Howard Rheingold on media literacy

The other day I was browsing through my Google Reader and found a link that brought me to this site. JD Lasica published a short (6 minutes) interview with Howard Rheingold at King’s College at Cambridge University.

21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

In this short interview on the importance of media literacy in the current day and age, he makes many interesting points.
At the beginning Rheingold states:

“Increasingly I think the digital divide is less about access to technology and more about the difference between those who know how and those who don’t know how.”

He emphasized the role of knowledge and information and knowing what to do with information, as opposed to access to technologies, which means very little, if a person does not know what to do with the content (s)he accessed.

On the Internet there are billions of different sites providing all sorts of content with varying degrees of credibility since a lot of content is user generated . That causes a problem because readers must be media literate, critical readers to be able to place the information they gained inside the context. A lot of people believe what they read and problems arise when these people are expected to make informed decisions like voting, participating in referendums, etc. He also mentions key terms, related to media literacy: Attention, Participation, Collaboration and Critical consumption part of the latter being “crap detection,” as he called it. Additionally he also emphasizes the role of multitasking - since we do live in so called information society, and Castells network society, we are saturated with information and contacts of all kind and a person must be have the skills to sift the useful information from the rest.

“The ability to know has suddenly become the ability to search and the ability to sift and discern."

Perhaps he sounds a bit radical, but he has a point. While many believe that they (as individuals) are powerless and that the media are all-powerful, trending towards media literacy and taking the matter into one's own hands could result in a significant change in the society.

FB chat with a MEP?

ICTs (information and communication technologies) and their ascribed revolutionary potential could/should by now make a notable change in the formal political arena. Many expected that they will bring politicians closer to their voters by enabling direct dialogue with political leaders. Yet, this is not the case. As noted by many researchers ITCs did not make a revolution in this view, instead they provided a new space for the polititians to be present but mostly do nothing. Of course, they use Twitter, Facebook etc. to update their followers on the latest happening, but they do not provide much of an environment, where a political discussion could take place. So instead of relevant political dialogue with the citizens, a lot of them share more or less personal thoughts, that have little or nothing to do with their political persona. (Holtz-Bacha 2004, Karvonen 2007, Sampedro & Pérez 2008) Personalization of politics is not a new phenomenon, yet the web and especially the ITCs provide a great environment. So as Bentivegna (2006, 337) adequately notes:

If one takes the formal political arena as a reference point for defining the role played by ICTs, the result is inevitably disappointing. In this context, in fact, ICTs can only take on a marginal role, in support of a pre-existing organizational and communicative apparatus. In the case of exceptional events such as electoral campaigns, ICTs assume a prominent role but without ever modifying the fundamental nature of the relationship between political actors and citizens.

As much as I agree with Bentivegna, there are exceptions. An interesting thing happened about a month ago. I was browsing through my news feed on Facebook an saw, that European parliament made an event called: Journalism, New Media & Public European Space - Chat with MEP Løkkegaard. I found out about this event only two hours before it was supposed to take place, so I decided to participate. This chat was created in order to get some feedback on a report “On journalism and new media – creating a public sphere in Europe”, a draft of which was presented by Danish liberal MEP Morten Løkkegaard to the Culture committee in April and which will be voted in beginning of June.

The chat took place here, under Mr. Lokkegaard's portait. Participants asked questions and MEP answered. Facebook users would surely agree, that trying to make a proper discussion by posting questions and answers as comments under a photo is nearly impossible: participants were trying to address complex problems and notions, such as the existence of the European public sphere, online deliberation etc., which require more space available for the text itself and even more importantly, more time to make a proper answer by the MEP. The event only lasted an hour and a half, and in this time I believe all of us got our answers: - they were short, sometimes superficial, but everyone got one.

Skeptics would argue, that this kind of events are only part of a show to humor the public, and make them think that politicians really do care and want be closer with citizens, but in my opinion, this kind of events are definitely a step forward from just being present in social networking sites and other ITCs. The MEP actually took the time and provided answers for everyone who had a question. Some questions were completely irrelevant and some people came only to promote their civic initiative groups and the like, but all things considered, such events could be seen as a sign of progress, because by creating potential spaces for online discussions, governmental institutions and polititians are (slowly) bridging the gap between political leaders and their citizens.

Examined literature:

Bentivegna, S. 2006. Rethinking Politics in the World of ICTs. European Journal of Communication, 21 (3): 331 – 343.

Holtz-Bacha, Christina. 2004. Germany: How the private life of politicians got into the media. Parliamentary Affairs 57 (1): 41-52.

Karvonen, Lauri. 2007. The Personalization of politics. What does research tell us so far, and what further research is in order? http://www.ecprnet.eu/ecpr/ecpr/paper_info.asp?paperNumber=PP226

Sampedro, Víctor in Francisco Seoane Pérez. 2008. The 2008 Spanish General Elections: "Antagonistic Bipolarization" Geared by Presidential Debates, Partisanship, and Media Interests. The International Journal of Press/Politics 13 (3): 336-344.

Tool experience: Google Buzz

About a month ago I, too, got curious about Google Buzz, and decided to click through the invitation on my Gmail to see what this new tool is all about.

Google Buzz is a social networking tool from Google, designed to be integrated into Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox. Buzz enables users to choose the content they want to share publicly with the world or privately with a group of friends for each post. Some tools like Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger and Twitter are already integrated.

Basically what I used it for, was mostly keeping track of my friends (Google suggested people I may want to follow and I clicked on the ones I wanted to be in coontact with) and I tried a bit of updating my 'followers'.

Turns out, it left me disappointed. I expected much more of it, perhaps because I am a Facebook and a Twitter user, and therefore I may have had high expectations. Regardless, the experience was somehow dissatisfying: my and my friends 'updates mostly had no comments, so potential for any kind of discussion is really low, thing people share are usually also published elsewhere (like Twitter – which is compatible with Buzz, Facebook, etc.) but the difference between other social networking sites and Google Buzz is in the context: Facebook, etc. have more stimulating environments – it's somehow logical that users “like” and comment each other's posts, but with Buzz it is just not that easy. I could hardly get anything more that a “like” from anyone.

Plus I have been using Google Reader for more than 2 year now and I am perfectly satisfied with what and how it enables content to be accessed. And now Buzz allows integration of these Reader posts, but it is just like having another Google Reader with more options in an unstimulating environment.

As you can see, I am not exactly 'thrilled' about Google Buzz, not to mention all the indignation Google Buzz caused with it's (more or less default) privacy settings, aptly addressed by Danah Boyd in her SXSW speech and some other newspaper reports like the Guardian, the Inquirer, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.

Perhaps I am biased, but since I can't make any good use of Buzz, and due to my preference to using Gmail, Reader, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter separately and not in an nonfunctional conglomerate of all this functions, I will turn Google Buzz off.

iPad. vs. publishing, pt. 4

Apple developers were obviously aware that in order for their new product (iPad) to be widely used, it must have to potential to be incorporated in it's user's everyday life, therefore it must be simplistic, user-friendly, not too big but at the same time but large enough to really appreciate the touch-screen and display resolution. So iPad enables users to carry everything with them in a small portable device: pictures, music, the Internet, personal information manager, interactive maps, books and magazines, movies etc. And to make sure to attract the masses, they made an alluring minimalistic design.

By creating a means of daily media consumption (iPad), Apple developers also affected the already changing publishing industry: now kindle has a rival, Amazon is threatened by iBookstore and the meaning and of a book is (becoming) revolutionized, first by e-books and now by e-books enriched with various audiovisuals. So If publishers want to assure their future, then their offer of e-books must exceed plain text and provide a dynamic reading experience. But as Nathan Jurgenson noted, the iPad favors passive consumers and not active prosumers.

During the last couple of weeks while I was browsing through various articles and blog posts on iPads I noticed something: the New York Times was constantly praising iPad in its articles and also when speaking of the new, revolutionized ways of reading newspapers, there was always a picture of iPad with the NYT on the screen (all the early posts on the subject had the same visual material, because pictures of iPad were available only on apple.com). In his recent article Francis Reynolds posted:

Dan Gillmor recently commented on the relationship between Apple and the New York Times, noting that Times new media executive Martin Nisenholtz was on stage for the iPad's unveiling ceremony in January, praising the device, and that the Times frequently appeared on the screen of iPads in advertisements for the device. "By appearing on stage at the Apple event and by launching an iPad app that the Times wants to monetize in every possible way—an app from which Apple will likely make money as well—the Times is becoming more of a business partner with a company it covers incessantly."

So while everybody is speaking of newspapers and publishing revolution in general, the NTY is getting a lot of publicity by being present at iPad-related events, in the visual materials and almost always being an example of this 'revolution'.

Reynolds makes another good point:

[iPad's] not just a better computer, it's a different way of providing content. It doesn't make it easier to surf over to nytimes.com, rather, the big draw of the iPad is that you don't go to nytimes.com, you get the content of nytimes.com in a visually-appealing and user-friendly app. All of which puts a lot of importance on the app as a content-providing medium.

While publishers are focusing on getting a lot of money from subscriptions, Apple will soon most likely be in the power to manage the content that these publishers will provide. So publishers are obviously not (entirely) aware of all the power they are giving up, and Apple is being smart enough to take advantage of the situation.

In my opinion, when all this buzz around the iPad subsides, it will be just like with all the other Apple products: there are die-hard fans and the “indifferent others”, as aptly presented in this comic.

What do you think?