Ratios of Bit-furcation

I have trouble allowing one source of media to be the focus of my analysis, so if anyone from my #wsusm (social media class) is wondering about the other large body of data I draw on here, it might help to familiarize yourself with the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.  (And if anyone is keeping track: yes, that was a counter-productive use of hypertext).  The Internet Project at the Annenberg School is another longitudinally focused study that collects data about media usage, though, as expected, it's focus is digital communication and the Internet.  The overview of the 2011 Digital Future Report meshes well with the PEJ State of the Media overview.  The data does not measure the same items, of course, but understood holistically can lead to interesting hypotheses.

Take for instance the rate of tablet adoption, as reported in the State of the Media: "By January 2011, 7% of Americans reported owning some kind of electronic tablet. That was nearly double the number just four months earlier."

To loosely commandeer Kurzweil's theory of doubling, this would mean that, prospectively, by January 2012, 56% of Americans will own a tablet.  This dovetails with the  Digital Future's 2009 statistic that time spent online (in hours per week) was doubling every nine years (the jump from 9.4 hours in 2000 to 19 hours in 2009 is actually highlighted in the 2010 overview).  The Digital Future 2011 report notes that Laptop ownership has skyrocketed from 18% currently to "nearly three-quarters of computer ownership," indicating a rate of doubling every 2.3 years.

But these facts must be softened with the other reality, holding back full realization of a socio-digital tipping point: The Digital Future 2011 report also noted that the percentage of homes with three or more computers, or four or more computers, had both reached record highs (16% and 17% respectively) while the tenth iteration of the project "continues to find that Internet use has a strong relationship with income."  All the while, print circulation and ad revenue is declining according to the State of the Media's Newspaper's section.  Even if this trend is far less than projected from 2009 numbers, it will not go away.  The same essay on Newspapers reports a growing migration from print to digital publication, with and Another section on "Key Questions" notes that only a small minority of users would even pay $5 a month for the privilege of local news online (see graph below, $10 a month will soon seem like counting to five after pulling the pin on The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch).

The Digital Future 2011 report also notes that Internet users go "online for non-sports news than any other type of media, online or offline," and users age 17+ generally reported "that the Internet was an important or very important source of information to them (75 percent)--higher than the percentage reported for television, newspapers, or radio." Users age 18+ generally reported that Internet non-sports news was "good" or "excellent" compared to print and broadcast, indicating a warmth to the transition to a fully digital world.  While the State of the Media's report on cable noted that the Median audience for all three major news broadcasters declined for the first time, while revenues rose and are only projected to continue for all three, as well.

All of these statistics point to a theory that deserves fleshing out: in a user-dominated world of social media increasingly serving as news, will income become the litmus test for a user's ability to dominate that marketplace of ideas with time and technology?  In other words, will there still be a free and objective press is these trends continue?  Smart-phone users can put together a website, but not maintain the kind of presence possible with the addition of a tablet or lap-top, let alone a high-powered desktop or server-tower.  Programs for monitoring online reputations within social media cost more and more as capability rises.  DARPA even has a hand in monitoring and manipulating algorithms controlling web traffic, designed for the following purpose:

"Among other things, the project will 'Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.' In response, the Pentagon will engage in 'Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.'"

 What exactly might this mean?  I personally am loathe to think about it.  It slightly upsets me.  Though, I would be proud if my blog's web traffic was affected.  But all this points to power constructing reality through the Internet, whether it be political or economic.

The State of the Media report is somewhat over-confident to state:

News organizations — old and new — still produce most of the content audiences consume. But each technological advance has added a new layer of complexity—and a new set of players—in connecting that content to consumers and advertisers.

Of course, by this, the authors of the report mean that aggregators and social media providers are now taking large portions of advertising dollars from newspapers, but through the theft of their data.  This is certainly retrospective (absent of foresight) compared to the forward-looking caveats to statistics about purchase and adoption of new media tools by consumers.  It is almost silly, given the data about trust in the Digital Future report: 40% of Internet-users (and 38% of those whom don't go online) reported that "most or all of the information on the Internet is reliable."  To break this down a little further, I'd like to bullet list points 47, 49, 50, 52, and 54 from the Digital Future 2011 overview:

• "The percentage of users who said that most or all of the information posted by the media is generally reliable and accurate rose marginally, while the percentage who said that most or all of the information posted by the government or individuals is generally reliable and accurate declined slightly."
• "A smaller percentage of Internet users said that most or all of the information on government
  websites is reliable and accurate -- now 79 percent, a decrease from 82 percent in 2009."
• "Seventy-five percent of Internet users said that most or all of the information posted on established media websites such as nytimes.com is generally reliable and accurate, up slightly from 74 percent in 2009."
• "Internet users continue to report extremely negative views about the reliability of Web pages posted by individuals. Only 15 percent of users said that most or all of the information on Web pages posted by individuals is reliable and accurate – down marginally from 16 percent in 2009."
• "A majority of Internet users have almost no faith that the information they find on social networking sites is reliable and accurate. Fifty-one percent of users said that only a small portion or none of the information on social networking sites is reliable and accurate."

 To sum this up, I believe big text is, yet again, necessary:

Media consumers continue to patronize traditional media establishments on the net, not because of the quality of reporting, but social constructions of print and broadcast media's legitimacy.

But citizen journalists are rising from the ruins of elite, High Modernist, American journalism.  And their power is like a lightning bolt, forcing journalists whom gaffe or mislead audiences from their position of power to take down offending articles or change pages within minutes of the posting.  Presumably, the narrative we are coming to learn so well is "<blogger x> commented that <source y> categorically disproved <journalist/pundit/media figure z>, whom took down the article after only being online for minutes."  This is the media attempting to do what it rarely does with corrections of old broadcasts or print articles: correct itself to bolster it's reputation.  But control of media still implies that some stories will only get coverage if citizen journalists do the task.  Don't believe it?  You don't have to be a critical framing scholar to know that it's always been the case.  If the media (print and broadcast as a whole) had effectively and objectively covered the #Occupy protests from the start, why would the "occupy wall street" flickr group be so necessary?

If this is the case, would this imply that those blessed with the luxury of being a citizen journalist, have an ontological imperative to raise the voices of those without such a luxury?  Is that fair to ask?  Comment while I ponder.