In my last post on New Media Mogul, I talked about Molly’s Monday Machinations, which is one of the leading AFL podcasts going around at the moment. As I said then, it is an authentic product because the creator reminds me of the type of guy you’d strike up a conversation with on the way home from the game, dissecting the team’s performance. It’s obvious that he is passionate about Australian rules football, considering he puts out at least 4 podcasts a week, and he’s well read.
It’s also obvious that the mainstream media still plays an agenda setting role for his podcast, further confirming some analysis conducted on New Media Mogul several months ago now. The podcast is an authentic product because we know what Molly’s biases are – he’s an unashamedly passionate supporter of Australian rules football and a Hawwthorn supporter. This is unlike a piece from a football journalist in one of the metropolitan newspapers, where we don’t know what team they follow and we don’t know if they’re into football, or if it’s just a job for them.
But how else do we judge this content? By traditional standards it isn’t very engaging, and wouldn’t give The Footy Show a run for its money, despite all the controversy that show has created of late. Yet what is it about citizen media that makes it an engaging medium?
Is it some sort of voyeuristic quality? Do we enjoy getting a glimpse into the lives of other ordinary people and what their thoughts are on certain things, in a non-contrived kind of way?
Is it some sort of rejoicing or interest in the banality of it all? In much the same way that people watch Funniest Home Videos for people making fools of themselves, do we watch citizen media because people get up on their soap boxes and sometimes say outrageous things?
So is this how citizen media should be judged? As another form of entertainment, even if it could be entertaining in a peverse kind of way? Or is it because we enjoy the simplicity of this kind of media, in much the same way we enjoy those conversations on the way home on the train?
Or is it some sort of reaction to the mainstream media and all its politics? Then again, considering citizen media producers like Molly are ultimately informed by the mainstream media, are we simply just putting a layer between ourselves and the media influence we’re trying to get away from?
I’m not sure how many of these questions I have answers to yet, but they are all relevant in trying to determine what it is about citizen media that makes it so popular, and what sort of issues arise from its popularity.
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