Filed under: Uncategorized
In Wikinomics, authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams ask a series of thought-provoking questions: …Wouldn’t businesses be more productive if they could reach outside their walls to harness the insights and energies of a vast network of peers that converge around shared interests and goals. If so, how would the traditional corporation change? And what new business models could be built on this new collaborative approach to producing goods and services? Having worked for an international news corporation several years ago, I thought of how these questions pertain to major media conglomerates, specifically news outlets.
Today, journalists play an important role in society, as they have done for hundreds of years. In the 1700’s, authors of the Federalist Papers advocated the ratification of the Constitution. Even today, the Papers serve as the primary source of interpretation for the document that is studied in classrooms and is abided by our president and members of the government. The strife of slavery can be best captured in the letters slaves wrote to members of their families, detailing their unthinkable living conditions and their hopeful thoughts of freedom. In 1972, one of the most monumental moments in journalistic history occurred, as Richard Nixon stepped down as the president of the United States. Nixon was forced to resign after Washington Post reporters, Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealed that Nixon’s staff broke into the Watergate Hotel to retrieve illegal documents.
Writers have captured the crucial moments American history. They’ve created the foundation of which our country is built around—stories. However, it seems that journalists are no longer the only storytellers. Implementing the advice of Tapscott and Williams, news organizations have now turned to their audiences to report on the stories. On CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, viewers are able to submit raw video, pictures, and audio sound bytes of the news as they see it occurring. On CNN, you can find stories covering a variety of subjects including the erratic Midwest weather, raising a child with autism, and Washington, DC’s cherry blossom festival. On Fox News.com, individuals can actually select which show under which they want to submit their videos. Some telecasts have devoted the last block of time to playing viewer stories. MSNBC has a Web site tab called “First Person.” The current highlighted feature includes funny travel photos from family vacations, honeymoons, and business trips.
Scoble and Israel would praise this approach to journalism. “Open the doors, let the public in!” they would say. And while it seems sensible have the story tellers be those who see the story happen, what kind of impact will this first-person reporting have on journalism? Will the Walter Cronkites of the world soon disappear? How reliable will information be when individuals are no longer held accountable? Will news outlets that are seen as biased or unreliable regain a positive reputation?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Mass Collaboration, Naked Conversations, Smart Mobs, Summer Reading, The Search, Wikinomics
Last night my mom, a teacher, told me about the failure of high school summer reading assignments. The boring titles that the fifty-year-old teachers were selecting for their adolescent pupils were not resonating with the audience, and students were spending more time discovering ways they could avoid reading the book while still getting an “A” on the assignment. They’d spend hours of their time Googling the book’s title, reviewing different Web sites that mentioned their assigned reading and determining whether these landing pages were legit.
Several months ago, a group of teachers at the school in which my mom works got together to brainstorm ways in which the summer reading assignments would actually be read by students .Because their same old ideas were no longer working, the teachers invited a group of students to the meeting. As the instructors began launching into diatribes about the importance of reading classics like Huckleberry Finn and Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, the teenagers started nodding off, some even resting their heads on the desk.
Finally, in an attempt to be somewhat productive, one teacher asked the group of students, “What would make you actually read the summer books?”
One student scrunched his eyebrows and blurted out, “Why can’t we be the ones picking the books?”
The teachers, clad in their button down shirts and jean jumpers, sat stunned. Why had no one ever thought of this solution? Perhaps it would be wise for those doing the reading to have some say in the assignment.
Before the meeting adjourned, the group decided that the student committee would make a list of 10 books that they would enjoy reading over the summer vacation. The books had to be somewhat enlightening and had to meet a minimum page requirement. The students were told to select a novel that was appropriate for classroom discussions. Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life wouldn’t fly.
Within weeks, the students developed a list of books that the teachers split up among themselves. One teacher remarked in a follow-up meeting, “I actually enjoyed what I read. It reminded me a lot of the students who I teach.”
Like, duh.
What these teachers realized was that students were much more responsive and enthusiastic when presented with an opportunity to participate in their education. These individuals just wanted to have some say in what they were being forced to read.
Mass collaboration anyone?
Although Tapscott and Williams were the first of those authors in our readings who defined this concept, they weren’t the only ones who’ve discovered it. Throughout this semester, we’ve been reading selections from authors who advocate this same phenomenon. From Naked Conversations to Smart Mobs to The Search. All of these individuals are essentially screaming, “HEY PEOPLE, LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE ALL WORK TOGETHER ON SOMETHING?”
The results are impressive. Internet companies like ebay, Wikipedia, and YouTube all include content that is created by the site’s denizens. How expensive does this cost those who are hosting these pages? Zippo. How much of a role does users’ participation play in determining the success of a World Wide Web page? A whole heckofa lot.
As is evident from the anecdotal example provided above, the positive results of mass collaboration are not limited to internet companies or Web sites. Imagine if a company was developing a vacation policy and instead of charging the head honchos with this task, they asked representatives from different department to work collaboratively on designing a policy that would actually work for employees? Or why doesn’t the administrator of a nursing home ask the residents for suggestions when planning the monthly menu instead of depending on ideas from state health departments and recycling old options that have been proven unfavorable? How much of an effect would this phenomenon have our on society at large if more people practiced mass collaboration?
