WEEK 8- Citizen Journalism.

As we further analyse Web 2.0, we can further analyse the effects of the autonomy the new digital era. This autonomy and decentralisation has taken the power away from traditional means of media production, as the information age takes over the industrial age.

Personally, I have witnessed the diminishing industrial journalism and media outlets and can say I am a contributor to the movement. I consume most of my news and other media purely from web based services, including formal news sites, right through to citizen journalism blogs.

But there has been a backlash to this ‘rise in the amateur’ cult facilitated by web 2.0, many of which come from professionally trained leaders of each sector affected. None more so then Andrew Keen, who’s The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture fronts this argument against this rise in amateurs in all sectors, claiming it is taking away from professional currency, and pushing a “cut-and-paste” culture of information exchange. More on this argument can be found here at: http://bit.ly/s5uCmI

This argument stems from the lack of “gate-keeping” of the internet, with no filtering of content any person with access and know-how can start blogging, sharing information avoiding such gate-keeping barriers such as traditional publishers would put on professional authors. This allows any information, regardless of its ‘truth’, integrity or even quality to be published and consumed by wide audiences.

I can see this being somewhat accurate, but minus all the garbage the internet does also harbour quality sites. Crikey being for example, producing as vast range of views, and journalistic stories opposed to more bias traditional newspapers, following agendas of such tycoons as Rupert Murdoch.

All and all an interesting debate has arisen, and will sure to be still on the top of professionals lists to moan about. But traditional professionals are beginning to become more obsolete, and it is more of a case to adapt to the technology or become irrelevant to this era. This is also my own person reasoning to do digital communications as a minor as my study, to help keep me relevant particularly in the rise of web services and tools and implications for marketing