creativeindustries.qut.com Gatewatching, Gatecrashing: Futures for Tactical News Media Dr Axel Bruns Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology

creativeindustries.qut.com Tactical Media Traditional vision: tactical vs. strategic activists vs. mainstream citizen journalists vs. industry journalists online vs. print and broadcast

creativeindustries.qut.com Two Tiers of Media Herbert Gans, 1980: Central (or first-tier) media would be complemented by a second tier of pre-existing and new national media, each reporting on news to specific, fairly homogeneous audiences. … They would devote themselves primarily to reanalysing and reinterpreting news gathered by the central media – and the wire services – for their audiences, adding their own commentary and backing these up with as much original reporting, particularly to support bottom-up, representative, and service news, as would be financially feasible. (Deciding Whats News, p. 318)

creativeindustries.qut.com Gatewatching Much tactical media is based on gatewatching: watching the output gates of news publications and other sources, in order to identify important material as it becomes available repurposing, recombining, recontextualising, reinterpreting mainstream news content discussing, debating, deliberating on the news providing multiperspectival insight and commentary acting as a corrective to the mainstream

creativeindustries.qut.com Yes, But… What happens next? two tiers now well established notable (but limited) effect of tactical media on the political process in some cases increasing interest in tactical media voices on mainstream media side: bloggers views as alternative to vox-pops move of key pundits from tactical to mainstream media mainstream attempts to systematically embrace tactical media (BBC blogs, Murdochs purchase of MySpace?)

creativeindustries.qut.com Beyond Tactics Diversification of approaches: emergence of tier intermediaries facilitating and moderating the engagement between both sides e.g. MediaChannel, Online OpinionMediaChannelOnline Opinion development of commercial editor-assisted gatewatching sites broad-based citizen gatewatching and open multiperspectival deliberation plus standardised editorial/production approach e.g. OhmyNews (Korea, international, Japan), Current.tvKoreainternationalJapanCurrent.tv

creativeindustries.qut.com Beyond News Sites New modes of access: entry through RSS feeds and aggregators (including Google News) diffusion of news reports beyond their site of origin – newssharing decline of the news brand? New modes of engagement and debate: increased interlinkage and commentary from off-site (links, Trackback, RSS aggregation) still limited engagement from mainstream media, though?

creativeindustries.qut.com Strategies for Tactical Media Making sure that second-tier voices are heard by and in the first tier gatecrashing, not gatewatching e.g. MediaChannels Media Access ToolkitMedia Access Toolkit but loses opportunity to explore different story formats note the mistakes of Wikinews danger of being swallowed by the mainstream? development of conduits which harvest citizen media content and feed it into the mainstream e.g. Technorati, Current.tv, …? potential for manipulation of the process – comment, link, and Trackback spam, viral news hoaxes establishing tactical media with commercial viability

creativeindustries.qut.com Beyond Tactical Media The post-Gansian mediasphere: increasing interaction between the tiers diversification, convergence, crossover? commercial interest in citizen media A new era: An end to strategies vs. tactics A beginning of … what?