We The Media

Looks at the emerging phenomenon of online journalism, including Weblogs, Internet chat groups, and email, and how anyone can produce news.

"We the Media, has become something of a bible for those who believe the online medium will change journalism for the better." -Financial Times Big Media has lost its monopoly on the news, thanks to the Internet. Now that it's possible to publish in real time to a worldwide audience, a new breed of grassroots journalists are taking the news into their own hands. Armed with laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras, these readers-turned-reporters are transforming the news from a lecture into a conversation. In We the Media, nationally acclaimed newspaper columnist and blogger Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make--and consume--the news. Gillmor shows how anyone can produce the news, using personal blogs, Internet chat groups, email, and a host of other tools. He sends a wake-up call tonewsmakers-politicians, business executives, celebrities-and the marketers and PR flacks who promote them. He explains how to successfully play by the rules of this new era and shift from "control" to "engagement." And he makes a strong case to his fell journalists that, in the face of a plethora of Internet-fueled news vehicles, they must change or become irrelevant. Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the Big Media oligarchy that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of journalism, and invites us all to be part of it. Dan Gillmor is founder of Grassroots Media Inc., a project aimed at enabling grassroots journalism and expanding its reach. The company's first launch is Bayosphere.com, a site "of, by, and for the San Francisco Bay Area." Dan Gillmor is the founder of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enable and expand reach of grassroots media. From 1994-2004, Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.

Features the writings of over one hundred journalists and media critics discussing the political and social impact of the mass media in the United States

We're in an age of information overload, and too much of what we watch, hear and read is mistaken, deceitful or even dangerous. Yet you and I can take control and make media serve us -- all of us -- by being active consumers and participants. Here's how. With a Foreword by Clay Shirky Praise for Mediactive: "Dan Gillmor has thought more deeply, more usefully, and over a longer period of time about the next stages of media evolution than just about anyone else. In Mediactive, he puts the results of his ideas and experiments together in a guide full of practical tips and longer-term inspirations for everyone affected by rapid changes in the news ecology. This book is a very worthy successor to his influential We the Media." --James Fallows, Atlantic Magazine, author of Postcards from Tomorrow Square and Breaking the News "Dan's book helps us understand when the news we read is reliable and trustworthy, and how to determine when what we're reading is intended to deceive. A trustworthy press is required for the survival of a democracy, and we really need this book right now." --Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist "A master-class in media-literacy for the 21st century, operating on all scales from the tiniest details of navigating wiki software all the way up to sensible and smart suggestions for reforming law and policy to make the news better and fairer. Gillmor's a reporter's reporter for the information age, Mediactive made me want to stand up and salute." --Cory Doctorow, co-editor/owner, Boing Boing; author of For the Win "As the lines between professional and citizen journalists continue to blur, Mediactive provides a useful roadmap to help us become savvier consumers and creators alike." -- Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution and co-founder of America Online "It's all true - at least to someone. And that's the problem in a hypermediated world where everyone and anyone can represent his own reality. Gillmor attacks the problem of representation and reality head on, demanding we become media-active users of our emerging media, instead of passive consumers. If this book doesn't get you out of Facebook and back on the real Internet, nothing will." --Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age "An important book showing people how to swim rather than drown in today's torrent of information. Dan Gillmor lives on the front line of digital information - there's no-one better to help us understand the risks and opportunities or help us ask the right questions." --Richard Sambrook, Global Vice Chairman and Chief Content Officer at Edelman, and former BBC Director of Global News "With the future of journalism and democracy in peril, Mediactive comes along with sage and practical advice at a crucial time. Dan Gillmor, pioneering journalist and teacher of journalists, offers a practical guide to citizens who now need to become active producers as well as critical consumers of media. Read this book right away, buy one for a friend and another one for a student, and then put Gillmor's advice into action." --Howard Rheingold, author of the Smart Mobs and other books about our digital future "Through common-sense guidelines and well-chosen examples, Gillmor shows how anyone can navigate the half-truths, exaggerations and outright falsehoods that permeate today's media environment and ferret out what is true and important. As Gillmor writes, 'When we have unlimited sources of information, and when so much of what comes at us is questionable, our lives get more challenging. They also get more interesting.'" --Dan Kennedy, assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, former Boston Phoenix media critic, and author of the Media Nation blog at www.dankennedy.net

This volume considers strategies, modalities, and styles of media use and reception. Dynamic changes in media technology and infrastructure have spurred important changes in media use. Looking at these developments within the common conceptual framework of reception strategies, modes and styles of media use and reception, this volume is highly relevant against the background of the changing media environment. When it comes to media use and reception, communication research has mainly dealt with two much-cited questions: What do the media do with the people? What do the people do with the media? In comparison, the discipline has devoted less attention to how the media are used, the modalities, patterns or configurations of the actual practices of media use. The volume features original contributions, both empirical and theoretical, on the key concepts and approaches in the field, covering old and new media and different types of media content. Offering a comprehensive overview of existing research as well as promoting original findings and insights, the volume will be of interest to communication researchers, students, and scholars.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Stealing Our Futures -- 2 Killing Our Culture -- 3 Scaring Us to Death -- 4 Why Is This Happening? Who Is the Gatekeeper? -- 5 What Can Be Done? -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author

Drawn from a thousand photos taken over fifteen years, We Animals illustrates and investigates animals in the human environment: whether they're being used for food, fashion and entertainment, or research, or are being rescued to spend their remaining years in sanctuaries. Award-winning photojournalist and animal advocate Jo-Anne McArthur provides a valuable lesson about our treatment of animals, makes animal industries visible and accountable, and widens our circle of compassion to include all sentient beings.

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 One of Bill Gates’s “5 books to read this summer,” this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller shows us that America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed. In this “superbly researched” (The Washington Post) and timely book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us—and how we are polarizing it—with disastrous results. “The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.” “A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis” (The New York Times Book Review), Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. “Well worth reading” (New York magazine), this is an “eye-opening” (O, The Oprah Magazine) book that will change how you look at politics—and perhaps at yourself.