There’s a train of thought here somewhere regarding that horrible term User Generated Content and how it works in relation to big media corps. Let’s see if I can find it.

Firstly, it’s not just big media. There just at the forefront of experimenting with it and a useful model for what will follow.

The response to Jo’s musing about the Birmingham Post using Flickr was very interesting, and not just for Flickr. It shows a real sense of ownership, a touch of “them and us” and above all the need to build personal relationships.

So when people have something of value, defined by being something that someone else wants, they protect it and want something in return. This isn’t necessarily financial. It also comes down to relationships, mutual respect and all that. Bring me on board and I’ll bring you on board.

A couple of months ago Adam Curtis was interviewed on The Register and I was rather torn by the result. I have a lot of time for Curtis but his interviewer, the dread Andrew Orlowski, is an arse of the highest order, imho, who can’t detach the message from the messenger and thinks blogs in their totality are rubbish. But Curtis I tend to listen to because, while he does finely shave the facts down to what’s needed to make his point, his point is worth paying attention to as a way of illuminating the world.

Via Ben comes this handy little video by Curtis which helps clear things up a bit. It’s not the UCG he’s worried about – it’s the facination with it by the media that’s the problem. G’wan – it’ll only take up four minutes of your life:

His basic thesis seems to be that the world is more chaotic that it appeared to be in the 70s (the height of the Journalist As Hero) and so journos are looking for someone to tell them what’s going on – their audiences.

It’s a slightly strange one but it does at least put the onus of responsibility on big media and not blame the nebulous “internet”. We’re not doing anything wrong by posting our photos and stories online for the world to see – it’s the way it’s being parsed and processed by the traditional gatekeepers that’s at fault.

Going back to that Register piece Curtis says “the people who do blogging, for example, are self-selecting. Quite frankly it’s quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they’re like: they’re deeply emotional, they’re bullies, and they often don’t get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information – they do little research of their own.”

Which is both fair and unfair. There are plenty of bloggers like that but there are also plenty who are the direct opposite of that. It gets a bit clearer though.

“I’ve talked to news editors in America. What they are most frightened of is an assault by the bloggers. They come from the left and the right. They’re terrified if they stray one way they’ll get monstered by bloggers on the right, if they stray the other way they’ll get monstered by bloggers from the left. So they nervously try and creep along, like a big animal in Toy Story – hoping not to disturb the demons that are out there. It leads to a sort of nervousness. The moment a media system becomes infected by nervousness it starts to decline.”

And this was what was confusing me. Those twatty bloggers giving us all a bad name, why don’t they just ignore them like we do? Sure, they’re self-selecting echo chambers re-enforcing their prejudices, but that shouldn’t affect the news gatherers. I think this is an important lesson that needs to be learned over the next few years. Anyone with enough time, luck and passion can create a media platform that creates a lot of noise for next to nothing these days. The barrier to entry has been lowered. But this also means the value attached to media platforms has also been lowered. Where there were once 100 outlets there are now 100,000,000. At least. So telling one of them to fuck off shouldn’t be a problem, should it?

So I’ve got two trains of thought here. One is that getting content from viewers is problematic because they will tend to be protective of it. The second is that cow-towing to the opinions of bloggers is really not logical because, hell, they’re only people. Pick out the best and treat them as sources that you wouldn’t usually have but for god sakes don’t be scared of them. I always thought the first rule of journalism was if you’re pissing someone off then you’re doing your job properly.

Nope, can’t tie them up. Feel like I should be able to though. See if you can.