The Huffington Post provides a wide range of news stories from various contributors on current events and popular culture. In contrast, Media Lens focuses specifically on political issues, often critiquing the BBC and mainstream media for perceived omissions or biases in their reporting. WikiLeaks publishes anonymous leaks of classified or sensitive government documents to shed light on controversial policies and actions.

1. Dan Gillmor (2006)
Andrew Keen (2007)
Year 13
Monday 26th March 2012

2. Julian Assange
 What did you find out?
 What did you question?
 What is your opinion?

3. Objectives
 By the end of the lesson you should
have;
 Understood Keen’s theory and views
 Understood Gillmor’s theory and views
 Applied and challenged the theory through
class discussion and/or debate
 Research and Present your case studies

4. Starter
 Where do you/your parents learn about
the news?
 Where do they get their sources from?

5. The evolution
 1945: People gathered around radios
 1963: Kennedy’s death via TV (earlier
newspapers and magazines)
 Sep 11 2001: News 24, internet
 21st Century: Blogs, IM, Chat, internet on
phones
Gillmor

6. We the Media: Grassroots
journalism, by the people for the
people
 ‘Journalism transformation
from a twentieth century
mass-media structure to
something profoundly more
grassroots and democratic.’
(Gillmor)

7. The Cult of the Amateur
Andrew Keen
 ‘There will be over five
hundreds million blogs by
2010, collectively corrupting
and confusing popular opinion
about everything from politics,
to commerce to arts and
culture. Blogs have become
so dizzyingly infinite that
they’ve undermined our sense
of what is true and false...’

8. Think point
 Can everyone be a journalist?

9. Not everyone is a journalist
‘...these days kids can’t tell the difference
between credible news by objective
professional journalists and what they read on
joeshmoe.blogspot.com...posting is just another
person’s version of the truth; every fiction is just
another person’s version of the facts.’ (Keen)

10. Regular people are Journalists
‘...news was being produces by regular people who
had something to say and show, and not solely by
the “official” news organisations that had
traditionally decided how the first draft of history
would look. The first draft was being written, in
part, by the former audience. It was possible – it
was inevitable – because of the internet.’ (Gillmor)

11. What are we Talking about?
‘...the internet has become a mirror to
ourselves. Rather than using it to seek
news, information, or culture, we use it
to actually BE the news, the information,
the culture.’ (Keen)

12. The BIG Media
 ‘...treated the news as a
lecture. We told you what
the news was. You
brought it in, or you
didn’t.’
 ‘Tomorrow’s news
reporting and production
will be more of a
conversation, or a
seminar.’ (Gillmor)

13. Anti-BIG Media
 Julian Assage
 Noam Chomsky
 John Pilger
 Charlie Brooker

14. Today
 Is it just the ‘BIG media’ that sources our
news now?
 Think about where you get your
information from?
 Where do you read about the news?

15. The 3 Major Constituencies
 Journalists
 Accuracy and fairness
 Important
 Shape larger conversations
 Gather facts and report them
 Newsmakers
 Rich and powerful discovering new vulnerabilities
 New ways to get out their messages
 Allies (politics)
 The former audience
 Once the consumers
 Helping create a massive conversation
 Grassroots becoming professionals
 More voices and more options
Gillmor

16. The Big media
 Aim: to make high profit
 Greed
 Readers and advertisements
 Care more for advertisements than quality
journalism
 Who will do big investigations
 Pay expensive lawyers
 Expose
 But is anarchy a solution to good news?
Gillmor

17. Big brother
 The government censors all information
 Politian's shut off information that the public
need to know.
 Is the grassroots journalism information
tracked?
Gillmor

18. Who’s democracy?
 ‘a rather narrow and very privileged slice of
polity – those who are educated enough to
take part in the wired conversation, who have
the technical skills, who are affluent enough
to have the time and equipment .’ Tim Stites
Gillmor

19. We are Monkeys
We are just monkeys to the neo
digital world. Dancing to the
world of the internet.
‘What is more disgusting that the
fact that millions of us willingly
tune in to (youtube) such
nonsense each day is that
some Web sites are making
monkeys out of us without our
even knowing it.’ (Keen)

20. Is it Democratic?
‘The rise of the citizen-journalist will help us listen.
The ability of anyone to make the news will give
new voice to people who’ve felt voiceless – and
those words we need to hear. They are
showing all of us – citizen, journalist,
newsmaker-new ways of talking, of learning.’
(Gillmor)

21. Is it Democratic?
Keen calls it ‘collective intelligence’
e.g. Google, the results it gives you is the
sites which have been clicked on the most
‘...ninety million questions we collectively ask
google each day; in other words, it just tells
us what we already know.’ (Keen)
So what new knowledge/wisdom are we
really acquiring?

22. Discussion
 Has new technology made the media
more democratic?

23. Case study
 Have a look at various news sources
 Online ‘BIG media’ newspapers
 Online Blogs
 Examples to compare (non BIG media)
 The new significance
 Media Lens
 Wiki Leaks
 Z Net
 The Progressive (.org)
 The New significance
 How is the news content different?
 Whose voice is heard?
 What issues do they talk about?
 How accurate is the news source?