For a look at the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied this talk, go here.
To hear an audio version of the presentation, go HERE
Forget the old media.
The way the world will communicate and get its news can be found deep in the interconnected and viral blogosphere, according to China’s Isaac Mao, co-founder of Beijing’s Social Brain Foundation and co-founder of cnblog.org, one of China’s earliest experiments in grassroots publishing.
While the entire world will change as blogging connects and informs people in new ways, the impact will particularly vivid in China, Mao told a lunch meeting of the Bangkok Media Conference.
That’s because rather than attempting to reform or change existing media institutions, still largely state-controlled, China’s 145 million! bloggers simply go around the old media and find their audience a different way, he said.
The catchphrase is “collective intelligence on the click of creation,” Mao said. In other words, the impact of a multiplicity of bloggers watching, reading and responding to each other is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
And as blogging is changing China, soon, too, it will change the world as soon as obstacles of language, culture, regional differences and technological barriers can be licked, he said.
Mao cited a number of lively examples where change occurred because “government failed to control the media space.”
One example: Authorities and the established media went wild when a rural farmer came up with what he claimed was a photograph of a rare Chinese tiger, thought to be extinct. Headlines were generated and awards were bestowed.
But then one lonely blogger posted the thought that the photograph might be fake, a computer manipulation. He wasn’t sure, but shortly thousands of other bloggers weighed in, some of them even demonstrating how the fake could be produced.
Finally, a blogger posted that the image of the tiger appeared to have come from a calendar he had tacked to his wall. The ruse was exposed.
“The truth came through millions of bloggers. No one told the whole truth. This is collective intelligence,” Mao said.
For more on this and other examples of how the blogosphere has trumped the traditional media, as well as Isaac’s own reflections on his talk, go HERE.
Is there no place for the “old media” or professional journalism?
Of course not, Mao said. He visits professional sites regularly and appreciates what the established media can do.
“But you know,” he said, “social networking can spread information. And eventually, get professional results.”
For a look at the Power Point presentation that accompanied this talk, go HERE