Freedom of Speech on the Internet — Part 6: The Internet Revolution and Citizen Media

The awesome, organic interlinking structure of the Blogosphere.

“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Internet Revolution: Diversification Via Citizen Media

The rise of Internet technology at the beginning of the twenty-first century permanently changed the media landscape for the better. Widespread availability of Internet access, free online publishing platforms like WordPress (which runs this blog) and Blogger, and a fermenting desire for a journalism revolution combined to quickly revolutionize the modern media landscape.

The development of the modern Internet “blogosphere”—the collection of blogs and their interconnections—form a social network in which individuals can share their views with a global audience quickly, easily, and at little to no cost. No editor or central authority can screen blog content for its political message or appropriateness. In short, anything and everything goes.

Public Citizen, a national non-profit public interest organization, described the phenomenon handily when they wrote:

The rapid growth of the Internet and Internet technologies provides a renewed opportunity for citizens to have their voices heard on a wide variety of issues, including their government, the corporations that have an increasing role in their economic security, and the unions that represent their labor interests. The Internet affords individuals the ability to exchange ideas on these and other issues with an ever-growing world community — an ability that no citizen in any previous society has had.

On the Internet, no one knows your a dog.

In short, the Internet has given voices to the voiceless and power to the powerless. For the first time in American history, there are no filters on what can be said, no editors, and no commercial interests to prevent the truth from being reported. From the turn of the millennium onward, the Internet and its millions of blogs, forums, wikis, and social networks have started to reverse the media consolidation trend through massive diversification. Anyone with access to the Internet can become a media creator instead of just a passive media consumer.

An Example: The War in Iraq

The potential power of Internet activists was proven in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraq War in 2003. Anti-war activists used new media – Web 2.0, social networking, and online collaboration – to organize themselves in a way that would have been impossible without Internet technology. Robert Hassan, a Senior Researcher at the University of Melbourne described it in Information Society:

As the expected invasion drew near, across the world, hundreds of thousands of activists began to plan an ‘anti-war global day of action’ for 15 February. Linked and informed through websites such as Indymedia.org and MoveOn.org, relevant information was created, shared, uploaded. Much of it offered differing opinions on the impending war from that of the institutional media, which for the most part tended to take the allied governments’ line at face value.

Thus, the Internet is the perfect tool for political dissenters to organize, raise funding, and spread their message to a global audience. Hassan goes on to say “In some ways blogs are having a discernible effect on both the political process and mainstream media whose institutional structures they threaten . . .” This evolution, commonly known as citizen media or citizen journalism, has become immensely popular, if the size of the blogosphere is any indication.

According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, the blogosphere is growing by one personal web page every second. At the end of 2008, there were an estimated 133 million blogs, a 14,000 percent rise from five years previously. Obviously, most of these blogs are not about politics. People are also blogging about their everyday lives – the minutia and trifling details of their day at work, the poor customer service they received at their local electronics store, and their thoughts about the most recent episode of Lost. Blogging is just one part of a larger phenomenon of Internet interactions and conversations created with new media.

Update: You should read:
Part 7 – Remix Culture (…again)
Part 8 – Threats to Freedom of Speech on the Net
Part 9 – Yes We Can Regulate Culture with Copyright Law
Part 10 – Lawrence Lessig = Awesome
Part 11 – Final Thoughts

You should share this with your friends: