New Media Mogul » collective intelligence

A defence of collective intelligence in media making

hughrjmacdonald — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:23:28 +0000

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.

Democracy and citizen media

hughrjmacdonald — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:35:11 +0000

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.

The power of the collective?

hughrjmacdonald — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:59:22 +0000

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.