1. What is the Current network and how does it aim to
democratize television? How does this relate to convergence culture?
The current network was created
for citizen journalists and aims to democratize television by
giving citizens control to communicate and share their voice. It relates
to convergence culture because citizen journalists are using different
types of media while blogging and creating statuses about various
topics.
2.The “critical pessimists” focus primarily on the obstacles to
achieving a more democratic society, namely the power of big media. While the
author acknowledges that media concentration is a real problem, is there still
hope for a more participatory media culture?
There is still hope for a more participatory culture because
everything is going online and entering the digital world. Allowing peoples
voices and opinions to be heard is create a substantial amount of
participation. Today, social media is the norm for our society and we keep
progressing since everything we use is accessible online.
3. While we don’t have any models for what a mature,
fully realized knowledge culture would look like, the author describes some
prototypes. Describe one or two of the prototypes that you find of interest and
explain why you think these are good examples (global frequency, smart mobs,
adhocracies, long tail, subscription-based).
One of the protypes I found interesting was the long tail
because it is very exciting that ordinary people have a significant voice in
how much success a company experiences. People now have a say in anything
that is really produced by the company and this is an improvement because
people will gain more information a specific topic that they are interested in
rather than focusing on something they do not care for.
4. Why is Wikipedia a good example of an adhocracy (or
knowledge culture) and how is this approach different than the intellectual
property of the mass media?
Wikipedia is a good example of an adhocracy because it allows anyone
to contribute information that has no limit. It is gives citizen journalists
authority and offers a great number of topics that improve our knowledge. This
approach is different than the intellectual property of mass media because the
information is shared by everyone and there is not authoritarian
overruling who can control what content.
5) Where does the power of participation come from, why is it
an important political right, and do we still have a participation gap as a
society?
The power of participation comes from our need to communicate
with each other but also establishing our own signature in the online world. It
is an important political right because it is in our constitution that we
have freedom of speech. We still have a participation gap as a society
because we have different ideas, however there are still some places that do
not give the same control to people with technology. Therefore not all of our
voices will be heard and some people do not even have an interest in
participating in the digital world.
