However, while blogs have created hundreds of prominent new voices in the national media, social networking sites like twitter have only reinforced the position of people and institutions who were already prominent in other media.  Not a single person has risen to become a prominent national media figure just through their tweeting.  However, popular TV shows, musicians, and politicians have gained two million followers or more through the medium.
Given this, it is a legitimate worry that the decline of blogging, and the rise of social networking, will mean that the media status quo that was once threatened by the Internet will now be reinforced by it.  Rather than new media functioning as a democratizing force, it  could become yet another tool of the status quo.  Maybe once in a while it will be used by street demonstrators against a totalitarian regime, as it was in Iran, but most of the time it will just make the already famous and the already dominant even more so.
–via “Social networking sites reinforce the status quo“

Those are the conclusions that Chris Bowers  draws from a report by the Pew Internet Centers on Social Media and Young Adults that finds that blogging is on the decline among teenage users of the Internet. Teens are also commenting less on blogs. Use among older Americans, on the other hand, remains the same.
Bowers is probably right in assuming that in the long term we are looking at the decline in blogging overall.  It’s worth noting that teens are not turning to twitter, as the survey shows only 8% of Internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 use twitter. So the often heard complaint that twitter is the death of English grammar, is simply not true. If we have to look somewhere for those dropped articles, words spelled without vowels, and total disregard for any kind of grammatical rules, we probably need to look at text messaging which is done by 62% of online teens, or instant messaging.
What is on the rise, is social networking.   According to pew, “73% of wired American teams now use social networking websites.”   Social networking websites, for the uninitiated, are sites like Facebook, MySpace,  LinkedIn and an ever-growing number of specialized websites  that  are exclusively for, or have a social networking component.
Bowers worries that the shift away from blogging to social networking will prevent new voices from emerging  as they were allowed to do in the early days of this phenomenon, and thus reinforce the status quo.   I think he’s right about the first part, at least potentially, but I’m not so sure about the second.  Rather than reinforcing the status quo, I think this trend could lead to further fragmentation of public opinion and increasingly uncivil discourse.
Once upon a time virtually all Americans  got their news from a similar set of sources. There were local affiliates of three major television networks; at least one local newspaper, perhaps more, depending on the size of the market; a handful of radio stations that sometimes ran nationally syndicated programming;  and a lively and diverse publishing industry. It was to the latter that most people turn for diversity of opinion, since it was so varied and diverse. The danger of having such a limited number of outlets is  that they can be more easily manipulated and controlled, but on the other hand people at least had a common set of information to talk about.
Today the local print newspaper is struggling and it is unlikely that it is locally owned. More likely it is owned by a media conglomerate that may or may not also own media broadcast outlets, though not in the same market. This is subject to FCC regulations, currently in flux due to an FCC review and legal challenges.
Print journalism is struggling, people get their news from a variety for sources, and are less and less likely to buy a newspaper for news. The internet has surpassed newspapers as a source of news, and they think of content on the internet as free. It’s a bit of a vicious circle, but as circulation drops, advertising revenues drop, as advertising revenues drop, papers cut back on staff and run more syndicated content, thus making themselves less relevant as news gatherers and reporters and less distinctive as a publication. They then continue to become less attractive to purchase, and the downward spiral continues. Newspapers are reducing staff or worse, closing their doors. Click here to see a visual representation of just how many.
Science is always praiseworthy if it is used viagra ordination for the betterment of their erection health. Also, take help of some music, lighting or fragrance that can evoke your mood and take you away from secretworldchronicle.com viagra sale your favorite sport, hobby or going out with family or friends. Not many sportsmen can bounce back so Visit Website cialis discount pharmacy readily after making huge mistakes which very nearly cost him the rest of his career. It also boosts quality sperm count and sperm motility. canadian pharmacy viagra For a while it looked as it they are being replaced by the blogosphere, then it looked like blogs and news aggregators like Google News.  Now, according to the article above, it is looking like social media. The internet is profoundly democratic in that it levels the playing field of discourse. When I push the “Publish” button in my installation of Word Press I will, indeed, have published the opinions in this piece. Theoretically, and provided we preserve net neutrality, they have an equal chance of being picked up as anyone’s, though I might have done better to put this posting in a site people already read for other content. But the truth is that most people who read this are going to be people I know or people who already know they agree with me. And therein lies the problem. The proliferation of sources has led to wider divisions between people of differing opinions. Whether your sympathies lie with the tea party movement or the administration of President Obama you could conceivably spend every waking minute of your day consuming media that only differed from your already formed opinion in specifics and details.
All of this is leading toward a crisis. There is a lot of gnashing of teeth and lamentation about partisanship in Washington, but I think that is only a reflection of something that is going on in society. Increasingly people who hold a given opinion listen only to others and hear only facts that support that opinion. When they see someone reflected a different viewpoint, it is only in order for that person to be attacked.
I don’t know how much people turn to social networks for news. Bowers may be overestimating that because social networks are, more often than not, personal. But to the extent that they become sources for news they will even further isolate people of differing opinions from one another.
More than that, we are losing one of the most important mechanisms our society has for holding power accountable, the press and the media. For the most part the blogosphere relies pretty heavily on traditional media for its news. And as they keep pointing out, the sites like Google News that so many have come to depend on for news simply brings together content from traditional sources.
The top six sources are The New York Times (newspaper), The Guardian (newspaper), The Wall Street Journal (newspaper), The Washington Post (newspaper), CNN (television) and the Telegraph (newspaper). I just opened up my browser to Google News and the first six stories I see are from The Washington Post, The Associated Press (a news syndicate), WQAD (radio), Wall Street Journal, New York Times and CBS News (television).
Nearly all of those outlets have cut back their news staff somewhat in the last 18 months or so. The New York Times cut back approximately 100 jobs at the end of last year, and The Guardian approximately the same number around the same time. The Wall Street Journal cut about two dozen newsroom jobs just this month, and The Washington Post is trying to avoid further cuts after so many last year, and the editorial staff of The Telegraph was reduced last year. There were also layoffs at the Associated Press.
And now the newsrooms of 2 of the 3 major broadcast networks, CBS and ABC are making major cuts in newsroom staff. Newsrooms were once the untouchable mark of pride for a broadcast network. You simply didn’t cut their operations or budgets. More than that, the news was part of the programming that helped them fulfill legal obligations to provide public-service programming. Now they, too, are being cut.
So who is gathering the news? Who is doing the investigative reporting? Citizen journalism is an inspiring movement, but your average blogger simply doesn’t have the resources for research and investigation. And therein lies the problem. Angry people are firing one another up based on empty rhetoric with fewer and fewer sources of facts and information to build on. A crisis in the making. We need to find a way to pay for the news.  The NPR series On the Media does interesting programs on this topic regularly.  Check them out.
Another interesting report, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” was published in October by the Columbia Journalism Review.
It’s vexing. What do you think about all of this? Am I overreacting?