We the media 4

The last three chapters of We the Media were an interesting read and I learned quite a few things.  Chapter ten talked about defamation and libel and the law, and how most bloggers work is punditry, which means that it involves linking to someone else’s work, and then commenting on it, so it is hard to libel it. The chapter also talked about how bloggers tend to write about public figures. The chapter stated “You can’t libel a public figure, even if the story is false, unless you publish it with what’s called “malice,” which in this instance means either the standard definition of the word or indifference to whether the story is true or not.”  Chapter eleven was about copyright and cookies.  I have always heard about cookies but never knew what it meant when applied to the internet.  Apparently cookies was created in the mid-1990s by Netscape. Cookies are “little files placed on users’ computers that allowed the owner of a web site to track where visitors went, and when.”  There is both a good and a bad side of cookies.  The good side is that without them some personalized pages like yahoo would not exist, the bad side is that it basically spies on your every move on the internet.  Chapter twelve sums up the whole book, overall reading We the Media, got me to understand more about the world of on-line journalism, and learn how the internet is shaping and changing it every day. 

We the Media 4

We the Media 4

 

Recently, I finished Dan Gillmor’s book called “We the Media.” I really enjoyed reading this book because I learned numerous things about new media and especially the online medium. For this assignment we were asked to read the chapter 10, 11, and 12 in “We the Media.” Topics that really grabbed my attention in these chapters included discussions on misusing other people’s work, the freedom the internet has brought us, and why the internet has been the most important medium since the printing press.

 

I have to agree with Gillmor’s thoughts on how misusing other people’s work (cheating) is “harder to monitor [and that] cheating is rampant in our society” (paperback, pg. 200). It is frustrating that with the internet’s millions of users, come many individuals who plagiarize. However, journalists can take comfort in knowing that the “Net gives us a mechanism to catch the violators [with] search tools such as Google…and Turnitin software” (paperback, pg. 200).

 

Another topic Gillmor brings to his reader’s is that of freedom with the internet’s huge success. I loved how Gillmor states that “Cyber-liberty [extended] culture and information in powerful, even unprecedented, ways” (paperback, pg. 209). Personally, I feel as though the internet has given me an exceptional amount of cyber-liberty even if it is just through blogging or using an online social network such as Facebook.

 

Lastly, I found Gillmor’s explanation of why the internet has been the most important medium since the printing press to be fascinating. Simply put, Gillmor asserts that the internet “subsumes all that has come before and is, in the most fundamental way, transformative” (paperback, pg. 236). I find Gillmor’s use of words to explain how far the internet has come to be very true and valid.

 

I really enjoyed reading Dan Gillmor’s book. I hope I continue to learn new ways that new media impacts my life and my future!