Eeeeeeeeep!
Thanks AP. I gotta fire up the shredder.
Very good points. Journalists have a responsibility to fact check (usually), but as consumers we also have a responsibility. We should take any particular source of inforation with a degree of skepticism, until we can confirm it elsewhere. It doesn’t mean paranoid, just broad in how we consume information.
Luckily blogs can get through a lot of the MSM and to the core of the arguements.
Minor correction to my comment above:
should be
I suppose as many of you, I am multitasking as I read this blog, and am therefore often guilty of pressing the Post button before I have done a completely thorough job of previewing my post.
The irony of posting a comment with lower quality because of typos or brain f*rts is not lost on yours truly.
Boiling the ocean (as much as Al Gore will dare allow me), prior to the blogosphere, we were told what to think, with little ability to resist. The blogosphere has enabled more and more to think for themselves, because they have instant and simple access to supporting and contrary information.
“Journalists” have one thing that is difficult to displace: relationships. As the fame value proposition of the MSM is eroded, by losing eyeballs and bums, the value of these relationships will erode as well.
Witness Harper’s management of the PPG. He doesn’t need them as much as they think he needs them. The value propositions of the MSM are evaporating, and their response is to try more of the same only harder (US election, Gaza…), rather than consider deeply what is really going on, and reacting accordingly: with a new, viable value proposition to its suppliers and consumers.
“You wouldn’t depend on a surgeon for advice on your car; your grocer for an explaination of sunspots; or the day-care facilitator for information about Iranian nuclear weapons development.”
OR POLITICIANS
I doubt that there’s a journalist in the world who undertook that field with the intention of being lazy, as well, I doubt that there is any skewing of IQs in the profession. Instead they’re like new politicians who enter the legislatures and parliament, all starry-eyed, in anticipation of making things better; their good intentions only to be sucked up into the old establishment vortex. So I understand poster Bobbi’s chagrin at people dumping on journalists per se.
While I agree that the news media often (always) gets things wrong, I can’t believe that this is predominantly caused by individual laziness and stupidity. More importantly, getting things wrong is a lesser evil than purposeful bias. Inaccuracy only makes the news medium useless, bias makes it dangerous.
Thankfully, whatever one judges to be wrong with the MSM, the internet certainly helps to ameliorate the problem. This process unfortunately is happening too slowly. Although we’re seeing frequent occurrences of print media succumbing, there is little evidence that I’ve seen of any effect on TV news. I believe that someone posted earlier that 70% of the news consumers still get their daily propaganda from TV news, as opposed to print or internet.
In Canada, with little hope of a FOX News equivalent, this does not augur well for clarity in a comfortable timeframe (I read the SDA age survey). Sorry to be such a downer in such a long post.
so I read the LIST of participants, quite impressive I must say. As a handiman type of guy should I feel inferior, nope, quite the opposite.
I’m well informed in many areas, and more so every day, thanks to people like KATE and ALL the posters here, even those I may disagree with!!
Cheer up, glasnost. The trend is more important than the moment. TV, in its existing form, will not be the news media of choice in the future. Instant, interactive and entertaining are the key words. Conservatives must learn to connect with the younger generation. Today’s kids will soon rebel against the boomer Establishment. Humor and a more rational perspective on events may be the natural reaction to progressive outrage overload ( or POO, for short).
Thanks for the ammunition, Kate. Our local rag had a feature piece titled “It’s Not The Media, It’s The Content’ just last week.
They started off right with the title, then quickly digressed into newspaper technologies, the internet and ‘citizen journalists’as being the root cause(s) of their troubles.
I’m sure you won’t mind, but I cut and pasted your piece (attributed) and sent it to the Managing Editor.
I’ve taken him to task on other occasions regarding their lack of balance. Needless to say, they truely and honestly just don’t get it (yet).
Incidentally, I included the CBC Majeeda Harb bit as a classic example of ‘Google is your friend’ and the apparent (or deliberate) incompetence of jouralists.
We night be in for a lot of bad winters if the Sun is any indicater.
Not soon enough can the demise of this disgusting CBC and CTV be! They have to be the worst in Canada, although Kevin NEwman is working his tail off to become the new liar king of Canada. Moving Peter Pansbridge and old Count Loyd over has been a big job for Kevin. Tell the truth or get the hell off the air, think of the children, you are wasting valuable resources in your zeal to indoctrinate the masses to your secular utopia you MSM MORONS.
My educational institute of employment has a journalism program – we take 18 year old kids and try to turn them into reporters/journalists, but what do they know about anything else? They don’t need to take history, political science, economics, etc – they focus on “writing.” The good ones learn they need to work their butts off, but many are slackers and don’t want to do any more work than they have to (no different than students in my own program).
One of the things they learn is that the editors rule, and that you give the editor what the editor wants, or you end up selling classified ads. I have been interviewed several times over the years by student reporters who have shared their work with me (often in the hope of feedback and better understanding of a topic) only to see a well written and researched article butchered by the editor because it was too long to fit the space available (because the add count was up that week and the story needed to become shorter).
Crap, they’ve moved Winnipeg !
Why wasn’t I sent the memo?
It’s not just that we have people from a wide range of professional fields here, but at least half a dozen specialties in the survey are represented by the lovely and multi-talented Kate.
Not to worry oatmealeatincanuck and Alienated, they changed the story when they found out they screwed up.
Suprising no one, they have not actually admitted that they screwed up.
What was Kate’s point with this post? Oh yeah.
Shaken;
Nicely said. Who knew your where a Philosopher? Not being sarcastic either.
I have just one point that you may have missed. Its the converse of fame.
That would be de-famation. How many have fallen like a Gary Hart for stupidity at his insolence towards the press if not decency. Hearst was well known to break men with glee he hated. How many people have the MSM vilified unjustly for other purposes, Political or commercial or out of malice?
Think of Hollywood & how since its beginning they have relied on a few “Gossips: to make or break folks.
Its about power as usual.
Good post Kate!
It brings me joy to see ever more people coming around to the realization that the mass media are deliberately feeding the public crap.
They know they are doing it and they don’t care for any number of reasons.
Whether incompetence, laziness, ignorance, venality, deliberate and willful attempts to influence to carry an agenda to bail for their political pets or to justify their own existence in any given case, it does not matter.
The MSMers have been promoting themselves as honest and having integrity. They continue to argue that they are better and better equipped to judge and define what is relevant and in what context.
They are in fact quite the opposite.
The MSMers have earned every bit of scorn and derision that comes their way.
Heap it on folks and keep pounding down on them.
I knew those NDPers were up to something. Trying to regain power by moving Winterpeg to Saskabush. Will they have no shame.
My thoughts on the media: “I may not be a smart man” but “Stupid media is as stupid media does”.
The Ken Whyte win is being freeped by Kate according to threaders but with defenders and NP has her Garth Turner memememem retirement letter upsetting others. All in all a good day don’t you think?
The advent of the Internet and the blogsphere was a communication tool that Disco Dictator Trudeau didn’t see coming. Fancy pants Trudeau and his thought police CHRCs along with his media police CRTC never imagined that Canadians would have a way to communicate with each other beyond the more traditional sources available. One of the results of this new communication tool is that the MSM no longer preaches it’s Liberal ideology and manufactured consent in a vacuum. The internet and the blogsphere gives people a voice that would otherwise not be available to them, a little bit of freedom goes a long way. The MSM now preaches mainly to the converted and the ignorant, their sphere of influence in politics, and society in general is shrinking. I greatly appreciate the freedom to hear and read the thoughts of other posters and know that I’m not alone in the wilderness. Right on Kate, great posts Joe Molnar and Shaken, it’s nice to not be marginalized.
Remember that if it’s in an American paper the temperature will usually be given in Fahrenheit and not Celsius.
-35 Fahrenheit is -37.222… Celsius. Still pretty damn cold no matter how you look at it.
Geeezzzz.I knew you peeps in Saskabush were starting to prosper now that you’ve gotten rid of the Dippers….but so much,so fast,you now need TWO provincial capitals?
“Kate, I nominate this for your best post ever.”
I agree!! My all time favorite thread except for last weeks Israel thread.
Yes, lawnguy, that’s why we keep coming back here.
Haha, I appreciate being included in the rancher/farmer/cowboy-related occupations. It is indeed a compliment.