essay topic - week 9 task

Now we have to write an essay by week 12, October 22nd. We have to choose one from these six essay topics:

1. Discuss the impact of TWO of the following figures on the development of digital technologies and digital culture: Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, William Gibson, Kevin Mitnick, Alan Turing, Ray Kurzweil, J.C.R. Licklider, Douglas Engelbart.
2. Explain what Creative Commons is and, using examples, show how it is different to other forms of copyright.
   
   
3. Why is privacy such a contentious issue for internet users? Discuss with reference to at least ONE social network service (or other web2.0 service).
4. Is the “virtual community” (Rheingold, 1993) a useful way of understanding contemporary online life? Discuss using one example of an online community OR a video game world (Virtual community is not to be confused with a “social network” site).
5. How do social media change our understanding of individual identity, with regard to the kinds of people we have in our social networks?
6. Increasingly mobile devices are an aid to the gathering and reporting of information, both by professional journalists and “citizen journalists”. Outline the advantages and disadvantages of this sort of news gathering. How might it impact on journalistic practices and news values and ethics?

No 2 and 6 are both very interesting to me, but I think I am going to choose number six question about the mobile journalism. As a photojournalism and media study student, it is a very interesting discussion. The photographer does not even require a laptop computer to send their high quality images to editors these days, as there are mobile devices which allow their images to send from their cameras directly to the Internet. I heard the media rooms of the big sporting events are getting smaller and smaller as editors do not have to be on the actual sites anymore. These mobile tools of the journalists are changing the world in many different dimensions.

Mobile communication tools, such as mobile phones and laptop computers have been making the journalism world totally different. Many news channels on the TV are now showing the footage captured by these mobile devices. Do you remember this video when we had a Tusnami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka on the Boxing day( December 26th) in  2004?





The people who were enjoying their Christmas holiday at the resort took this footage with her personal video camera, and this video was broadcast all over the world. I remember I saw it so many times on our local TV stations. This kind of footage, being right there on the natural disaster, is almost impossible to capture by the professional journalists. There is a huge advantage on citizen journalism when something like this happens.

Because of web2.0 and interactive Internet abilities, citizen journalism which is the news stories posted by everyday people have been getting very popular.

I have to do research about a few famous websites of citizen journalism such as CNN iReport (http://ireport.cnn.com/) to start with. Then I have to find a few academic journals arguing citizen journalism, and find out the pros and cons about news from non professional people.

I might have to define journalism and professionalism as well.


Well, I will post my essay on this blog before the due day, so see you soon in a couple weeks!!