Jeremy Olshvang
Imagine for a moment you are walking
down the street and accidentally overhear a conversation between two corporate
CEO’s containing potentially incriminating information. Now, you in no way
claim to be a journalist, and you have no particular allegiances, but you do
take it upon yourself to write about what you heard on your online blog via the
website Blogger that has no connection to any major news outlet simply because
you feel like the public has a right to know and might have some interest in what
you heard. Suddenly, you find your blog post has been viewed not just
thousands, but millions of times and hundreds of people are contacting you for
follow up information because your article has gone completely viral. This is
an example (albeit a hyperbolic one) of what Clay Shirky describes in his book “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of
Organizing Without Organizations” as the
“mass amateurization” of journalism. But what exactly is “mass amateurization?
According to Shirky, “mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of
expressive capabilities…” (Shirky 66). More simply, mass amateurization is the ongoing
process by which the ability of all people to be heard, recognized, and
acknowledged is becoming more widespread. A person no longer needs the title of
“professional journalist” to have their work published.
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| A lot of people in today's media landscape claim to be journalists because they can publish their work to a large audience |
We see examples of this every day in ways we may not even
realize. Every time you log onto social media accounts, be it Facebook, Twitter,
even Instagram, you are seeing mass amateurization at work. People publishing
their opinions on current events for all to see even though they are not professional
journalists. People posting photos of events on a public forum even though they
are not professional photographers. It is now completely possible to stay
connected and up to date with the news of the world as well as publish
information about it without ever tuning into or contacting a major media
outlet. In older media structures none of this was possible because the media
that existed was limited by its technological capabilities or lack thereof.
Shirky speaks to the limitations of older media when he says, “radio,
television, and traditional phones all rely on a handful of commercial firms
owning expensive hardware connected to cheap consumer devices that aren’t
capable of very much” (Shirky 77). The issues resulting from this were that not
only could people not have their own voices be heard, but they also had no say
in what was broadcast to them. Under this model, journalists had very defined
roles because, as Shirky put it, “so long as publishers were rare, it would be
easy to list them and thus to identify journalists as their employees” (Shirky
71). Ultimately, there were only a few news outlets and millions of viewers, so
the media corporations had complete control over what was newsworthy and what
was not.
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| Before the mass amateurization, people only heard what the major news outlets wanted them to hear, regardless of the accuracy of the information |
Mass amateurization (created in the new model of media) was born in direct contrast to the older forms of media publication. Shirky argues that new media, which predominantly includes the creation and wide influence of the internet that has resulted in mass amateurization, has led to a complete overhaul of journalism as a profession as well as the definition of news in general. Journalism, a profession once both defined by and limited to those who could be published by a recognized and established publisher has been lifted of those constraints due to mass amateurization. Shirky speaks to this when he says, “an individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a non-profit of one, and self-publishing is now the normal case” (Shirky 77). Mass amateurization has given way to a new means of having one’s work published, no longer requiring a publisher to do so because new media allows us to do it ourselves anywhere at any time, thus blurring the lines of what constitutes a journalist. In addition to its effects on journalism as a profession, Shirky believes that mass amateurization has transformed the very definition of news from, “…news as an institutional prerogative to news as a part of a communications ecosystem, occupied by a mix of formal organizations, informal collectives, and individuals” (Shirky 66). Essentially, Shirky believes that news is no longer a few major media corporations forcing us to see what they want us to see because we have no alternatives, but rather an entire network of people that includes organizations as well as average citizens providing myriad ways to report and consume information. If you look at today’s media landscape it is not hard to see Shirky’s predictions about mass amateurization becoming a reality. Hundreds upon thousands of people self-publish their own writings on online blogging websites and social media accounts every day, all of them making their own decisions about what they deem to be newsworthy.
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| As social media has grown, so too has the ability to self-publish. |
Personally, I believe the future of the media professional
to be based upon how successfully one can rise to popularity in the current
media structure that makes it incredibly difficult to do so. Unlike in the
past, where only a select few had the ability to produce media professionally,
we now live in a society where you are competing with every single person that
has the ability to create media, which is essentially every person with a
device that can access the internet. A person can spend months working on media
that they feel is deserving of attention only to be outdone by a 30 second
video of a cat doing something humorous. Mass amateurization has caused a
shifted the focus of media professionals from strictly reporting the news to
clamoring for the attention of viewers by whatever means necessary because of
how difficult it has become to capture the attention of a large audience. While
mass amateurization has led to equal opportunity amongst media professionals,
it has also increased the difficulty of getting your work recognized tenfold.
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| Media producers will find it increasingly difficult to have their work reach massive audiences in today's media landscape that has become so obsessed with trivial entertainment. |
Bibliography
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing
without Organization. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print.
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