Being "Mediactive"

Dan Gillmor’s Mediactive encourages us to be better informed and more proactive in our use of social and digital media. He gives a general tutorial on how to be skeptical of what we read online and how to seek out reliable and accurate information. He also offers ways to be more savvy Internet media users, not just as consumers, but creators.

Gillmor mentioned the “echo-chamber” effect –as he puts it, our tendency to seek out information that we’re likely to agree with. Gillmor says it’s easier now than ever before to seek out and pay attention to sources of information that offer new perspectives and challenge our current assumptions. But I think it’s far more complicated than that. As we discussed last week, it’s easier now than ever for platforms like Facebook to package and sell information about our media consumption habits to marketers and advertisers whose job it is to only present us with information they believe we want to see, not necessarily information that’s going to help us make well-informed decisions. This was largely the topic of the journal article I brought last week. That and other privacy issues, and our right to “private inquiry” if there is such a thing on the Internet. Read more here.

I’m skeptical about the “slow news” idea. As Gillmor mentions, Twitter is the antithesis of slow news. And I don’t really believe we’re going backward. As rapid fire as information spreads now through Twitter and other online outlets, the technology will only get more innovative, people will find ways to communicate faster. It’s ever changing, and as Gillmor says, we can almost assuredly count on the fact that the media we know tomorrow will be even more diverse than it is today.

Gillmor’s optimistic view makes me mostly hopeful, though I don’t know that just the nature of the Internet necessarily fixes the problems he cites with traditional media occasionally getting things wrong and making errors of omission. And while I know it’s more critical now than ever before to hone our digital media skills, I also know my parents, veterans of the newspaper industry would beg to differ with Gillmor’s assertion that Internet media entrepreneurs will need to “save journalism.”

Gillmor encourages participation as the start of “genuine literacy.” He says we have to create, contribute and collaborate in the Digital Age. As we find our place in the digital world as not just consumers, but “potential creators,” he says we become collaborate because the new tools of creation available are inherently collaborative. I agree that we can no longer afford to just be passive consumers, and that being an active media user now means not just being a hands-on consumer, but creator as well, but people have to want to collaborate and contribute. While people commit journalistic acts online every day, should we really expect that they’ll all adhere to the principles Gillmor sets forth for citizen journalists to follow?

As I mentioned last week, I’d like to believe that for a group of mass communication graduate students, we can probably research more thoroughly the news we’re consuming and filter better. Or at least we have more of a desire to. I still believe the average person doesn’t or won’t spend the time to research beyond what immediately presented to them. Whether it’s laziness or just a lack of time, I don’t believe most people would actively put the tools and suggestions Gillmor offers to good use. Does the average person demand information that’s truly reliable and trustworthy? Most people just take what they read at face value or are content with the first search result after they type something in Google. But he urges us to go outside our comfort zones, to seek out information from other educated, well-informed people who may see things differently. I think it’s a tall task Gillmor asks us all to undertake, but I know I’m certainly up to the challenge.