PLATFORM INFOMEDIATION AND JOURNALISM

Abstract

In a May 2011 article on GIGAOM, Om Malik argues that the Internet has removed the monopoly of information distribution from the mainstream media, enabling everyone to distribute contents. It is a change, he tells us, that has led to the proliferation of information and, more broadly, to a ‘democracy of distribution’. For journalism, the removal of the media’s monopoly over information distribution has had mixed effects. On the one hand, it has undermined many large media brands, but on the other new journalistic forms and contents have come to proliferate (Malik, 2011; Ingram, 2011). And, as Jay Rosen has argued, the more people participate in journalism the better it is going to be (Rosen, 2011). Indeed, the past decade has seen some fascinating changes in journalism, including the development of ITS radical forms (e.g. Indymedia); participatory forms (with crowdsourced projects such as the Guardian’s MP expenses story); open forms (Wikileaks); and citizen-based forms (collaborative news-blogs) (Siapera, 2012). What is more, all of these changes have come, quite literally, at the expense of big media, which have frequently seen their power diminished, their business model undermined, and their credibility questioned. Critics of the increased conglomeration and concentration of media ownership must surely feel assuaged. Indeed, this appears to be a story of David and Goliath, with the big media Goliaths brought to their knees by bloggers and engaged citizen-journalists everywhere.

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