Shirky on Upheaval
Just yesterday I wrote The Value in Social Media Isn’t ROI. QOE = Value, referencing some of the powerful thinking from Clay Shirky and others. This evening, I noted this piece by Shirky, and found it a compelling read that everyone who’s interested in social media, social networking, new media, old media or journalism (by either professionals or citizens…or crowds or computers) simply must read.
Not an Upgrade — an Upheaval by Clay ShirkyThe hard truth about the future of journalism is that nobody knows for sure what will happen; the current system is so brittle, and the alternatives are so speculative, that there’s no hope for a simple and orderly transition from State A to State B. Chaos is our lot; the best we can do is identify the various forces at work shaping various possible futures. Two of the most important are the changing natures of the public, and of subsidy.
As Paul Starr, the great sociologist of media, has often noted, journalism isn’t just about uncovering facts and framing stories; it’s also about assembling a public to read and react to those stories. A public is not merely an audience. For a TV show with an audience of a million, no one cares whether it’s the same million every week — head count rules. A public, by contrast, is a group of people who not only know things, but know other members of the public know those things as well. Both persistence and synchrony matter, because journalism is about more than dissemination of news; it’s about the creation of shared awareness.
[Read Clay's full post]