As this research report will show, North Koreans today are learning more about the outside world than at any time since the founding of the country. North Korea is consistently ranked by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders as the country with the least free media in the world. This ranking reflects the country's complete lack of an independent domestic media, its legal restrictions against accessing foreign media and the harsh punishments it metes out against citizens who violate those restrictions. Yet, since the late 1990s the information environment in North Korea has undergone significant changes. Although the media environment remains extremely restricted by international standards, North Koreans' access to outside media has grown considerably over the past two decades. Many inside the country continue to develop new ways to access information while avoiding the ever-present risk of detection and punishment.
posted by DiesIrae
on Dec 11, 2012 -
13 comments
Fungible: A treatise on fungibility, or, a framework for understanding the mess the news industry is in and the opportunities that lie ahead.
The younger the person you ask, the less likely it is you’ll find that link between wanting to know what’s going on and grabbing a paper or opening up a news website. They use Pinterest to figure out what’s fashionable and Facebook to see if there’s anything fun going on next weekend. They use Facebook just the same to figure out whether there’s anything they need to be upset about and need to protest against.
posted by shakespeherian
on May 11, 2012 -
25 comments
Is SEO killing America? Clay Johnson about how media gives us what we want, not what we need, and how it's destroying democracy. If you don't have time or can't watch a 17 minute video, read
this article discussing and summarizing the video.
posted by desjardins
on Mar 2, 2012 -
88 comments
Right Wing astroturfing A non-scientific analysis of the patterns in forum board discussions on a variety of topics. The gist: discussions of issues in which there's money at stake (like
climate change,
public health and corporate
tax avoidance) are often characterised by amazing levels of abuse and disruption by rightwing libertarians who are pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Discussions of issues in which there's little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilised than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions.
posted by novenator
on Dec 20, 2010 -
79 comments
Restoring Journalism Maureen Tkacik talks about her life as a journalist, the nothing-based economy, and the future of journalism. She suggests abandoning authority and productively channeling narcissism. (via
2p &
dd)
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Jun 12, 2010 -
18 comments
Misreading Tehran: Leading Iranian-American writers revisit a year of dreams and discouragement. "With a full 12 months now between us and the election, the time is ripe to start revisiting the hype and hope in a year of writing: which stories were overblown, what stories were missed entirely, and what can be gleaned about Iran's
annus horribilis from a more thorough understanding.
FP asked seven prominent Iranian-Americans, deeply immersed in both the English- and Persian-language media, to look through the fog of journalism at what actually happened in Tehran -- and why so many of us got it so wrong."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jun 8, 2010 -
29 comments
Corey Arcangel is perhaps the internet's most
infamous hack,
masher-upper,
digi/net artist.
His work stands for a
growing culture of artists who
run wildly through
animated GIF landscapes populated with corrupted
data-compressed bunny rabbits and tinny, MIDI
renditions of Savage Garden ballads. As the
Lisson Gallery, London, opens its archives to Arcangel's curatorial eye, could digi/net
art be set to
infect the real,
fleshy world, like a rampant
Conficker Worm? Has
YouTube become the truest reflection of our
anthropological selves? Are we destined to roam the int3erw£bs like the
mythic beasts of yore, hoping,
in time, that
digi art can free us from the confines of this fleshy void?
[...
previously]
posted by 0bvious
on Dec 8, 2009 -
20 comments
Crap Detection 101 Howard Rheingold offers a fairly in-depth primer on media and internet BS detection.
Lots of links to resources for enabling critical analysis of various information sources included.
posted by telstar
on Jun 30, 2009 -
17 comments
My, how the tables have turned: Many of the same daily newspaper correspondents that not too long ago turned up their noses at us online journalism pioneers, claiming we weren't "real" journalists, now fill my email box daily with their resumes, looking to me and others like me to provide them with work. ... Memo to my remaining daily print colleagues and their nostalgia club: Get over it and get over yourselves. It’s not that the Internet is Mr. Wonderful. Much of it mimics the same bad qualities that drove the public away from daily newspapers. You lost the public to us because - there's no nice or sugar-coated way to say it - you guys really suck at what you do. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on May 12, 2009 -
95 comments
NPR's On The Media presents a short set of pieces about comments on news websites and the challenges of "digital democracy," with
discussion from Ira Glass about responses to a show about teenage runaways, and New Republic editor and critic
Lee Siegel, who posted anonymously to respond insultingly to comments on his own blog. And a
Roanoke newspaper editor discusses how one paper sees the integration of comments into online news sites and whether it's a valuable reader service.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Jul 27, 2008 -
67 comments
People of the Web --very well done short video profiles of interesting people online. Mike Rogers of
blogactive is on the front page now. Links to previous profiles are on the right, including Kirk Cameron, Caleb Shikles, Sherman Austin, and Josh Wolf.
posted by amberglow
on Jun 1, 2007 -
3 comments
News Sniffer. It's a site dedicated to monitoring news articles and discussion threads at the BBC. For censored comments from BBC news threads:
Watch Your Mouth. And now it has implementation that tracks changes in news articles, to see how things are edited:
Revisionista. Here's a
couple of
examples.
posted by gsb
on Sep 11, 2006 -
5 comments
Narrow Casting: This article describes the trend of narrowcasting, a media consumption pattern in which users increasingly turn to specialized, often web-produced media content and away from professionally mass-marketed content shown on TV and sold in record and video stores. [Via Aldaily.com]
posted by gregb1007
on Dec 22, 2005 -
12 comments
Osama bin Laden,
littérateur and new-media star. A thought-provoking analysis of bin Laden's adept use of Koranic language and the Internet by Bruce B. Lawrence, an Islamic scholar at Duke who edited a new anthology of bin Laden's public statements called
Messages to the World. The Western media -- says the millionaire mass-murderer
formerly trained as a useful ally by the CIA via
Pakistan's ISI -- "implants fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media are doing!" Know thy enemy.
[via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by digaman
on Nov 3, 2005 -
57 comments
Reflections On Our Media of Communication. Traditional news media vs. the internet. Are people really abandoning TV, paper, and radio news? Does the 'net really offer the best in free-press? The ever lovable Fred thinks so, and he's not afraid to tell you why.
posted by eas98
on Apr 22, 2004 -
14 comments
Here's A Really Neat "
Ask Slashdot" feature on how much we rely on the good 'ol Net for our daily dose of news and knowledge.
I've gradually abandoned almost all other sources of news, to the point where TV, magazines and news papers have pretty much disappeared from my life, but unlike the Slashdot guy, I still get a fair amount of "
Information" from books.
He's got a good question, and there are some really
Good Answers at Slashdot, but I'm curious about the mefites... "
Is the Internet Your Source of Knowledge?"
From his post:
"...but if I'm trying to look up something and can't find it online in a couple minutes I generally just blow it off, as if there's no other place to look. This realization seems sort of stunning. I'm very curious if other Slashdot readers have become dependent on the Internet to that level, and what their thoughts are on the subject." "
According to
a study Teens and young adults spend more time online than watching TV, and looking at
Other Studies, they all seem to point the same way.
Is print dead?
posted by Blake
on Oct 1, 2003 -
15 comments
Future of the Net: "Information wants to be free" vs. "truth costs extra" "...a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others....spoke of "tiered" service, where consumers would be charged according to "gold, silver and bronze" levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the "Digital Divide" in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company.
Anybody interested in other "non-mainstream" news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission." For more, see
The Center For Digital Democracy
posted by troutfishing
on Aug 5, 2003 -
38 comments
The War is about to Start and for those of us without a TV we are part of a grand experiment to see if we can be as well informed. According to
this Reuters article, Radio had World War II, Television had Vietnam, Cable TV had the Gulf War and now, the Internet may have the U.S. war with Iraq...reporters and producers with wireless laptops and handheld digital cameras will
file reports from battlefields and military installations. Cameras are at key locations for live feeds 24 hours a day. Interactive, 3-D maps will update troop movements, casualties and weapons used. ''You're combining the speed of television with the depth of print,'' says Mitch Gelman, executive producer of CNN.com. ''This could define how future wars are covered.'' (more inside)
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 19, 2003 -
19 comments
Want to listen to the World Series on the Web?
Pay $9.95. I know, it's a sports post, so (most) everyone will hate it, but I see a disturbing trend of no more free media lunches on the Web. CNN
went subscription months ago, and most other places I've gone for free video/audio are drying up. All I wanted was to listen to the game. But I can't find it anywhere. All the regular stations I listen to that carry the game are silent. And how will the Angels make a valiant comeback if I can't cheer them on? (sigh)
posted by TheManWhoKnowsMostThings
on Oct 26, 2002 -
25 comments
WebLogs bring less traffic than major media sites. There isn't any surprize there, but what
kind of traffic does each bring?
...those Google/Scientology articles I wrote didn't get nearly as many links from blogs... but they were of much broader interest to readers than the blog articles, so when a few major media sites linked to them, they got a ton of traffic.
Major media sites have to appeal to a common denominator, while smaller sites (MeFi) can focus on quality and thought provoking content. Is there any wonder there's less people interested in the specifics?
posted by KnitWit
on Apr 5, 2002 -
12 comments
