Sorry the picture really has nothing to do with this essay whatsoever.
...It goes with the title though ;)
Changing the Dynamics: The Press Sphere
The recent legislation against
Internet piracy, brought to Congress in the forms of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy
Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), and the subsequent protests against the Acts exploded
onto the news scene in traditional media as well as not-so-traditional sources.
By and by, it took about a millisecond for the entire nation to know about the
impeding legislation and about two milliseconds for the rest of the world to
find out. The impact of this story on the legislation was as swift as it was
devastating. The fact that this story went “viral” so quickly and had such a
huge impact says a lot about our current media system today, how it is changing
and what influences the stories we, the people, get to hear about.
The story about SOPA and PIPA did
not actually become a story until a large-scale protest was organized by some
of the biggest names in the digital media world, such as; Google, Wikipedia, Facebook,
and Twitter. The initial reporting of
the story in traditional media focused largely on the protests rather than the
Acts themselves with headlines like, “Internet community cheers power of protest; Hundreds of websites
showed their support”, an article written by Roger Yu and Jon Swartz in USA
TODAY (Internet Community), or “Tech companies boldly protest anti-piracy bills”, an article
written by Beth
Krietsch in PR Week Magazine (Tech).
The first stories to surface about the protests were posted the Tuesday before
“Black Wednesday” (the name given to the protest) went into effect, but even
then only a small number of stories were published before the actual protests
began. According to Ben Dimiero’s report, “News Networks Ignore Controversial SOPA Legislation”, (which was
posted on January 5th, 2012. Black Wednesday occurred on January 19th,
2012) next-to-nothing was reported by traditional media
about SOPA and PIPA themselves. Dimiero writes, “As the Stop Online
Piracy Act (SOPA) makes its way through Congress, most major television news
outlets -- MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have ignored the bill during
their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to
it” (Dimiero). Apparently, SOPA and PIPA had been extensively debated through
sources on the Internet, from blogs to forums to memes, for several months leading up to the Black Wednesday
Protests and had yet to be even remotely discussed in the traditional media.
Dimiero does give some credit where credit is due and writes in his report
that, “the online arms
of most of these news outlets have posted regular articles about the fight over
the legislation, but their primetime TV broadcasts remain mostly silent”
(Dimiero).
Dimiero’s report unveils an interesting
perspective of today’s media system and press sphere as a whole. It also
highlights some of the major differences between the traditional media and the digital
media. What the reporting of SOPA and PIPA show us is that today’s media system
is centered on events. The bigger the event and the more important the event,
the more reporting is done. Now there are huge discussions to be had about what
is deemed “big and important” by the press and why but that is a debate for
another day. For now, lets leave it at this: SOPA and PIPA were not deemed
important news until after the Black Wednesday Protests. As Nick Tan, a blogger
for the website Game Revolution, so
eloquently writes,
“So either mainstream media is extremely slow to pick up on things
(definitely possible), they're being paid not to cover it or to cover it once
and then slip it under the radar (also possible), or they've been waiting for
something big to happen like today's SOPA Blackout on the internet to give a
hoot about it (probably).”
The parenthesis are Tan’s work, not my own. The most pronounced
differences that Dimiero’s report shows between traditional media and digital
media is the scope of available content. Before the Internet, the press and
those individuals desiring to share and discuss current events on a large scale
were limited to crowded newspapers or time-crunched TV and radio programs. With
the Internet there is a virtually unlimited amount of space and opportunity to
discuss and share events. This newfound breathing space has dynamically changed
how the press-sphere operates and how the public interacts with that sphere. The
Black Wednesday Protests dramatically revealed the powerful influence the Internet
now holds over the press.
After
the initial Black Wednesday Protests the story quickly shifted focus from the
main event to the response to the event. This sort of shift is a natural
progression for a typical news story, especially a story as big as the protests
against SOPA and PIPA. People want to know what happens next, they want to know
more. Thus, we began to see stories that expanded their focus and delved into
greater detail. We saw stories that explained the SOPA and PIPA legislation in
more detail, stories that focused on the pros and cons to the legislation and
stories that discussed the viewpoints of the legislation’s opponents and
defenders. However, what is unnatural about this particular story’s development
is how self-reflective it has forced media to become. News writers and bloggers
across the board all noticed that the SOPA and PIPA protests were a shining example
of Internet’s vast potential to influence the press sphere and, in turn, the
political landscape as a whole. The Huffington Post’s article, “SOPA And PIPA Bills: Online Companies Win Piracy Fight” points out
that,
“Just weeks ago, the bills seemed
headed toward quiet approval with bipartisan backing…The turnabout was so
unexpected that some think the online world's triumph signals a pivotal moment
marking its arrival as Washington's newest power broker. ‘This does serve as a
watershed moment,’ said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a communications professor at
the State University of New York at Albany who studies how political groups use
high technology. "Certain channels for communication that people routinely
use have the power to get their users to become political activists on their
behalf" (AP).
The
huge response garnered by the Black Wednesday Protests has shown the world just
how far-reaching and widely used digital media has become. With that reach
comes an immense amount of political power for the Digital Media Giants, a
power that most (even the giants themselves, I think) did not know they had.
The Huffington Post is but one of the many news providers, worldwide, that has
realized the power the Internet now holds. In an editorial published in The Observer, a newspaper in the United
Kingdom, the author writes, “Little people? Facebook,
Apple and Google are embryo media masters of the planet. Perhaps we still
tremble about BSkyB's cash clout or Fox News’s baleful influence, but that's
not the way News International sees the future. It feels weak, vulnerable and
scared” (The Internet). The Observer
notes the power shift from traditional media to the less traditional media of
the Internet. The Internet took a story that the traditional media had
previously ignored and turned it into an international media sensation.
According to The Observer, the idea
that digital media now has a greater influence over international news has News
International more than a little nervous.
Of course all this talk of power
poses a larger question, where did this power come from? The International Herald
Tribune answers that question in its article, “Internet generation flexes
its lobbying muscle; An impromptu coalition halted copyright bills, but can it
hold together?” The author writes,
Can
the Internet industry, along with legions of newly politicized Web users, be a
new force in Washington? And if so, what else can they all agree upon? If labor
unions once amplified the legislative agenda of certain American industries,
the anti-piracy fight showed the power of a different force: young Americans who
live and breathe the Internet (Internet Generation).
The
Huffington Post and The International Herald Tribune both note the underlying reason the
Internet has gained so much power; young Americans use the Internet as their
source for news more than almost every other media tool that exists today. There
lies the strange self-reflective quality of this news story. Through the press
sphere this story has morphed into a story about the future of the press
sphere.
Through the press sphere the Black
Wednesday Protests became more than just a story about protests against
anti-piracy bills, the protests became a symbol of a new age. The interaction
of the press, the simple reporting, the claims and counter-claims, the
expanding and forwarding of ideas, serves to dig out from a story its essential
meaning and purpose. For the SOPA/PIPA story its implications became very
clear: a new era of News Media has arrived and with it comes a shift in the
power balance between traditional media, digital media and, subsequently, the
entire political landscape of how we, the people, receive and influence our
news.
Works
Cited
AP.
"SOPA And PIPA Bills: Online Companies Win Piracy Fight." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 21 Jan. 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2012.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/21/sopa-and-pipa-bills-anti-piracy-legislation_n_1220817.html>.
Dimiero,
Ben. "REPORT: News Networks Ignore Controversial SOPA Legislation." Media
Matters for America. 5 Jan. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/201201050008>.
"Internet
community cheers power of protest; Hundreds of websites showed their
support." USA TODAY. (January 19, 2012 Thursday ): 958 words. LexisNexis
Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2012/02/28.
"Internet
generation flexes its lobbying muscle; An impromptu coalition halted copyright
bills, but can it hold together?." The International Herald Tribune.
(January 28, 2012 Saturday): 1109 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date
Accessed: 2012/02/28.
Tan,
Nick. "Mainstream Media Ignoring SOPA." Game Revolution. 18
Jan. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/mainstream-media-ignoring-sopa-10587>.
"Tech
companies boldly protest anti-piracy bills." PR Week (US). (January 19, 2012):
450 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2012/02/28.
"THE
INTERNET: Beware new dynasties in fight for web freedom." The Observer
(England). (January 22, 2012): 1176 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date
Accessed: 2012/02/28.