The Media Professional is one who
specializes and has been trained in producing whichever form of media they
produce. In “Everyone is a Media Outlet”, Clay Shirky describes a profession as
some sort of exclusive society, characterized by certain norms established by
the whole community of Professionals. Shirky quotes Technological advancement
has massively increased he ease of Producing and Publishing media by the
untrained masses. The Amateurization of media in this generation has created a
whole new landscape for the distribution and consumption of media; what Shirky may
call a change in the “overall ecosystem of information”.
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| Still from a amateur video of two rappers fighting from the XXL Magazine Website |
A while back I learned that one of
my favorite rappers was in a fight with another rappers. It was a topic of
discussion on the radio so I whipped out my phone and went to twitter; I
searched the rapper’s name and found multiple on scene videos and accounts from
people who were there. These days there is no middleman between the everyday
person and the news.
He describes technology and the new mediums of sharing photographs as a
creation of ease into the market by non-photographers. Another example he gives
is the stock footage, which is one I have witnessed first hand; providing a
place where you can choose from so many different videographers with stock
footage reduces the scarcity and in doing so the prices. What was once hard to
come by is now an easily accessible commodity that can be purchased with a
click, as I witnessed at the production company I interned at over the
summer.
I didn’t need to wait till 10pm to find out what happened,
I didn’t even need to wait until after the commercial break for the radio
personality to describe the story to me, I saw it myself. I realize now that in
the process of me getting my news I cut past so many professionals and whole
industries. One danger I see in this culture of Amateurization is the obsoleting
of all the parts that go into the production of media. The videos I found
online were poor smartphone quality videos, but they served their purpose and
instantly made the videographer and his expensive camera obsolete. The captions
on the videos I saw and the comments by people providing context to the
situation basically did the job of the radio personality, news broadcaster,
anchorman, or whoever else would have had the job of telling me what happened.
All these jobs were done with a simple tweet and some retweets. As Shirkey
admits when speaking on photographers, “The threat to professional
photographers came from a change not just in the way photographs were created
but in the way they were distributed.”. |
| Citizen Journalism Cartoon: maichimai2611.wordpress.com |
It seems to me that Amateurization
can be seen as the infiltration of the exclusive society created by and for the
Professional. It enables those who did not go through all the training or may
not be able to create at the same level to enter into the market place and
compete. This could be seen as a bad thing, a downgrade of quality in the
profession. Shirky says, “… not only do we want high standards of education and
competence, we want those standards created and enforces by other members of
the same profession, a structure that is almost the definition of
professionalism”. He calls this
“professional judgment”, the community of colleagues holding each other to a
certain standard of practice for the betterment of the profession. So what happens to these standards when
amateurs are able to create work and get almost just as much exposure as the
pros, or are being shared and consumed using the same mediums as the pros? With
companies making a lot of their products more user friendly, it has become
easier for amateurs to create content, and then turning to the internet which
gives them the opportunity to reach just as many people as the professionally
trained. An iphone video being shared on someone’s twitter and retweeted a
bunch of times is just as easily accessible as the news clip on the network
website; able to be critiqued side by side. Some would say this hurts the guy
who went to school for it, and over all hurts the craft. In “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New
Collide”, Henry Jenkins seems to see it a bit differently. He describes the
world of fan fiction, based on the popular book & film franchise, “Harry
Potter”. He describes a community of fans that have developed online where fans
young and old come together and create their own little worlds based on the franchise’s
story line. These fan fictions are specific and detailed and show a certain
level of comprehension of the story and investment by the fans. These fans do
not know each other’s ages of professional levels but are all posting literary
work to a site on line and giving each other feedback. This is just like the
world of media we live in today, where consumers are able to comment on work
and critique it no matter what level “professionalism” the creator is at.
Jenkins says this open floor to the consumer is what maintains the quality of
work. In the fan fiction, as older fans and younger fans communicate and go
back and forth on certain fictional topics, they are critiquing each others
work and making each other better writers. His analysis Amaturization and the
role of the internet to new authors is, “As we expand access to mass
distribution via the Web, our understanding of what it means to be an author –
and what kinds of authority should be ascribes to authors – necessarily
shifts.” (Jenkins, 188)
Biliography
1.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where old and New Media Collide, New York:
New York UP, 2006. Print.
2. Shirky,
Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organization. New York:
Penguin, 2008. Print.
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