Big Media Blows It (Again) on Personal Media

May 7th, 2006 by Tim Barkow

While we wax about the meritocracy in personal media — the idea that anyone can create great stories and get credit for it — there is a flip side where the anonymity of personal media allows for the creation of a wider array of (sometimes disturbing) content. But that anonymity also allows others to co-opt and steal that content, redefining it with sometimes disturbing ends.

This recent Reuters story about terrorists modifying videogames, replacing soldiers with terrorists, is completely fake. It turns out that not only is this not a videogame “mod” (as these types of modifications are called), it’s just a short video clip a fan made for fun (reply #18 is apparently the author) which includes quotes from the movie comedy Team America (shoulda been a tip-off).

It’s not too much of a stretch to see in this more ham-handed, government-sponsored “spin,” either to stir up support for the war on terror or against videogames, take your pick. The Reuters reporter is probably spending the weekend getting the hook out from his cheek (research, people).

We’re likely to see more of this as personal media blends into the mediascape, so it’s best not to get too upset right now. Just take some solace that despite the mainstream media’s power to blow a story big and for others to spin those lies to their own ends, the truth gets out more quickly than ever.

The question is whether this will lead to complete media chaos, a rabid cycling of lie-mongering on top of truth-telling, where it’s almost impossible to tell fiction and reality apart, or whether we’ll adapt to the landscape and get our bs-filters on.

In finance, this current state of affairs would be called an arbitrage opportunity — media folk are more advanced, more able to manipulate the public than the public is able to identify and dispell the lies. The rise of the blogger can be seen as a natural reaction to this phenomenon.

As media giants have become ever larger, their POV has dulled to correspond with their more heterogeneous audiences, creating a vacuum at the local and partisan level. At some point, people realized that the media was no longer speaking to individuals. The blogger fills that gap.

So will the bloggers bring chaos, as many big media pundits predict? Probably some, but their benefit to the larger conversation far outweighs the increase in chatter.

So move over big guys. The reason you have to deal with bloggers at all is because you weren’t doing your jobs. You ignored your duty to inform and entertain individuals, something I doubt the bloggers will ever forget.

 
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