Gatewatching, Gatecrashing: Futures for Tactical News Media

1. Gatewatching, Gatecrashing: Futures for Tactical News Media Dr Axel Bruns Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology a.bruns@qut.edu.au

2. Tactical Media • Traditional vision: • tactical vs. strategic • activists vs. mainstream • citizen journalists vs. industry journalists • online vs. print and broadcast

3. 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 What’s News, p. 318)

4. 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

5. 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, Murdoch’s purchase of MySpace?)

6. Beyond Tactics • Diversification of approaches: • emergence of tier intermediaries • facilitating and moderating the engagement between both sides • e.g. MediaChannel, Online 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.tv

7. 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?

8. Strategies for Tactical Media • Making sure that second-tier voices are heard by and in the first tier • gatecrashing, not gatewatching • e.g. MediaChannel’s “Media 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

9. 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?