COMS 591 Blog 3

Response on:
New Media and Internet Activism: From the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to Blogging - by Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner

This article talks about how over the years new media, especially the Internet, has been used by different organizations and individuals for various purposes. In one instance, the Internet is bringing people together, comparable to an online community, in unison to fight for a similar cause. Several campaigns have been established with the help of the Internet’s ability to disseminate information globally. Some use the media to their advantage to bring about more awareness, promote peace, and offer support to those affected by war and terrorism. The Internet can act as a carrier for worthwhile, justifiable causes as well as for an individual’s personal intentions. Whether there are hidden agendas, harmful information and the like or not behind the purpose of setting up these online institutions and movements, we must be more conscious of the existence of such meanings when viewing media around us.

Due to the Internet’s dynamic, multi-functional structure, separate cultures have been created as a result, such as hacker culture and internet militancy. Such groups have been able to form and further develop themselves because of the interactive capabilities new media offers. New mobile technologies even make possible interaction with people around the world at any time anywhere. As a new phenomenon, the mobile phone is increasingly becoming an all-purpose device that will fulfill basic communication needs and help accomplish or even ease one’s daily tasks in life. Globalization is now beginning to develop and occur from below with citizens and the mass population out there as opposed to capitalist corporations. I think groups such as the “hacktivists” are benefiting society by helping along the progress of globalizing the Internet and other new media. Hacktivists are better informing citizens and providing free alternatives to the Internet and other technologies that were once controlled and owned by governmental organizations.

However, freeing up the control of the Internet has recently lead to the danger of abusing and misusing applications such as blogs to broadcast and influence others with narcissistic individual attitudes and views. Though, if one were to look at it from another point of view, one may see that these blog posts are in fact encouraging more social interaction. Blogs today are gathering people from all over the world to form a wide range of groups, each focusing on a certain interest of some kind. Moreover, what has become of this new way of communicating with people online is the emergence of a blog culture. Unfortunately, blog cultures are being accused of clogging search engines with useless information and blamed for distastefully creating profit for corporations that are linking up key words in blogs for revenue. I agree that when we may be searching for a particular subject or topic online, we are most often ending up with a lot of irrelevant, useless junk as opposed to real, authentic information. There are, of course, other blogs that are being put to good use, including ‘warblogging’ which raises awareness about anti-war efforts, and political blogs that harmlessly distribute and share certain opinions and information across the net. What we now must learn to recognize is the possibility of dishonest reporting within blogs in addition to how and what bloggers are doing to help advance our society. Kahn and Kellner state that “bloggers are expanding the notion altogether of what the internet is and how it can be used.” As a whole, the Internet has allowed for an interactive, free domain for which people can now communicate similar and/or contrasting views and ideas. The Internet is a new place of struggle and of argument and debate in real time; it is reaching global extents in an efficient and speedy manner.