We Are All Stupider!

Andrew Keen’s chapter “the noble amateur” takes a deeper look into amateur journalism on the internet. While this is the first I’ve read of Keen, I am fairly confident that he would agree with me that the internet has made us all more stupid. Although the reading really only covers the pitfalls of amateur journalism, including misinformation and real-media expendability, I want to delve deeper into the effects amateur journalism and the internet in general have on society as a whole.

For starters, Keen makes several good points that I have found to be evident in our class. Keen claims that bloggers and other amateur journalists “are the digital equivalent of online gated communities where all the people have identical views and the whole conversation is mirrored in a way that is reassuringly familiar.” So our professor goes online to talk to other popular culture professors about what she should put on her syllabus. She has found a community that she is comfortable in because they share many of the same points of view, or POV in internet slang. Well here’s the problem with that, that’s one side of the popular culture argument. Keens article is the first example that we have looked over that is challenging the ideas of popular culture. This class has become an environment where the internet can do no wrong, has no downside. Going online to a community that shares liberal ideals concerning internet use by society makes it seem like we are learning biased information, which we are. Keen is giving the other side to the internet that we have yet to and probably won’t even touch in this class. Amateur journalism is an unreliable source of information as often times the knowledge is skewed and based off of public opinion then passed off as truth. Though there are biases in mainstream media, the resources and connections they have trump that of amateur journalist.

Mainstream media has also fallen victim to amateur journalism. Whether it is Wikipedia forcing Britannica to lay-off workers or media having to clarify rumors spread by bloggers, the role of mainstream is taking a hit. After the Tsunami that destroyed the surrounding areas of the Indian Ocean, amateurs started claiming to have taken pictures of the destruction which major newspapers began to publish. In this article published online, http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=195680&area=/insight/insight__columnists/, it shows the newspapers that had to apologize because it used these pictures taken by amateurs that ended up being fake. Thus, showing a major pitfall of amateur journalism, who are you supposed to believe? We as a society are more stupid because we are ignorant to the fact that information posted on blogs and Wikipedia is generally an opinion opposed to factual information.