Iran's Graphic Coverage = 'Distributed Activism' - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBlogger
The unfolding events in Iran are creating some complex issues for mainstream media outlets playing by old rules.
For CNN, the unverifiable nature of the stream of Twitter messages has them both presenting, and disavowing any of the information they're getting from unknown sources. It's not their fault, it's the very nature of their role as a fact-checker and a truth-teller.
Yet, at the same time - we're watching and participating in a global event, engaging in both critical reading of unverified posts and often becoming part of the story, re-tweeting twitter posts and forwarding YouTube videos. With Twitter, understanding its central role as both the gatherer and megaphone for Iranian news and information - has decided to come off the sidelines and allow their users to color their avatar's green, to show support for the protesters.
It's what Jerry Weinstein (@tummler10) calls 'Distributed Activism'.
The shift in both the voice of the newsmakers, and the engagement of observers is unprecedented, and should provide us with a glimpse of media's fundamental role in an evolving democracy.
For example:
On Flickr you can see etehraz's photostream - live and uncensored.
(you can follow him on twitter as well; http://twitter.com/etehraz )
On Twitter you can follow http://twitter.com/TehranBureau http://twitter.com/iransource45
And there's a updated aggregated channel of twitter feeds, flickr photos and uploaded and discovered video here:
Also, on Twitter -
'Stand Free with Iran' is posting here; http://twitter.com/Shawtttaaay
And even Google has gotten into the act, releasing a Persian language translator here: http://translate.google.com/translate
The point is - we're moving from an era of trusted authorities to an era where readers (and viewers) need to absorb information from multiple sources, and make their own sense of the data. It's hard work, being media literate in a fast moving world where truth can have multiple lenses.
Multiple points of view should result in a more complex, but ultimately more truthful and more nuanced world.
But it also means that the comfort of Walter Cronkite's "that's the way it is" brand of authoritative journalism is being replaced by a more complex cloud of information that requires a more engaged and critical reading and viewing of dispatches.
The events in Iran are important because they encourage us to both pay attention to an important and fast moving story, and offer us for the first time a way to amplify and participate in the coverage. For example, even as protesters in Iran were using Twitter to tell their story, a rumor spread through the web on Sunday that suggested that Iranian Government forces were using the location tags on Twitter handles to hunt down the protesters. True or not, hundreds if not thousands of twitter users around the world changed their location to Tehran to help camouflage the data being created by the actual protesters on the ground. This digital participation is likely to be a sign of things to come, as data transmission becomes the primary tool in gathering protesters to a mass movement, and governments and dictators look to clamp down on digital freedoms to keep control.
Gathering. Curating. Sharing. Organizing. These are the features that are becoming part of the mix of reader-contributed content and professional journalistic news-gathering. It's too early to say how this will evolve, but watching events unfold in Iran will certainly illuminate the changes in both Journalism and the new Digital Democracy that are forming both on the web and on the ground.
Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/magnify
Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well known innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarding as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net
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