This week’s readings focused primarily on digital media’s implications in terms of democracy and political engagement, and how it’s changing, and what it means going forward. Several of the articles also discussed the ever-increasing role of citizen journalism.

I particularly enjoyed the article that examined Facebook’s role in the 2008 presidential election. The study detailed the intensity of engagement and breadth of participation in Facebook postings on the presidential candidates’ Facebook walls that year. I’m doing a similar study for our final paper in this course, but analyzing the candidates’ use and management of social media in 2008 and today. Herbert Gans (2010) proposed that news and blogging websites helped contribute to the large number of young people who voted in the 2008 presidential election. Social networking sites are helping young people become politically engaged more than ever before, and the ways that people are spreading political information is continuing to develop and change every day.

There was a significant theme that linked several of the articles. The authors all believe that declining advertising revenue and failing traditional media organizations has fueled the growth of citizen journalism sites. Gans said, “The arrival of new and competing communication technologies, the decline of the news audience and of advertising revenue, and the resulting closure of several newspapers” is worrying traditional journalists about the future of news (p.10). He details what he a vicious cycle through which traditional outlets provide news, but lose audience and income, while news websites that are social or citizen driven are gaining larger audiences, but still not pulling in significant advertising income. Likewise, Lacy et. al. (2010) state that while readers seem to be making “the slow transition to digital newspapers, advertising lineage is not” (p.34). These changes have set the stage for others to provide community coverage in places where newspaper coverage may be lacking.

As Gans says, the Web is becoming the “main home for the consumption of news” (p.11). I agree with Gans’ assessment. Even though the newspaper business has suffered, Lacy, et. al. (2010), found that citizen news and citizen blog sites can complement newspaper websites, but are not a sufficient substitute for the news and information offered by traditional news sites.

There are reasons why citizen-based and social-oriented sites can’t meet the needs of the traditional news consumer. Those who work for newspaper-based sites and news-oriented sites are journalists who are trained to report on news events. They are experienced at detailing facts in a story as well as weaving together a mixture of facts and eyewitness reports. More often than not, citizen-based or social sites rely on third-person accounts or rumors about events, often repeating gossip instead of facts.

The biggest challenge for the newspaper industry and other news-oriented sites is finding ways to increase advertising revenues. The notion that so many things on the Internet are now free and should remain free is a key stumbling block. Some sites, including many popular sports and recruiting sites, require readers to pay a subscription fee. Some newspapers also are doing this. Readers are offered a few paragraphs of a story but must pay a fee to get the full content. The LakeCharles American Press and the Ruston Daily Leader are two such papers in Louisiana.

In order for the newspaper industry and other traditional outlets to keep up in the digital age, they will inevitably have to continue to adapt and change what they do to maintain an audience and increase revenue. Though there are certainly issues, newspapers aren’t going anywhere. Not just yet anyway.

In Lawrence Lessig’s book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, Lessig details our ever escalating "copyright war" and how we should address copyright law going forward as new digital technologies develop.

Lessig suggests we live in a "remix culture." With the digital technologies available to combine, transform, and manipulate photos, music, stories, and other information, remixing is now easier than ever. And that’s Lessig’s primary point: People are naturally doing what new technologies encourage them to do (Nook location 12). The very nature of digital media makes it so simple to "remix" by reformulating content and presenting it as something new or different.

It’s creative and fun to take photos and video clips and re-arrange them. But Lessig poses some serious questions. What effect will our copyright war have on children? Will it change how they think about normal behavior? How will their behavior toward copyright law change as they continue to download and "remix?" How will they look at other laws in general? And are we too quick to criminalize kids from the get-go for utilizing digital technologies that are made so easily available to them?

It’s no secret that new digital technologies have changed how we think about access. Lessig agrees this is a pivotal issue. He uses Amazon as an example. Amazon gathers consumer information about what we like and are likely to buy, then tailors products to our specific preferences. This is hardly any different than what platforms such as Facebook and Google allow advertisers and third parties to do right now.

Lessig compares the passive read-only culture to the more reciprocal read/write culture we’re familiar with today when it comes to dealing with digital technology. He says as the read-only culture has "evolved in the digital world, technologies have given the copyright owner an ever-increasing opportunity to control precisely how copyrighted content is consumed" (Nook location 84). Or as he says, "Every time you use a creative work in a digital context, the technology is making a copy" (Nook location 85). In the digital world, he says, any use triggers copyright law because any ordinary use is a copy. On the other hand, the very nature of read/write culture suggests any rewriting in a digital context produces a copy and violates copyright law.

Lessig also hits on the Internet as "the age of the hybrid" (Nook Location 137), building on aspects of commercial and sharing economies. He says that "a hybrid that respects the rights of the creator -- both the original creator and the remixer -- is more likely to survive than one that doesn't" (Nook location 185). He offers as one example the Creative Commons he helped found that offers legal and technological tools for creators to effectively share their digital content and helps offer a balance between the reality of the Internet and of copyright laws.

Lessig poses the other questions, "In a world in which technology begs all of us to create and spread creative work differently from how it was created and spread before, what kind of moral platform will sustain our kids when their ordinary behavior is deemed criminal? Who will they become? What other crimes will to them seem natural?" (Nook location 11). Lessig suggests that because kids are now growing up in an age where digital literacy is the new literacy, they’ll be hard-pressed to understand why "remixing" isn’t necessarily OK.

Lessig outlines several suggestions for how to change (NOT abolish!) copyright laws in ways that will allow for more creative thought and expression on the Web, including simplifying copyright laws and regulating use of copies while not criminalizing copies themselves. Indeed digital copyright laws will inevitably have to change as the digital landscape continues to.

I believe the world of remixing and copyright provides a very slippery slope. I’ve downloaded music illegally in the past. However, I would never try to claim another author’s work as my own. I suppose the fear here is as easy as it is for people to manipulate content online and represent it as something new, where are you supposed to drawn the line? I think it’s each person’s responsibility to do that. But I also believe that just like we teach kids not to run red lights or to obey the speed limit, it’s going to become equally important to teach them about copyright issues concerning the web … what’s appropriate and what’s legal.