|
Imagine this: Trevor Sandara wants to organise a countrywide march to promote measles awareness in Zimbabwe but has no physical contacts in nine of the 10 provinces.
Distraught and not sure how he would push his campaign, Sandara contacts a friend who introduces him to Facebook, a social networking site, and posts a message requesting those interested to sign on to the campaign. A few hours later, five people sign on and confirm participation.
The message spreads like a veld fire while Sandara enjoys his favourite game of pool with friends. By the end of the day more than
2 000 people from various geographical locations sign on, some offering donations while some confirm attendance. By the end of the week, Sandara has volunteers, coordinators and service providers of the event in every province.
Sepath in Bulawayo offers to coordinate all schools in the province, Tendai in Gweru says he would lead negotiations with some church organisations that were averse to immunisation in the Midlands province.
So does Nothando in Manicaland, Sekai in Mashonaland East, Sibanda in Mashonaland West and many others. The march goes according to plan without a single face-to-face meeting between the coordinators.
Many years ago broadcasting companies packaged programmes and broadcast channels at the passive receivers and made them come to websites or “portals” to get information and content they saw fit to let the users have.
This was the broadcasters’ space and they were the sole determinants of what the people listened to and watched. The situation is different now. Millions of people around the globe are now creating their own media, telling their own stories with pictures, making movies, advertisements, music and even news stories. People have become news providers and consumers at the same time.
I have a friend who hates computers and technology and we often see her as a “BBT”, meaning one “Born Before Technology”.
As technology advances faster than we can imagine there is an increasing number of new and exciting tools for the community sector to reach new audiences — to communicate, advocate, lobby and provide services in innovative ways.
But what is the meaning of this? The answer is simple: the concept of new media.
We are now working increasingly in an environment where new media is changing almost all aspects of our society, from how we conduct business and consume services, to how we spend our free time.
New media has revolutionised communication.
New media has been extensively used by business, social movements and individuals to educate, organise, share cultural products of events, communicate and build networks.
A paraphrased definition of new media from Wikipedia shows that this is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerised, or networked information and communication technologies. It simply refers to communication technologies that enable or facilitate user-to-user interactivity. The world has moved from the “one-to-many” model of traditional mass communication with the possibility of a “many-to-many” web of communication through the internet.
In this era, any individual with the appropriate technology can now produce his or her online media and include images, text, and sound about whatever he or she chooses.
New media has broken geographical boundaries in communication and increased communication between people all over the world. It provides people with an avenue and platform to express themselves through web blogs, websites, pictures, and other user-generated media.
Two of the most important characteristics associated with new media are convergence and interactivity.
Convergence occurs when multiple products come together to form one product. We often see on websites, for instance, text (news stories), images, audio (in the form of podcasts or internet radio), video, shopping carts and links on similar subjects to other pages.
The second most important characteristic of new media is interactivity which involves several tools that are used to communicate/interact with online news/programme providers. You will see a lot of live content online.
These characteristics have changed the face of communication around the world including in Zimbabwe.
Have you ever heard some people say, “Let me google it for you” when they refer to searching for something on the web? Could this be a correct statement? I guess not because it narrows down every search on the web to be on Google and yet there are many search engines that we can use for research. Some of them include Yahoo!, Altavista, SearchGiri and Ask. There are also search engines that are specific to professional disciplines.
But one must always check and verify information they get on the internet. It does not necessarily mean that because it has been plucked from the web then it is correct or factual.
It is still a challenge to talk about social networks among peers because some still do not have access to technology. Social networks have taken the world by storm.
The Standard of February 20 carried a fantastic story titled: “Flash Gordon — Urban Groovers’ source of pride”, by Online writer John Mokwetsi. The article was about urban grooves singer Gordon Mutekedza who is studying
in Italy. Did Mokwetsi travel to Italy to interview Mutekedza? No! He had an interview with him on Facebook! Even news production is now influenced by the use of social networks.
Social networks sites such as the hugely popular Facebook and MySpace allow users to create their own pages. The networks only allow qualified members to view the pages and are built around the idea of ‘friends’. Some of the networking sites include YouTube -music and videos, Flickr—photos, Twitter, Skype, forums and web blogs only to mention but a few.
The networks encourage their members to form groups around common interests and often provide tools for them to do so.
Web blogs are one of the tools that are being widely used and some news organisations such as South Africa’s BusinessDay, UK’s Guardian incorporating them on their websites.
• A blog is an online diary that can be easily updated as frequently as needs be.
• Blogs are easy to set up, edit and keep up to date. A blog tells an online narrative and can be used to highlight any particular issues or events.
• They are used by news organisations as a way to attach users to the website. Studies have shown that blog audience is the most committed crowd of users of website.
• Blogs allow to publish information outside of the traditional news cycle and story format.
You can create a blog on Wordpress, Blogger (by Google) and Typepad.
The question one might ask would be is new media relevant to Zimbabwe? Does new media pose a challenge to print journalism and does it affect the quality of journalism in Zimbabwe? What effect does new media have on culture? These are issues for discussion on another forum.
There are also issues to do with capacity and bandwidth and legislation that affect the development of the usage of new media tools.
BY CONRAD MWANAWASHE
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
