Amateur Media: Shirky III

Shirky tells of an occurrence when, ". . .in the afternoon on May 12, 2008, and earthquake hit China's Sichuan province" (Shirky 293). The earthquake was devastating to many, but managed to be reported first not by professional reporters but by the locals themselves.

Shirky refers to this type of reporting as amateur media. People who had updated their statuses on their social media websites with comments about the earthquake and images helped to spread the news quickly. Even more quickly than a typical professional reporter would and quicker than the government would.

"Another reason word of the quake spread so quickly is that it reached a few highly connected individuals, who then passed on what they had heard to much larger groups" (Shirky 294). This displays the high connectivity that the Internet provides. Information has the capability of spreading like wildfire. Information about the quake spread which ultimately lead to more informed individuals. People began to find out about weak structures such as schools which were poorly built. The poorly built structures lead to tragedy during the quake. This led to infuriated protestors who would have otherwise probably not known on such a grand scale about weak structures. Since many people found out, these same many people were able to organize as a group and protest.

This theme occurs more and more often now that people are more connected due to the amateur media. Consider how we get our information nowadays. We find out about current events through a sort of "virtual word of mouth" such as blogs, web pages, people texting people what they read somewhere on the Internet on someone else's Facebook status.

It must be taken into consideration that many people can become misinformed this way as well. Naturally, with something like an earthquake it's somewhat difficult to get the major facts confused. But with something smaller. . .say a new local restaurant's grand opening, the details can get mixed up just like they would in the children's game "Telephone".

This leads to the same type of problem that we find with the Internet. We can't believe everything you read online. Likewise, we can't believe everything we learn from amateur media. There still needs to be some "fact checking".