Sunday, May 11, 2008

Labryan's Response to "Melindamarie Power to the People"

Melinda, I agree that the forum of blogging and citizen journalism has allowed the opinions of society to surface in a manner that is becoming more recognised by opinion leaders, such as politicans and organisations.

Your example of the Lynx advertising campaign expresses a niche in the blogging community. Sure, people were upset about the exploitation of women, so much so that they still continue to comment of their dislike. As Clement stated, “We are ‘lulled by the entertainment values which often replace news values’(Clement, 1986). This constant bad publicity inherited by the blogging community has in fact drawn further attention to the company and its future advertising campaigns.

Recently, in Australia there was outrage over the TV ad for U tampons which showed a lady with pet Beaver. The online blogging community was in outrage, and so the campaign was pulled from television. Highlighting what Bruns (2008) describes as the power of the participatory culture. However, if you go to YouTube and type in "The Beaver Ad" you will see that it has been watched by a large user base, raising the question - is all publicity good publicity? And are citizen journalists in fact aiding a new forum for advertising?

The problem is not the citizens covering the news from any particular ideological, political or religious vantage point, but the citizens distorting the news they're supposed to be reporting upon objectively (Jennings, 2002). But objectivity does not seem to be apparent in the blogging community which is ruled by opinion based journalism.

References

Bruns, A. (2008)KCB201 Citizen Journalism. Week 10 Podcast. accessed May 10, 2008, http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_29175_1

Clements,I.(1986) The ravenous half shut eye manufacturing bad news from nowhere, Media Information Australia, 39.

Jennings, D.(2002) Media Distorting Reality, accessed May 10, 2008, http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2002/020823

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