A LEAKED STORY IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH.

"The truth will always win."
Powerful words, by an even more powerful man- who has the ability to access thousands of secret documents illegally, in order to educate the public of what the big guys are keeping from us.

In a bid to further my knowledge on the story behind the Wikileaks phenonenom, I typed the words 'wikileaks' and 'julian assange' into two seperate browser searches and was absolutely bombarded with results. A total of 21 million on the creator of Wikileaks, and 125 million on the site itself, all within 0.22 seconds. By entering the Wikileaks official site, every Tom, Dick and Harry have access to thousands of videos and documents deemed "private" or "secret"by large-scale commercial media organizations. The main issue here seems to be how the information is obtained by Assange and his co-workers.

Nobody likes a hacker. The thought of somebody being able to access my bank details and usernames/ passwords without being in the same room (or country) as me sends shivers down my spine. There is absolutely nothing ethical about hacking- it removes peoples privacy and is simply illegal. However, when the hacking is done for the greater good of society, that's when things get tricky. There is nothing okay with how Wikileaks hackers obtain their information, but after viewing the military shooting video in class this week I say hack away Assange, hack away.

"JOURNALISM IS A ROUGH DRAFT OF HISTORY"- BUT: HAS JOURNALISM BECOME HISTORY?

Citizen journalism allows every member of society to share opinion, report news and provide information and stories for others. But the debate still lies as to whether this freedom is a threat, or a godsend. Long gone are the days where a fully qualified, professional journalist reports to us breaking news every night at 6pm. Well, the journalists are still there every night on our television screens at 6, the audience however are elsewhere. We are logged on to our online library of information where amateur journalists keep us up to date, minute-by-minute of breaking news.

With citizen journalism, we are each entitled to share images, video and stories online, and have it be read. The problem, however, lies in the credibility of the information we are being provided.

When it comes to sourcing news and information, most of us are simply seeking convenience; hence citizen journalism is a convenient way of reading the news (anywhere, at anytime). The struggle lies when traditional forms of media such as newspaper and magazines are unable to keep up to date with the ever- evolving media consumption patterns of their audiences, and hence lose out to the more contemporary forms of media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Before we go jumping on the next blog we see that’s claiming to report us the truth, we should probably take a step back and remember who the originals tend to do it best. After all, isn’t that why we are at university?

IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE: THE REALITY OF THE ONLINE LIBRARY

I still remember being in 7^th grade, and receiving an assessment task for Science. The task was to choose an animal, and find as much information as I could on the chosen animal, presenting it on a large piece of cardboard, with pictures included. So, I went home that afternoon and trawled through the hundreds of Encycolpedia Brittanica and Reader’s Digest books on our bookcase. Some books, dating back to when my parents were teenagers; our home study was an archive for every year since 1973. In fact, every assessment in junior high school was completed by sourcing information from books, because that was how information was sourced five years ago.

Today, however- every single piece of information we may ever need to access can be found by loading the Google homepage. Individuals in our society would prefer to download an application allowing them free access to hundreds of books on their phones rather than actually visiting a book store to purchase a book. For the past two years that I have been at university, I have not touched a single book for information for an assessment- all of it has been online. Is it that we are too lazy to get up and find the information ourselves? The convenience of e-books seems to be making it difficult to choose a bookstore over Amazon.com.

It’s sad to think that professional writers will soon be selling themselves short, offering their books on iBooks for $1.99. But then again, we created this mess didn’t we?

CONVERGENCE ALL DAY LET'S US WORK, BROADCAST AND PLAY

Convergence culture is the new black. And everyone's doing it. Differing forms of media used to be reached using different channels, consuming our hours day after day. But nowadays, I just pick up my iPhone and I can do pretty much everything...

It's scary how much that just sounded like a marketing pitch for Apple. But that's what I've become: a walking, talking iPhone promoter- only without the perks of a sales job. And it seems that everyone around me has too. If you don't have an iPhone, I'll show you all the reasons you should invest in one. If you do have an iPhone, our conversation will probably consist of comparing apps, updating twitter, checking in to our location and checking the next week's weather together.

It's strange to think that 5 years ago all we could do with a phone was text, call and play snake. In relation to our media use, Jenkins states “This circulation of media content—across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders—depends heavily on consumers’ active participation.” We are going to see convergence becoming more and more predominant in our lives in the following years, not just we like it- because soon we'll need it. We are to become addicts to the drug that is mixed media, (the sum of all forms of media combined) and without our dear little friend convergence, we may just have to lift a finger in order to find out what's going on in the world.


Jenkins, H. (2006). 'Worship at the altar of convergence: A new paradigm for understanding media change'. In H. Jenkins, Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide (pp 1-24). New York: New York University Press. [URL:http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/0814742815intro.pdf]