QotW9: Stompin' Ground

“Citizen journalism, also known as participatory journalism, is the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information” [Bowman & Willis, 2003]

If the above is how we should define Citizen Journalism, then I guess STOMP is indeed an example of it. In this website, for example, under the section “Singapore Seen”, they carry a slogan that goes, “You generate the contents, you write the reports, you take the photos, you shoot the videos”. This is indeed what Citizen Journalism is about. The public does the jobs of the journalists. The emphasis on “you”, referring to the public, being the ones providing the news, is a tell-tale characteristic.

“The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.” [Citizen Journalism, 2007] This seems to be the key in Citizen Journalism: it comes from the general public or laymen who are not trained professionals. Most of the submissions of updates, news and podcasts available on STOMP are indeed submitted by this very category of people.

“What will happen when 10 average citizens aim their phones at the stars and zap the images they take to their friends or to websites? Still images are only the beginning; video cameras will be par of our phones soon enough. The paparazzi have better cameras and are better picture-takers, but the swarms of amateur paparazzi will satisfy most of the public’s insatiable hunger for news about their favourite celebrities. And for the people who live in the public eye, that eye will never blink when they’re outside of their homes.” [Gillmor, 2004]

Under the section “Stompcast” audio tracks of interviews or podcasts mainly concerning celebrities and popular figures can be found. A lot of latest news about celebrities is uploaded here and pretty much all of them are submissions made by the public, just like the above-mentioned scenario. We are now living in a “society of voyeurs and exhibitionists” and that “the mass is now the paparazzi”. [Gillmor, 2004]

Apart from being an example of how Citizen Journalism functions, STOMP seems to offer a little more than that. The website also provides a platform for an online community to be formed. Forums are set up and are categorized accordingly. Students can participate in the “campus chit-chat”, females can check out “the tai tai room”, health practitioners can share tips at “the gym”, NS men and regulars can share about their army experiences in “wake up your idea”, gourmets and food lovers can make recommendations in “foodie groupie”, music lovers can gather at “backstage”, and the list goes on. Hence, users are able to interact with people of similar interests, and in a lot of ways it can also work like a gift economy when ideas and tips are shared and helps are rendered to one another.

As to how STOMP can be improved, personally I think that maybe the contents can be further broadened. The way I see it, STOMP currently focuses on a lot of daily stuffs as well as entertainment related things. Other than that, what we get to see on STOMP is mostly sensational news. Perhaps more serious contents (i.e. grounds that newspapers would cover, such as sports news, politics, etc) can be added in, that way participation by the community may be maximized as well, although I think it would not be that easy as Singapore is pretty much notorious when it comes to censorship. With the reason move taken by the government anonymously looking into people’s blogs, freedom of speech is not very much left either. However, in order for one to participate in Citizen Journalism, it does not mean that we have to post radical or controversial contents. Hence, it would still be good for people to contribute more.


References:

Bowman, S., Willis, C. (2003) We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. The Media Center at the American Press Institute. Retrieved March 30, 2007 from: http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php

Gillmor, D. (July, 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

Citizen Journalism. (2007). Citizen Journalism. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Absence of The Sacred interviews and reviews

The latest interview with Focal Pro is up now! Click on the banner above to view it. We're also on the front cover of the latest issue of Aging Youth webzine. Click on the picture below to view it.

An album review has also been uploaded on Metal Archives website. More updates would be posted soon.

Beauty in Darkness...

I'm not that big a fan of Gackt. This guy's got one hell of a killer voice but material wise I'm not very much into his stuff. When it comes to Japanese music I have lots of other preferences, but there's just something that I have to give it to Gackt: his stage presence is heavenly (yes, I actually used that word. Not something that comes out of me very often, and that says a lot!). Watch it yourself, you'll know what I'm talking about.

QotW7: Twitter - Online Community?

What makes up a community? It mostly refers to a sociological group in a large place or collection of people (or other organisms) sharing an environment. [Community, 2007] Judging from such an explanation or definition, does Twitter fit into these criteria? Seems like it does. In Twitter, people are linked to one another sharing an environment, in this case, the networking site itself. Most of the time people are linked to one another based on a similar interest, or any other things that they have in common. In my case, for instance, the people under my Twitter friend list are all BAC students of UB-SIM. That is our similarity.

How Twitter functions is also similar to what we know as Reputation Management, which is the “process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop”. [Reputation Management, 2007] What we do in Twitter is basically telling others what we are doing, and others would express their opinions and react to these messages as well, and then we might react to their reactions, hence, forming a cycle.

Fernback and Thompson mentioned in their article that “the structural process that is associated with community is communication. Without communication there can be no action to organize social relations. The intimate nature of this relationship is best illustrated in the words community and communications”. [Frenback & Thompson, 1995] In other words, communication is the key, which is basically what Twitter is all about. Twitter fits in this very description almost literally, as all that we do up there is to tell others what we are doing, describing it in WORDS. And then people respond accordingly: COMMUNICATION. Although Twitter may not have functions as elaborate as compared to Friendster or MySpace, it does serve a very similar purpose when it comes to social interaction and virtual interpersonal relationships. It is pretty much an online community in its own right.

There is a general understanding that in an ideal community, people are supposed to be getting along well with one another, and even help one another whenever needed. Here is a case-study of how people have actually helped one another through Twitter: A guy had lost his wallet and then made a Twitter post about his wallet being missing. The person who found his wallet happened to see his Twitter post about it and because of that, he was able to return the missing wallet to its rightful owner. [Mike, 2007] This may not be a common case that happens everyday, but it does prove a point; that Twitter functions just like a normal community, to the point that someone’s lost item can actually be found through it instead of having to rely on the authorities who would probably take much longer to solve the matter without any guarantee that the item can be found intact as it is.

Now that we have looked at Twitter using the above-mentioned descriptions and definitions, as well as the case study of the anecdotal experience by some users, we can very well sum up that Twitter is indeed an online community.




References:

Fernback J., Thompson B. (May 1995). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? retrieved March 15, 2007 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Reputation Management. (2007). Reputation Management. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management

Community. (2007). Community. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

Mike (March 12, 2007). Release - Lost and Found. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://perpetualbeta.com/release/archives/2007/03/12/lost-and-found/

QotW6 Bonus Mission #1: RJC revisited

"Someday a stranger will read your e-mail, rummage through your instant messages without your permission or scan the Web sites you’ve visited — maybe even find out that you read this story...You might be spied in a lingerie store by a secret camera or traced using a computer chip in your car, your clothes or your skin...Perhaps someone will casually glance through your credit card purchases or cell phone bills, or a political consultant might select you for special attention based on personal data purchased from a vendor...In fact, it’s likely some of these things have already happened to you...Who would watch you without your permission? It might be a spouse, a girlfriend, a marketing company, a boss, a cop or a criminal. Whoever it is, they will see you in a way you never intended to be seen — the 21st century equivalent of being caught naked." [Sullivan, 2006]

A lot of you would have seen this video, or at least heard of the incident that happened back in 2003. A student of Raffles Junior College from PRC was scolded in front of everyone in class, and the tutor made snide remarks at him, went on ticking him off while tearing off his assignment piece by piece. A fellow student "could not take it lying down" (that was what he was quoted to have said in the newspaper, sorry this is an old news and I was unable to find the article itself. Apparently this new got so big it was on the front cover of Home section of The Straits Times) and recorded this footage using his camera phone, and then he posted the video online. Within days, it was circulated all over the country, all students of other JCs know about it, and then the higher-ups of RJC finally got their hands on it as well. This student was later expelled from the college, while the tutor was sent for counseling and made to attend stress-management sessions (if I am not mistaken, do correct me if I'm wrong).

This marks the start of this whole topic of privacy invasion and unethical use of electronic gadgets in Singapore. The government grew concerned about it so much so that such gadgets are banned in all Army premises, and that anyone caught with it would be severly dealt with. In schools and colleges, this issue has since become a hot topic of discussion and examination questions for 'A' Levels General Papers are actually set to this as well. There is basically two sides to this: the first group of people would feel that this is unjustifiable and that voyeurism of such nature should be eliminated. One the other side, a lot of people agree that there is a lot of things in this society that people are turning a blind eye at, and that the best way to create more public awareness of all these problems and to get them eliminated is by taking footages of things like these (e.g. undesirable behaviors in public, or abuse of authority, etc etc. Remember the video made by a guy about the traffic warden parking their bikes on the double yellow line?). All big problems start small after all.

Personally, I feel that Sousveillance is fine as long as it is being exercised with restraint. One must know where to draw the line. Your friends may have done silly things that are funny and then get them recorded in the video, and they may like the footage themselves. But the joke can turn really sour when they see it up online. Things that are meant to remain within the cirlce, should remain in the circle. The best way to do this is to seek permission from the involved party whenever possible. Otherwise, be as tactful and discreet as possible.

Being discreet when in public will definitely help one defend against violation of privacy. Be careful with important things, do things swiftly, be protective but be natural about it. The human nature is one such that people get attracted or become curious about something that is different from themselves. I am not asking everyone to be clones, by all means be yourself. But that is the whole point: be yourself, nothing more, nothing less. It disgusts me when I see people who purposely dress up and then throw glares to others who look at them in any particular manner. If you want to be different, you should have expected this kind of attention coming from others and that it should not bother you. In the first place, the very fact that you dress in a particular way that is different from others means you are making a statement and you want people to notice it. People who are "self-expressive" and still complain about the attention they are getting are either putting on an act, or they are just seeking for MORE attention. Ironic? haha! More coming your way!

Man cannot destroy what he did not create. Privacy is something that we all can create, and hence, destroy. Everyday a new gadget is being invented, new better models are being manufactured. Phones with sharper pixels and video functions with higher resolutions are constantly being released into the market. Sizes of these gadgets are shrinking significantly as well, and are much easier to hide; very convenient for the "eagles" who can now scout for preys better. And guess what? Chances are that very same bunch of people who made so much ruckus and whine the loudest about issues concerning violation of privacy would be the first one to rush down the IT stores to get these latest gadgets before anyone else does, and after having done so they would go around flaunting it, and then continue whining again when something happens. That said, all these talks about violation of privacy is actually nothing but a self-inflicted cause-and-effect cycle, and who is to blame for this? I think the answer is more than just obvious.

Referemces:

Sullivan, B. (October 17, 2006). "Privacy Lost: Does Anyone Care?". Retrieved on March 10, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/