When the internet was first conceived, one of the things it was deemed useful for was as a revolutionary method of easily acquiring information from sources around the world without having to leave the comfort of your home for a trip to the library. Over time, the information is added and the method by which we could access it began to change. People now wanted to have their say and have their opinion heard. It is that want to be heard across the World Wide Web that allowed the conception and eventual rise in popularity of Web 2.0 — the global community where everyone who has something to say can say his piece, and be heard by the world.
But just like anything else in the world, Web 2.0 has its drawbacks as it continues to remain unregulated to this day. Every person who has a blog says his piece and other people pick up on it and repeat it. Kind of the way that one picks up on a news story from the newscast or newspaper and repeats it as a basis of fact. Repeated enough times, a blog piece takes on a life of its own and becomes reality because “everyone has read it”. So, should the person who wrote that blog now qualify as a journalist just because of word of mouth? I do not believe so. Being a journalist takes more than just being able to say what it is you want without thinking of the possible consequences of your words. If you blog something hurtful about others, damage can and will be caused. That is not what a journalist is about. A journalist has the social and moral responsibility to relay confirmed pieces of news based upon investigation, accurate facts, and if necessary, untainted evidence to prove your stance. These things do not exist in the “journalistic” world of Web 2.0.
The reality is that blogs, tweets, and other forms of social networking that allow us to share our thoughts on a spur of the moment are an explosive situation waiting to happen. Read the papers these days and it will not take long for you to realize that blogging has taken over the world and that more and more people are accepting it as part of the information dissemination process of our world. Nothing wrong with that. Except that bloggers do not function in the same way as journalists. Blogs all have a specific purpose in mind and that purpose is not always for the betterment of many. Some of these exist to stoke the flames of unrest in some people, especially in countries that are teetering on the brink of civil war. The effects of bloggers acting as journalists were last seen in action during the Iran election this year. Bloggers were the only source of news for what was happening in a country that had its civil liberties suspended. News sources like CNN and Fox News were picking up on Twitter feeds, blogs, and cellphone videos to present the reality of a situation to the outside world. Were these people journalists? No. News contributors? Maybe. News is always slanted to benefit a certain side of an argument.
Blogger journalists have the ability to influence what people see, think, and feel in a way that no reputable journalists of the past have ever had the privilege to. It is this unprecedented power to influence a vast population of people that makes blogger journalists a dangerous power to reckon with. Not all bloggers studied to become journalists. Therefore they do not hold themselves to the same rules and regulations as their trained counterparts. And that rawness and abandon of their reporting style is exactly what makes their style of sharing their lives and opinions with other people a highly explosive and dangerous way of sharing information in Web 2.0.
References
Hempel, Jessie. “Are Bloggers Journalists?”. Businessweek. 2005.