E-vigilantes. Here I thought I was just another opinionated blogger but I can be a new superhero, Dennis Rogers' e-vigilante. What a great idea!
Vigilantes in real life can be somewhat of a hazard. Hauling suspects out of jails and hanging them is frowned on these days. I think we can all agree that behavior has no place in civil society.
But an e-vigilante - what kind of individual would that be? Well, the person in question would have to be very sure of their convictions, like the real world vigilante. And this person would want to take an action based on their convictions. And this person would try to persuade others of the rightness of their ideas. And this person would be operating in the virtual world of the internet, giving the 'e' prefix. Hmm, so no actual harm would come to anyone from this person's actions, but he or she would be forcefully expressing opinions in a public forum...Holy keyboards, Batman! It's free speech! With a new action hero label!
Like Superman, E-vigilante seems to have arrived just in time. As main stream newspapers are turning to fluff pieces on the front page and limited reporting of hard news with little fact checking, our new hero saves the day. He or she asks hard questions, is skeptical of official and government announcements, participates in online debates with others of opposite opinions, challenges sources of information, seeks out and provides conflicting information while looking for answers, proposes new theories for discussion, and more. Everyone can read these ideas and is free to respond.
Welcome to the blogosphere, also called netroots. It's a free for all. You'll find unscrupulous vendors trying to disguise a sales pitch as an ordinary person's comment. Idiots post insulting comments, usually resulting in administrators banning them from future discussion. Conspiracy theorists suggest the most outrageous connections and plots. As the man said, bring it on. This is the greatest town hall/barbershop/street corner discussion ever invented. Someone suggested that I shut off my computer? That really would be like crawling into a dark cave and getting out of the light of limitless information. In blogs and online forums are people just like you asking questions and having discussion. Typically, folks provide links to online information they've used in forming their opinions. If you want to look it up, you can decide for yourself how accurate or reliable the source. Note that retractions on the internet are printed in the same size typefont as the original information - not always the case with blaring newspaper headlines. And if you don't put out a retraction of wrong information, someone else will point out your error for you.
From LittleGreenFootballs to DailyKos, a wide spectrum of political ideology provides commentary on all the important news of the day. Then, the discussion takes off - with netizens providing related stories or information, questioning the party line, and the older members among us giving historical background. In the 20th century, we looked to the news media, the fourth estate, for its ability to frame political issues. But current journalism has turned away from objectivity as a goal in news reporting. The focus of today's main stream media is entertainment and audience share. I feel our community and consumer watchdog has been neutered. Fortunately, rescue is online. E-vigilantes of the virtual world, proliferate!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment