Different role-playings in different places

Networked media help make community a better place

It is known to all that one of the most important principles of newsworthy is the proximity. Especially local newspapers should lay much emphasis on local communities in order to catch people’s attentions. So, community is both the sources and audiences of media.

In my opinion, the biggest difference between media and networked media is the internet. In comparison to non-wired community, more people are known and participating, which facilitates discussion and mobilization around local issues. And about the community, if we see it at a higher level, the whole state and country could also be referred to as a community. And whatever it is a small or big community, the networked mainstream news media play the same positive role in all of them.

In developed countries like America, the work networked media do is to enable almost all the people to supervise the government in time and to provide a more convenient and faster platform for more people to speak out ideas to make their community a better place. While, the positive function seems to reduce its own power in my own country, China. As I mentioned lots of times already, unlike America, where freely speech of media is under the protection under the First Amendment, Chinese traditional media, including print, TV and radio are all under strict sensor of government till now. Therefore network mainstream news media may have relatively a little more freedom to speak, but still cannot escape the fate under control. Please do not be confused, last time I said it is the internet, not the network news media, which gives people more rights to speak.

As to the innovation part, the idea to combine the informatics and journalism to better serve the people and communities from the Nieman’s report is excellent. For example, citizens would complain about flooding in their neighborhood on local media websites. Diligent text mining of that public comment could show who and where it is coming from and whether comments and frustration have increased over time. By text-mining public officials’ comments, public documents, and news articles, a comparison could show whether and how well the city responded to the neighborhood’s concerns—and it could also discover the public officials’ excuses. Of course, it won’t work in China as well.