Future Journalism

Many information are posted on the Internet for people to read. Newspaper publishing companies has turned online as well. Many younger generations are getting the information of the world on the Internet. Reading of the latest news on the Internet is not new now. This trend is putting many newspaper companies on red alert because ordinary people can report the lastest news, and put it on their blog. The introduction of blog has allow everyone and anyone to become a citizen journalist. Therefore, the traditional medium companies cutting their editorial staffs or asking reporters to become "backpack journalists" who can do everything -- shoot video, take photographs, write stories. The freedom of speech online has not create gatekeepers to verify the truths of the reportings done by citizen journalists. This would have the question of " Do we still need trained journalist?" Columbia University's Sreenivasan has mentioned that we still need journalists who are trained to report on the wars, the politics, etc. This is because citizen journalists write only whatever they wanted.
I came across the video on 2007 New Yorker conference about The Web:2012 (http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/web2012). I find it is a good video as it talks about the future of commerce, journalism, and community on the Internet, featuring Barry Diller, Arianna Huffington, and Craig Newmark. The founder of Huffington post, Arianna Huffington talks about the changes in the world of journalism in 2012. She said that the news would be in real time, and citizen journalists together with mainstream journalists would worked together to provide the news coverage. Criag Newmark has also mentioned in the video that citizen journalist who have accuracy may be better than professional journalists in the future. Arianna feels that the future of news would be taken over by citizen journalists. The reason for this is because headline news would be updated constantly by them causing newspaper publishers follow as well. It is also believe that news would be more transparent and accurate.

References:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/57193.html
http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/web2012
http://www.helium.com/items/511212-triumph-waiting-digital-journalismone

Power and limitations of Internet for political campaigning

Internet is becoming a more important medium nowadays. The political arena in the US is making use of the Internet to campaign for the Presidential election that will be held this year. The Internet is a powerful that can reach out to millions of people, and has up-to-date information. Candidates of the Presidential election created their own social network to interact with the people. This allows the people to provide feedbacks to the candidates as well. The use of Internet for the Presidential elections could reach out to people of the younger generations who uses Internet as the main medium for information. Information on the Internet travels faster to the people than on the traditional medium. Internet communication is an essential tool for supporters to get out to vote for the candidates for the US Presidential election. The tools on the Internet also help supporters of various candidates to communicate with each other on the forums.
However, there are limitations for the campaigning on the Internet. The older generations and people who are not technology savy would not be able to access the Internet. There are some people who are too poor who cannot afford to own a computer would not be able to go online as well. Internet is able to reach large number of people, but has proved to be much less effective at swaying voters who are not interested in politics. Internet campaigning would not be able to replace human contact in the campagin itself as one could not be feel the kind of ambience at the rally by watching it online.
Therefore, Internet can be a complementary media, but not a sole media for campaigning because certain groups of people would be left out. A combination of medium would work better to reach out to the different population of the people. Internet may not be the sole media to do campaigning now, but it can become the only media for doing campaign in the future.

References:

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/1007/ijde/carvin.htm

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9849169-7.html?tag=nefd.only

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/washington/02campaign.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/02/19/02192008waconlineorganize.html

http://www.usip.org/virtualdiplomacy/publications/reports/vburma/vburma_three.html

NewsML

NewsML is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) to designed, and to provide a media-independent, and structural framework for multi-media news. NewsML is created by International Press Telecommunications Council(IPTC). This design is used to publish news in any format. It is used by the news providers to combine pictures, video, text, graphics and audio files in news output available on web sites, mobile phones, high end desktops interactive television and in any other device. This helps the publisher to create packages of information that is targeted at specific audiences. The would help the consumers to personalized their news. NewsML provides an accurate, objective set of description tools, which help to qualify the information and make the search more precise. Users will be able to search the news by using description. NewsML is able to contain stories in differenct languages.

References:
http://about.reuters.com/newsml/contacts.asp
http://about.reuters.com/newsml/whynewsml.asp

Cyber Crime

Cyber crime is a serious crime in Singapore, and the fastest crime growing in the world. Hackers in Singapore can be jailed for up to three years or fined up to S$10,000. Cyber crime is a threat for Singapore because terrorists who plan to attack a country could send a carefully engineered packet of data into the computer systems which control the network for essential services. This would threathen the safety of the people in Singapore. Cyber crime in Singapore has raised from 10 in 2000 to 19 in 2001 and 41 in 2003. Singapore has joint hands with various Asia countries to combat cyber crime by having seminars to exchange informations on Internet security. The examples of cyber crime are

• computer or network is a tool of the criminal activity include spamming and criminal copyright crimes, particularly those facilitated through peer-to-peer networks.
• computer or network is a target of criminal activity include unauthorized access (i.e, defeating access controls), malicious code, and denial-of-service attacks.
• computer or network is a place of criminal activity include theft of service (in particular, telecom fraud) and certain financial frauds
• traditional crimes facilitated through the use of computers or networks include Nigerian money fraud or other gullibility or social engineering frauds (e.g., hacking "phishing", identity theft, child pornography, online gambling, securities fraud, etc.).
• Cyberstalking is a traditional crime (harassment) that has taken a new form when facilitated through computer networks.

The cyber crime article relating to Singapore that I found is email bombing. This article is about a Singaporean guy who has sent 75000 emails to goverment agency. The message was sent to 3 computer server of the Housing and Development Board (HDB). I find that this crime may be minor to some people, but it is a serious crime in the law of the eyes.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybercrime

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/asia-pacific/751817.stm

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/11/11/singapore.internet.reut/