It's been discussed before, the connection between blogging (and other 'open' publishing aspects of web culture), and the emergence or rise of a DIY culture. If we link these suggestions with journalism, there seem to be quite a few examples of 'Do-It-Yourself Journalism' - some of which have been specifically attributed to the 9/11 attacks in the United States according to a 2002 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Quoting this report: "Those seeking news on the Web have unprecedented access to the basic evidence that makes up many news stories, and can become journalists themselves on narrow topics. Blogs may be the most prominent example of “do-it-yourself journalism,” but any Internet user can investigate the facts of a story without leaving the living room."

Indeed, in a discussion piece in the Online Journalism Review (24.09.02) Dan Gillmore is quoted as claiming: "Weblogs are certainly part of the process that adds up to journalism. I'm talking about the trend of do-it-yourself journalism. We think of journalism in terms of this late 20th Century model of mass media, where gatekeepers gather news from sources and send it out to readers [SNIP] There's this blurring of lines and I don't know where it's going to come out, but I do know that something major is going on that is bringing journalism from the top down and the bottom up."

What seems to be important here is the interconnectedness of offline and online media phenomena - creating a spill-over effect. It raises interesting questions: if people online are adopting some or all of the characteristics of journalism, how is journalism in turn socially shaped by the characteristics of open publishing?

Following up on the possible links between blogging and democracy - been reading Clay Shirky's (08.02.03) observations about weblogging as a social system, and therefore inevitable displaying inequality: "Inequality occurs in large and unconstrained social systems for the same reasons stop-and-go traffic occurs on busy roads, not because it is anyone's goal, but because it is a reliable property that emerges from the normal functioning of the system. The relatively egalitarian distribution of readers in the early years had nothing to do with the nature of weblogs or webloggers. There just weren't enough blogs to have really unequal distributions. Now there are."

Yesterday's post suggested open publishing is non-hierarchical - which is correct from a technological or instrumental perspective, but socially speaking blogging is most definitely 'unequal'. Perhaps this makes blogging even more democratic - as democracy is inherently unequal too, as it is most commonly based on the premise that anybody who is eligible to vote (unequality #1) can elect from a select number of people (#2) a group of politicians that will make decisions for everybody (#3) in a certain period of time (#4). The point is, that this kind of professionalization of politics (and the news media reporting on it) displays a similar unequality, while at the same time displaying some kind of openness (through elections, town hall meetings, public polling, and so on).

And another thought on an earlier post, about journalism (or: media) as conversation: just read John Durham Peters thoughtful paper on conversation and democracy, where he signals "a deep skepticism about the naturalness of conversation", as he argues: "Conversation is no more free of history, power, and control than any other form. It is a style of communication that can be demotic and playful, invigorating and demanding, but certainly not exhaustive of the communicative forms native to either our species or to democratic life."

The conversational, DIY and participatory digital culture of which weblogs are an exponent cannot be a substitute for either democracy, politics or the press. Or...?

To some, journalism and democracy are interdependent. If blogging and journalism (can) come together, what does this mean for democracy? What kind of democracy are we talking about in a collaborative, (seemingly) non-hierarchical open publishing environment?

Check out this paper on 'emergent democracy' for inspiration - courtesy of the Blog.org archives on weblog postings and papers.

Took a couple of days off... Hey, it was Queensday over here. In the meantime, been thinking more about the undercurrents of the weblog phenomenon - better yet: the coming era of participatory news as Dale Peskin calls it.

Peskin thinks the key to understanding the road ahead (a wonderful Bill Gates metaphor): "communication is king, not content." It is the same thing Andrew Odlyzko wrote (in a 2001 issue of the excellent First Monday ezine) about "the primacy of connectivity over content."

NYU's Jay Rosen has tried (25.03.04) to pull blogging into the realm of 'real' journalism and traditional views on democracy and the public sphere. That is wonderful. But by playing the definition game, we are trying to push a trend back into the holes where we came from, instead of letting it loose. If the weblog is an amplification of an undercurrent already 'out there' in the (offline) world, we need to connect to that current, rather than discuss it in terms of the currents we are already familiar with.

The issue of conntectivity and communication sounds promising enough to pursue. Journalism as a conversation? Risto Kunelius' work on the topic is insightful. The Finnish scholar suggests the popularity of 'dialogical' types of journalism can be explained by: "the failure of mainstream serious journalism to address the experiences of people in a meaningful way."

To be continued...