Tag Archives: Citizen Media

A defence of collective intelligence in media making

Posted on April 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

Collective intelligence is a hotly debated topic amongst those of us interested in new media. In its basic form, it is the idea that everyone has a contribution to make, and when combined those contributions can create a quality product. It is the idea that is the basis of Wikipedia, an open source encyclopedia that has been the subject of much controversy in its short lifespan. Wikipedia controversies arise when the pages of political figures are hacked to contain inaccurate and sometimes scandalous information. But its biggest controversy arose when an analysis in Nature found that Wikipedia’s scientfic articles were nearly as accurate as those in Encyclopedia Britannica.

The insult to Britannica was that their articles are usually written by the foremost experts in the field, whereas the articles in Wikipedia are written by anyone who feels that they have a contribution to make to such an article. To those who supported the idea of collective intelligence in media making, this finding supported their contention that this approach can produce quality products. There are many others who remain unconvinced.

Jaron Lanier is unimpressed by the chaotic nature of collective intelligence. He believes that consensus is never reached in making media products this way; instead the products produced are in a constant state of flux and cannot be relied upon as being 100 percent accurate. Likewise, Terry Fisher warned of the lack of stable cultural reference points that might exist in a society that openly embraced the idea of making media through collective intelligence.

To my way of thinking, these commentators miss the point on collective intelligence. Collective intelligence also exists within the production of computer software, and is known as open source. In the open source software community, developers from all around the world form teams and work cooperatively on developing software. The best example of open source software is Linux, an operating system that contains many of the same features as found in Windows and OSX, as well as some that aren’t.

This is the freedom that open source software has – nobody expects it to be perfect. So features that might be too risky for a commercial application like Windows to include can be tried out in the open source software world. Mozilla Firefox is an open source web browser, and was the first application of its kind to feature tabbed browsing. The idea of tabbed browsing caught on and now the commercial browsers, Internet Explorer and Safari feature it as well. Likewise, OpenOffice is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office and pioneered the use of an XML based file format. Now Microsoft has followed suit in the latest versions of their office suite, because OpenOffice proved that it could work well first.

The same relationship could exist between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, or between the collective efforts of citizen media and the mainstream media. Citizen journalism has already proved that it can cover some issues more effectively than the mainstream media, mainly because of the limited time and space that the mainstream media can devote to any one issue. Likewise content can be developed in a collective and if it proves popular and workable, be developed into a stable product within the mainstream media. Consequently the mainstream media could leverage the advantage that collective media initiatives give them – a testing bed for new content and a forum for extending the coverage of issues; letting amateurs with an interest in the issue run with it.

Just as proprietary software producers like Sun and Novell encourage the efforts of hobbyist software developers to create new products that they can later refine and release commercially, mainstream media organizations could foster the efforts of citizen media makers in an effort to bring more innovation and diversity into the ‘stable’ world of the mainstream media. Jaron Lanier suggests that citizen journalists need leadership from a strong independent press, but this isn’t about the mainstream media leading citizen media makers. This is about amateurs and professionals working in a symbiotic relationship to create quality media products.

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Attention all sporting organisations: social media is an effective weapon for promotion, use it wisely

Posted on April 7, 2008 | Leave a comment
Firstly, thanks for reading New Media Mogul’s first post in nearly three weeks. As much as I enjoy maintaining this blog, sometimes personal issues get in the way and that’s exactly what happened here. With any luck, this new post will mark the beginning of many months of uninterrupted blog posting. Now begins New Media Mogul’s latest post:

In a sign of the changing times, Swimming Australia has taken the step of warning its athletes that images they post to their Facebook pages are effectively in the public domain and they should be careful with the types of images they upload. The need for this warning has risen after swimmer Stephanie Rice, and her fiancee, fellow swimmer Eamon Sullivan were depicted as a ‘hot cop’ and a sumo wrestler while attending a dress-up party. These photos were uploaded to Rice’s Facebook page and have now found their way into the mainstream media. If you haven’t seen them already, check them out here, courtesy of The Daily Telegraph.

While it is understandable that Swimming Australia does not want their swimmers presented in a negative light, and wants a clean cut image for its swimming team, nobody was doing anything wrong here. While the photos of Stephanie might take on certain sexual connotations, she is simply a girl who is having fun at a party. And if people see these photos and find her sexy, is that really such a bad thing?

It seems that Swimming Australia has failed to understand the opportunities that are on offer here. Every sport needs personalities – people who transcend the sport, and boost ticket sales because punters turn up to see these people perform. Swimming has had a history of ‘pinups’ – Keiran Perkins, Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Susie O’Neill and Gian Rooney to name a few. But with the exception of Hackett, these people have all retired and swimming needs to unearth some new personalities to ensure that the sport remains popular.

The other point is that most of these swimmers have carefully manufactured media profiles, with carefully selected exposure to mainstream media texts. But consumers are no longer buying this the way they were five years ago – these days they want to see real people with real personalities.

Stephanie Rice is a real person with an appealing personality, and the photos that have found their way into the mainstream media demonstrate that. Swimming Australia should not be afraid to let swimmers with personalities such as this emerge on the new media landscape of Facebook and other user-generated content sites. In this era of viral marketing, it is possible for athletes like Stephanie to attain a media profile without spending a cent.

This type of marketing appeals to the voyeuristic element that is creeping into media – spawning reality TV shows such as the latest big hit, So You Think You Can Dance. Swimming Australia could give their swimmers the freedom to use social media sites in whatever way they consider appropriate, and see new stars emerge within this medium to keep swimming as one of Australia’s premier sports.

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Citizen media and the Beijing Olympics

Posted on March 11, 2008 | 1 Comment

In ‘Blogging for gold at Beijing’ I’ve previously outlined the IOC’s plan on New Media Mogul to let athletes maintain personal blogs surrounding the games, provided they don’t comment on the performances of other athletes or upload audiovisual content they have created of an Olympic event.

Speaking more generally, it would appear that the IOC considers blogging to be ‘a legitimate form of personal expression’ rather than journalism. To quote the IOC’s official statement on these blogs;

‘Therefore, the IOC does not consider that blogs by Accredited Persons, in accordance with these Guidelines, will compromise paragraph 3 of Bye-law to Rule 49 of the Olympic Charter which states that “Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity”.

It would appear then that blogs of personal commentary surrounding the Olympics by citizen journalists are also permissible, but that posts appearing on sites such as Nowpublic and Wikinews may contravene the IOC’s bylaws. But then again, what exactly is the difference between personal expression and journalism? The IOC’s only attempt at clearing this up is to say that a blog is a type of website where entries appear in a reverse chronological order. Entries also tend to appear in reverse chronological order on the aforementioned citizen news sites.

In the same document, the IOC puts forward its policy on audivisual recordings being made at the games;

The dissemination of moving images of the Games through any media, including display on the Internet, is a part of the IOC’s intellectual property rights. No sound or moving images (including sequences of still photographs which simulate moving images) of any Olympic events, including sporting action, Opening, Closing and Medal Ceremonies or
other activities which occur within any zone which requires an Olympic identity and accreditation card (or ticket) for entry – e.g. competition and practice venues, Olympic Village, Main Press Centre – (“Accredited Zones”) may be made available, whether on a live or delayed basis, regardless of source.

This prohibition also extends to still images, which must also be taken from within accredited areas. It is unclear just how the IOC plans to police this, because with technology the way it is, 90% of people entering a stadium could be carrying a camera built into their cellular telephones. No information about entry conditions to the Olympics appears to be available on the official site at this point in time, but a cursory look at the ‘audiovisual policies’ of major Australian sporting grounds reveals they’re out of step with modern technology.

Under the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s conditions of entry audio recording equipment and video cameras are prohibited, except in cases where the parents of Auskick participants are trying to enter the ground with this equipment and in these cases it is permissible (presumably with some sort of proof that the person does have a child participating in Auskick). Telstra Dome prohibits professional cameras, audio recording equipment or video cameras. The SCG Trust, which operates the Sydney Cricket Ground and the Sydney Football Stadium, prohibits anyone to have or operate television, cinematographic or photographic equipment for commercial purposes.

Under the MCG’s conditions of entry, almost every patron should be barred from entering the ground, seeing as the majority of mobile phones are capable of recording video and audio. Under Telstra Dome’s policy it would depend what was considered professional; but the cameras found in some of the latest mobile phones are 5 megapixel, so while they may not be operated in a professional manner, they are certainly capable of capturing a decent picture. The SCG prohibits any commercial use of audiovisual equipment, but with citizen media increasingly gaining recognition, this might be a redundant distinction in a few years time.

There isn’t so much of an issue in Australia as none of the major sporting codes seem as hellbent on maintaining complete control of their intellectual property as the IOC. But certainly the Olympics will be an interesting fortnight for watchers of citizen media like New Media Mogul. Because the only way the IOC is going to maintain complete control over the content that is disseminated from the Olympics is by insisting that every patron check his or her mobile phone at the entry gates. Otherwise there will be thousands of devices capable of capturing and disseminating Olympic content outside of the accredited zones of Olympic stadiums. Television stations have this policy when you go and see a show being recorded, but while this may deprive someone of their mobile phone for a two hour period where they have to be quiet anyway, Olympic events go all day and in this age mobile phones are first and foremost vital communication devices.

So you can be sure that New Media Mogul will keep watching this issue.

To look at the full statement from the International Olympic Committee, click here.

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Media sport

Posted on March 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

In Sport, Culture and Society: An Introduction, Grant Jarvie argues that sport and the media is not sport per se, but sport that has been mediated for the sports media complex. Many if not all aspects of media-sports are social, economic and political constructions that carry messages, are controlled by human beings, and provide selected representations of reality, Sports through the media carry messages about gender, race, class, nationhood, violence and what is good and what is bad sport.

So far in my analyses of mainstream media and citizen media on New Media Mogul I’ve more or less concluded that the citizen media sphere mirrors the mainstream media. Citizen journalists are interested in the same sports that their professionals counterparts in the mainstream media are, and they are more or less interested in the same issues within those sports, although they tend to devote more time and space to them than the mainstream media. However how representations of different sports are constructed within the citizen media sphere and whether these constructs come from the homogenised world of the mainstream media or an individual citizen journalist’s beliefs and morals is an interesting point. In order to test out any differences that may exist, I am going to present a content analysis of boxing this time, a sport that polarises sports fans, and seemingly polarises those within the mainstream media too.

The content analysis will concentrate on the recent bout between Anthony Mundine and Nader Hamdan, where Mundine defended his WBA title. The analysis concerns articles from The Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph and The Age, as well as the fan site boxingnews24.com.

The mainstream media seemingly construct the media sport of boxing along lines of violence, crime, religion and intelligence. In the first article I studied from The Sydney Morning Herald, Anthony Mundine’s use of the English language is seemingly commentated on in a derogatory manner. Mundine is directly quoted as saying that, ‘He is tougher than them two because this guy is a lionheart’. While this is undoubtably what Mundine said, I feel that quoting him like this was probably unnecessary and is part of the mainstream media construct that boxers are dumb thugs.

A feature article on Nader Hamdan also in The Sydney Morning Herald perpetuates this construct. Hamdan is quoted in the article as saying, “Who would have thought 16 years ago when I was hanging here and terrorising these streets that I would be fighting for a world title?”. It’s also pointed out that Hamdan has a long-time friend named Jimmy Barakat, ‘a huge tattooed man likely capable of staring down an agitated gorilla. The two spent juvenile detention together after a fight with police in which Hamdan grabbed an officer’s pistol. Barakat has survived gunshots, comas and jail but hopped from one foot to the other like a nervous child’.

Whether this construction of boxing within the mainstream media is due to a belief that its ‘outlaw’ side is sexy would be interesting to know, but it also seems to extend to an unnecessary focus on the Islamic religious views that many boxers have. It is explicitly stated that Hamdan’s day begins with a ‘ritualistic prayer at 5am’ and the names of his close friends, who all have Arabic sounding names, are mentioned in the article. While this is a ‘colour piece’ on Hamdan, it seems like there is an uneasy emphasis on his Muslim background, as though this is a further element of the mainstream media’s media sport construction of boxing.

In contrast, a report on the bout by a citizen journalist focuses on the contest between the two boxers instead. At one point Eric Shmidt criticises Mundine as he has ‘yet to face a hard challenger, instead going up against Pablo Daniel Zamora Nievas, Jose Alberto Clavero and now Hamden. Missing are names like Edison Miranda, Jean Pascal, and Jean Paul Mendy, to name just a few opponents that I consider much better than the utterly soft opposition that Mundine has chosen to defend his title against so far’. But Schmidt’s report doesn’t deal with either opponent’s Muslim beliefs, or their previous life of crime or the apparent poor English grammar that Mundine possesses. Instead this report criticises Mundine for his cowardice in not defending his title against quality opponents.

In On Television and Journalism Pierre Bourdieu argues that any sporting event is produced twice; the first time being in the stadium and the second time being on the television screen. Perhaps this rings true for all media to some extent; that any sporting event is reconstructed as media sport along selected lines of reality. Although in this case study it would seem that for the sport of boxing, the reality of the sport is far more specifically constructed within the mainstream media with overtones of thuggery and violence accompanying articles on boxing. In contrast the citizen media report analysed seems a far ‘truer’ account of what boxing really is – two men engaged in a sport that requires skill, strength and endurance.

It isn’t really a case of saying the mainstream media is wrong in their portrayal of boxing, but it is interesting that they choose to construct the sport in the manner they do, and it seems that fans don’t take away the same constructs from the sport as the mainstream media does.

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Democracy and citizen media

Posted on February 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

Last week on New Media Mogul I raised the issue of democracy within ‘citizen media’ by talking about the athletes’ blogs at the Beijing Olympics. While the idea of a blog is to encourage its owner to write about whatever they feel like, athletes have been warned that they cannot talk about the performances of other athletes and other such things, which kind of takes some of the democracy out of their blogging experiences at the games.

This leads me to thinking more widely about how democracy functions in different ways and on different levels within the media landscape. From a holistic point of view, the mass media is democratic to the point that while the Government regulates mass media, the mass media is free to create and distribute any content that does not contravene these regulations without interference from the Government.

On this level, user-generated content enjoys a greater level of democracy, considering that its main means of distribution is the Internet and in Australia regulation of the Internet really only extends to pornography and gambling. So provided that user-generated content does not contravene these regulations, there is also the freedom to create and distribute any content.
Individual democracy within the mass media is tightly controlled by the corporations that control the proprietary media networks. Newspapers set aside pages where a careful selection of opinions from the general public are published on a daily basis. Some television shows also encourage interactivity – whether it is SMS voting, emails, letters or in some cases talkback. Talkback radio has been put forward as a particularly democratic medium, but ultimately while considerable time might be devoted to the opinions of individuals by this medium, not all callers can get through as their opinions may be too controversial or just not interesting enough.

User-generated content and the sites devoted to its hosting encourage a much more fluidic democracy – some sites will promote a dialogue between an individual who has created a piece of work and the viewers of that work, while other sites are read/write in the sense that users can change the work of others, or build upon it. This read/write process is known as collective intelligence and is encouraged by sites like Wikipedia and movements such as creative commons with its ‘share and share alike’ philosophy.
The idea of ‘collective intelligence’ is such an interesting one to me – never before has it been so easy for individuals to collaborate on creating media and the success of this collaboration will determine the success of UGC as an alternative medium. How individuals, sporting organizations and media professionals address the potential drawbacks of collective intelligence is essential, given the influential nature of media within society, and this is an area that I will be working on in much greater depth.

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The power of the collective?

Posted on February 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

In my last analysis on New Media Mogul I looked at the relationship between the mass media and citizen journalists and found that in the case of sports media at least, the mass media still plays a major role in setting the agenda for discussion and analysis. However while the mass media might still retain its powerful agenda setting function, does it having a bearing on the breadth of discussion surrounding a particular issue? What I am questioning here is whether people, given this unparalleled freedom of expression are making their own minds up about issues and contributing their knowledge on the issue, or are they still more or less guided by the opinions of respected journalists and commentators in the field.

This analysis will look at coverage of the AFL’s decision to expand their competition to 18 teams by 2012 and will compare the coverage that this news has received from the Herald Sun, The Age, The Roar and the Australian rules football news and discussion site, BigFooty.

The mainstream media has approached the AFL’s expansion plans from a number of angles. Reaction has been sought from the Sydney Swans, who until now have been the only team in a market that is still dominated by rugby league. Their view is that Sydney is not ready for a second team and so this move by the AFL has not been welcomed by the Swans. Another common theme has been questions over where the extra talent for these two teams would come from, with Paul Roos expressing this concern in an interview and Mike Sheahan discussing it in his regular column. There was also some reaction from Victorian clubs to the news that the competition would now comprise 18 teams, with Jeff Kennet particularly vocal.

On the specialist sporting websites The Roar and Footyheads, the discussion has been based around similar issues. The Roar’s article concerned a potential backlash against the Swans as the AFL tries to further establish itself in rugby league heartland – something that Paul Roos was confident would not occur, according to Guy Hand, a professional journalist writing on The Roar. Footyheads reported Andrew Demetriou’s agressive agenda for the AFL to grow the game.

Opinions submitted to the Bigfooty site and other amatuer blogs have largely concerned another issue – that it is soccer by way of the A-League that is a threat to the AFL in Western Sydney, rather than rugby league which already has a team there anyway, and the AFL may be making this jump into Western Sydney to draw away from any popularity that the region’s own A-League team might garner. This has been an issue that has not been so widely followed within the mass media, but has been debated vigorously on BigFooty.

The other issues that concern BigFooty contributors could be described as ‘small picture’. Someone has pointed out that the AFL will be obligated to keep all 18 teams afloat after 2011 if it is to sell a 9 game per week television package. Others are talking about the finals structure of an 18 team AFL competition, while it has also been pointed out that areas like Canberra, Darwin and Tasmania have been ignored in this expansion of the national competition.

These are all important points, and have no doubt been omitted by the mass media because of the limited space that the mass media can give to any one issue. This then is the value of user-generated content, at least within a journalistic context. Combined with the coverage and analysis provided by the mainstream media and professional sports sites, citizen sites like BigFooty can give an issue the breadth that would not have been possible without this sort of technology. Certainly there is always talkback radio for this, but the advantage that user-generated content sites have is that there is a permanent record of a user’s opinion on the issue. Consequently, users are using forums like BigFooty to bring their own opinions on certain issues to the fore, and in the processs creating a wealth of knowledge around an issue that can be harnessed by others. This has been termed collective intelligence.

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Blogging for gold in Beijing

Posted on February 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

It has emerged that athletes will be able to keep blogs for the first time ever at the Beijing Olympics, coming up later in the year.

Rebecca Beisler in Melbourne’s mX reports that “experts have labelled the move an attempt to modernise the games and reach Gen Y. It has also raised speculation that athletes may use the blogs to make political comment. The International Olympic Committee has said blogging is a ‘legitimate form of personal expression’ but athletes must follow strict rules.”

It seems that the IOC has decided that athletes cannot talk about other athletes, cannot post audio or video clips of Olympic events and cannot disclose any confidential information. Clearly the IOC is trying to protect its brand here, particularly with the lucrative broadcasting revenue it receives from selling the rights to the games, which could be diluted if athletes were to post their own personal audio or video from the Games. However, while the athletes might be relatively easy for the IOC to control, it will be interesting to see what measures they put in place to stop citizen journalists and other creators of user-generated content who are attending the games from creating and distributing content. Whether they end up collecting all camera phones and digital cameras off people as they enter the stadium will be interesting to see.

Getting back to the article in mX, Australian athletes won’t have their blogs censored by Australian Olympic officials but they have been warned to watch what they say because anything could be used as a direct quote in the media. This is sound advice, as the blogs could change the way journalists do their jobs at the games. Instead of having to interview athletes to get their opinions on different issues, journalists could simply read through the athlete blogs and collate the information they need. As blogging and other forms of user-generated content take off, this could be a preview to the sort of role journalists will play in the future.

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The discursive nature of citizen journalism

Posted on February 13, 2008 | 1 Comment

Recently a number of sporting sites have emerged that mix the pursuits of professional journalists usually recruited from established mastheads with the views and opinions of fans who sign up to the site and are encouraged to contribute articles on their favourite sports and topics. There are meta sites which encourage articles and discussion on most major sports such as The Roar and Sportingo, and specialist sites that deal with individual sports like Footyheads for Australian rules football and Cricketwoman, which deals with women’s cricket.

One of my research interests in the area of user-generated content is establishing the relationship the mass media has to the content produced by so called citizen journalists on sites such as this. It is possible that it could be a symbiotic relationship, where the mass media produces content that citizen journalists absorb; then these amatuers pick up on the thread ad continue reporting and articulating on it. On the other hand perhaps there is a reactive relationship; whereby citizen journalists establish that some topics within the mass media don’t receive the attention they deserve and seek to rectify this situation.

By analysing the websites of The Roar, Sportingo and Cricketwoman I hope to establish that as far as a relationship between the mass media and user-generated content goes, it is the case of the former, and the relationship is very much symbiotic. I have chosen these three sites because they are similar in their aims and design, but different enough to be able to make some valid points about the nature of the relationship that citizen journalists have with the mass media.

The Roar is an Australian site that features the work of some prominent Sydney sports journalists such Spiro Zavos from the Sydney Morning Herald. It seems to mostly cater for articles and discussion surrounding rugby union, rugby league, Australian rules football, cricket and soccer but devotes a section of the site to other sports. So in theory an article could be written about any sport on The Roar.

Sportingo could almost be seen as the English equivalent of The Roar, although it does not promote the work of professional journalists on the site and most of the articles seem to come from amatuers, although there is editorial control over the content of the site – this is no Wikipedia. Reflecting its different heritage it devotes itself to covering rugby, tennis, cricket, cycling, basketball and football (soccer), although just like The Roar it welcomes submissions about other sports and featured an article about the recent American gridiron Superbowl on its frontpage.

Cricketwoman is a specialist site that is devoted to women’s cricket. It features a news feed from online news sites such as Yahoo! News and BBC Online that provide articles and results for women’s cricket matches. Just like The Roar and Sportingo it welcomes submissions from amatuers concerning women’s cricket.

The Roar and Sportingo are well populated with new articles appearing every day on a variety of different subjects. The Roar appears to have two new articles written by citizen journalists uploaded today along with three articles from its ‘expert’ journalists along and a story from the newswire. Sportingo appears to have seven new articles written by its army of citizen journalists appearing for today. In stark comparison, the Cricketwoman site does not appear to have ever receieved content from any citizen journalists, and actually appears to have been overrun by spammers. Its sole purpose appears to be as an aggregator of content about women’s cricket from other sites.

When examining the sports sections of Melbourne’s two daily newspapers, The Herald Sun and The Age, there appears to be a direct relationship between the content featured in these mass media publications and the relative popularity of posting amatuer content to these online sites. Today The Age sports section featured 2 pages devoted to cricket, with only one article concerning women’s cricket. There was also a page assigned to Australian rules football, a page for athletics, along with articles about horse racing, rugby union, cycling, motor sport, rugby league and an entire page for soccer.

The Herald Sun sports section features much the same mix of articles with three pages devoted to Australian rules football, a page for cricket, and articles concerning swimming, athletics, rugby league, a page of racing, a page of soccer along with motor sport and iron man. However unlike The Age, the Herald Sun did not feature any articles about women’s cricket.

Women’s cricket never features heavily within the traditional media, and a Factiva search revealed that most recent articles concerning women’s cricket have appeared in suburban newspapers. The North Shore Times, Preston Leader and Macarthur Chronicle have all recently featured articles concerning women’s cricket, and there was also one article that came from AAP’s newswire. The problem with women’s cricket has always been a perceived lack of professionalism and therefore lack of interest from the traditional media in general.

This lack of media interest seems to have a flow on effect to fans of the sport, for while issues in other sports are heavily and regularly opined on The Roar and Sportingo, neither site featured a single article on women’s cricket. While it is not quite clear how much editorial control there is over these two sites, there would appear to be nothing stopping a fan of women’s cricket from contributing an article and yet there is no evidence that anyone has. Added to this, the Cricketwoman site could be easily found by anyone interested in the sport, as it ranks highly in Google and is cross referenced on Wikipedia, yet it is falling into a state of disuse.

It would seem to me that one of the opportunities created by user-generated content is the ability to produce media that differs from that found within the mass media, and greater coverage of women’s cricket would be an example of this. It should be noted that the leading cricket website, Cricinfo, devotes a section to women’s cricket. However surely if fans and players of the sport took an active role in creating media surrounding the sport it would help to raise its profile, and perhaps the organisers of women’s cricket should put in place strategies to encourage fans and players to contribute content on user-generated content hosting sites such as Cricketwoman, Sportingo and The Roar as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace that also host media.

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The Harbhajan Incident: A case study of the changing media landscape

Posted on February 11, 2008 | 1 Comment

By now, e veryone who follows cricket should have heard something about the series of incidents involving Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh. This blog doesn’t concern cricket, so I’m not going to get into it but if you’re not familiar with it, then I’m sure a search of Technorati or Google will fill you in on all the necessary details.

However, the concern of this blog is the ways in which different sections of the media have dealt with the incident. The mass media dealt with the incident in such a way that the issue became political, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Governor-General Michael Jeffery commenting on the issue. It almost became a diplomatic issue as well, with suggestions that relations between India and Australia were strained because of the incident. There was also restraint shown by media operators who would have suffered financially if India refused to play anymore cricket on the tour, namely PBL Media and News Corporation, and the publications and services operated by these two companies were less critical towards India than other media operators such as Fairfax were.

However, a completely different slant on the issue could be found online at Youtube. The video depicts a man dressed as a monkey running onto the field dressed as a monkey, dancing and rolling around and evading security staff at the Adelaide Oval for as long as possible. The video then ends with an editorial, stating that the incident between Harbhajan and Symonds should have stayed on the field, it didn’t need to be dragged through the media and consequently the general public had no right to be involved in it. Cricket is a passionate game played with intencity and occasionally in the heat of the moment things are said that shouldn’t be, but ultimately it is a form of entertainment, and having fun while playing the game should be a key element. In a stunt that wouldn’t look out of place on The Chaser this group attempted to show the lighter side of the incident and bring some fun back into a cricket series that had become overtly politicised.

Whether a majority of Australian or Indian cricket fans would agree with this group’s interpretation of the incident, it is diffucult to say. But from a new media point of view, it is interesting to see this sardonic interpretation of the incident coming through a piece of user-generated content while the mass media was concerned with the politics and diplomacy angles of the story. The reasons why the mass media strayed away from portraying the incident in this way are also interesting. Perhaps if The Chaser had been on air at the time they would have made light of it, but every active section of the mass media was treating the whole incident very carefully indeed.

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