OSP: Clay Shirky - End of audience

 Clay Shirky: End of audience

Media Magazine reading

MM55 - page 13.

Answer the following questions:

1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson?

2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet?

3) What does ‘open technology’ refer to? Do you agree with the idea of ‘open technology’?

4) Bill Thompson outlines some of the challenges and questions for the future of the internet. What are they?

5) Where do you stand on the use and regulation of the internet? Should there be more control or more openness? Why?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody charts the way social media and connectivity is changing the world. Read Chapter 3 of his book, ‘Everyone is a media outlet’, and answer the following questions:

1) How does Shirky define a ‘profession’ and why does it apply to the traditional newspaper industry?

2) What is the question facing the newspaper industry now the internet has created a “new ecosystem”?

3) Why did Trent Lott’s speech in 2002 become news?

4) What is ‘mass amateurisation’?

5) Shirky suggests that: “The same idea, published in dozens or hundreds of places, can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets.” How can this be linked to the current media landscape and particularly ‘fake news’?

6) What does Shirky suggest about the social effects of technological change? Does this mean we are currently in the midst of the internet “revolution” or “chaos” Shirky mentions?

7) Shirky says that “anyone can be a publisher… [and] anyone can be a journalist”. What does this mean and why is it important?

8) What does Shirky suggest regarding the hundred years following the printing press revolution? Is there any evidence of this “intellectual and political chaos” in recent global events following the internet revolution?

9) Why is photography a good example of ‘mass amateurisation’?

10) What do you think of Shirky’s ideas on the ‘End of audience’? Is this era of ‘mass amateurisation’ a positive thing? Or are we in a period of “intellectual and political chaos” where things are more broken than fixed? 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/A* extension work: Read Chapter 1 ‘It takes a village to find a phone’ and Chapter 4 ‘Publish, then filter’ to further understand Shirky’s ideas concerning the ‘End of audience’.