Session Notes: Old Media and New Media

Old media and new media: challenges and changes.

Session Notes taken by Tomomi Sasaki

Confused?
Guarav: Traditional journalists feel threatened by new media. People are looking towards grassroots for information.

Sonam – mainstream journalist that contacted GV about mistakes on Bhutan coverage: Bloggers are individuals that might have agendas. Smaller countries will have their voices are drowned (even if everyone goes online), just in terms of population. Confusion: Credibility, formats, rules… bloggers are free for all, no cross checking. GV can become a very powerful form. What are the rules? What can be done to “control” it?

If the mainstream media is linking to bloggers and tweets, and GV is doing the same, why do we need GV?
* Multi lingual – Mainstream media only quote from blogs in English.
* More voices out there, create the truth together. Not a either/or situation.

GV is a easy way for mainstream media for easy way to find bloggers to quote!? What if they become very good at finding bloggers?
* Solana: It's true! we work together. Voices from the countries that we're talking about should be part of the conversation. Foreign coverage might miss emotional, personal, aspects. Sometimes it gets lost. The more the better but mainstream media looks for stories that have breaking news.
“Today they care, but tomorrow they don't”. We do it with a community that cares about the issue.

* In Brazil – traditional media works like an organized party.
GV gives a balance. Even when traditional media qutoes a blog, it supplements their opinion.
GV will quote people even if they disagree with them.
* GV does not need to justify itself in its presence.

What is the new thing that we're doing, in the context of how we produce/consume news?
* Look back on history – protocol of distrust that comes with every new technology
* Are we really doing something radically new with new media?
People always made social networks, blogged, published…. but without the Internet.
* The scale has changed dramatically with the Internet. Scale is crucial.
* Language – the multilingual factor.

Guarav: Three ways

1. Big crisis
2. Celebrities
3. Get television channels to promote

What do you think about this? Is this happening in your country?
* Being funded means you have to change your editorial
Without this, you're free.
* Interaction – comments
* Participation has become default in traditional media

Ethics of new media?
* New and traditional is not black and white.
* New media will always have content that old media cannot/willnot cover.
* The common citizen needs more than what the traditional media offers.
Old media has selections/filters on what to offer.
New media gives the other side, the “B-side”.
* The audience s sometimes contradictory in their reactions.
Traditional media offers cutural programs but viewership is low.

G: Gist is that we need citizen media because old media is too entertainment focused.
We need citizen media to bring out the hard news.
But actually, there's more soft news in citizen media than there is in tabloids.

Perhaps it's not so different??
* Blogging is not just social media – what is the differenciation? We need to define this.
* It's not a bad thing that people write about what they care about
* Also depends on the number of news outlets a country has.
* We are still dependent on traditional media for fact checkign and filtering.

Guarav: Two things are happening

1. A lot of traditional bloggers and a lot of bloggers – old media is incorporating new media, and new media is starting to behave like old media. (US, some European countries, India)
2. Or, no reliable traditional media. (Bhutan, Liberia)

* Angola censorship: one national governmentally owned newspaper
Bloggers write about whats happening
No one knows whats going on but everyone has their own opinion
Self censorship – Citizens threaten each other
I want to share the truth. Or, two sides of the story.
* Credibility – journalist friends only had 30-60 minutes to write a story
they call someone up or use Wikipedia.
I spent 3 days researching it for a GV story.
blogger gets his credibility through what hes writing but a newspaper relies on the advertisement, financial power

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