Dumbing Down America - The Dark Side of Citizen Journalism

On the surface, the rise of the citizen journalism movement fostered by the Internet is a beautiful thing. Since we can't trust the big media corporations to report the news fairly or accurately, without their own agendas, isn't it better to be getting news and information from citizen journalists who are "on the ground" and can report on events as eyewitnesses almost instantly as long as they have an Internet connection? For some news areas, it absolutely is. Citizen journalism is invaluable for things like getting first hand accounts of war, protests, even natural disasters. Never before in history have people had instant access to so much information and the theory goes that the better informed we are, the better the choices we will make, the more politically active we will be, and the more likely we will be to help others once we have related them to on a personal level by reading their stories, seeing their family photos, and forming instant bonds of humanity with them even if they are a half a world away.

But is that really happening? Underneath the shiny veneer of ultimate equality and the idea that people are taking back their own power from megalithic media conglomerates there is a dark side to the citizen journalism movement that could have some very serious effects. Increasingly people are seeing every aspect of culture from politics to foreign policy to everyday occurrences through a tunneled lens that makes them react to things on a personal level instead of seeing larger patterns or the big picture. Because people are more isolated today than ever before, we reach out to people through blogs, social networking sites and other popular online mediums forming instant intimate relationships with strangers. Their stories become our stories, and we bond in sympathy or outrage at the events of our 'instant friends' lives or in shared opinions and histories but we don't examine the bigger forces of culture at work, ask hard questions, or demand any accountability from politicians or from society in general.