“WikiLeaks: the revolution has begun – and it will be digitised.”
Written by duckrabbitA brilliant article in The Guardian today.
To some this marks a crisis, to others an opportunity. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography – replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency.
The student protests in the UK, wikileaks cable disclosures, the power of social networks have all shown that things are changing no matter what we think.
It used to be that a leader controlled citizens by controlling information. Now it’s harder than ever for the powerful to control what people read, see and hear. Technology gives people the ability to band together and challenge authority. This is a revolution, and all revolutions create fear and uncertainty. Will we move to a New Information Enlightenment or will the backlash from those who seek to maintain control no matter the cost lead us to a new totalitarianism?
This is very relevant to photojournalism as much as it is for any other media machine and in business, they say “change or die”. That process of constant regeneration is exciting for those looking for fresh opportunities to revitalise the power of photographic story telling as the revolution has already arrived.
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (12 Comments)
It may well be digitised- but it just aint translating to the streets here in the US. Facts, truth, history, wisdom, clarity- none of it transforms into action here. Hell, none of it sinks into a mindest long hijacked by right wing media and recently fortified by Obama’s complete capitulation to the status quo.
At least you guys are making some noise over there…
Stan,
That is indeed pretty sad, but as you’ve mentioned, the general public have been nicely trained by their overlords.
Shame to hear that Stan from across the pond.
Are the US public more apathetic? Does the media reflect the viewers more accurately than we think? Like the Palin and Bush factor, they do have a popularity beyond our imaginations so a significant part of the population like being comforted by having their leaders express ideas like their own so is the media complicit in that?
“WikiLeaks: the revolution has begun – and it will be digitised.” – I very much agree! http://www.duckrabbit.info/?p=11855
I guess, if we take that argument further into the photojournalism field, the advent of crowd-funding sites such as Kickstarter and Emphas.is, we’re seeing photographers pull away from their regular sources of funding – i.e. magazines, newspapers and organisations (NGOs or IGOs) in favour of the crowd. A crowd that can, increasingly, control what they see and want to see. The crowd doesn’t trust the media to show them quality photojournalism (in general, of course) and will look for it for itself.
In the political realm, the Tea Party is a good example of that. Fed up with a Republican Party that didn’t live up to their expectations, a large group of people launched their own movement to promote their own ideas…
Great points Olivier.
Not sure crowd funding is so virtuous. I understand the business model but much of this industry is plagued by a lack of accountability to an audience. Crowd funding is another form of charity because you give first and shoot second. This is the world of grant giving, charity donations and photo editors detached from their audiences all over again.
My fear is that this is just another way of getting charity funds in order to shoot what you want. A sustainable business model demands that you invest and then you get your rewards for giving enough people what they are willing to pay for and although I wish emphas.is well, the structure legitimises rather than innovates.
It does not change the ideology of the photojournalist or demand that they build an audience first before executing any ideas. The crowd will give in hope but if the project fails, then the photographers still have their funds? It still puts the power in the hands of editors and not the public so the work will always reflect the ideology of the editors.
That is where the incentive will be for shooters who want to conform to Emphas.is’ idea of what project to put forward to the crowd. They will all try to please those “board of reviewers composed of industry professionals” and I am not convinced radical fresh new audience grabbing ideas will get through this editorial panel who are part of the current industry. The model is at high risk of producing a lot of “buyer regret” if the early projects do not do anything different to what is being done so is fragile to start off with. How long will they keep giving and how hard will shooters work if they already have their funding?
It is the shooters leveraging off crowd sourcing based charitable giving rather than shooters selling something wonderful that the public are willing to pay for. It is funding the supply through crowd sourcing and NOT creating demand by interacting with an audience.
That is what PJ’ism needs more than anything else – a platform that connects and converses with audiences and not editors or curators. Something that tests, measures and creates real demand from the public outside of the industry.
I hope emphas.is works to fund those shooting out of the love of the medium so I really really really hope my fears are misplaced.
The students in the UK certainly know how to use social networks to stay one step in front of the media and the police!
I think there is a fail-safe in this case. Yes, for its first project on a crowd-sourcing site the photographer might fail, or shoot without any accountability to its audience… But what will happen when that same photographer will come back to ask for more money or for money for another project? I would trust the crowd to have good memory on this and refuse to back that photographer once again. And especially with the rise of blogs such as this one, I think it will be easier to call out on photographers who abuse the system…
Unless, of course, it completely fails from the start, but I think it won’t.
Agree with you OL that lots of positive good will really help at the start.
The likes of Magnum and VII are in different states of financial difficulties. Magnum now charge money for 20 min portfolio reviews – they should be healthy enough to do this for free to search out the best talent and not to profit. VII recently took 50% of income raised from prints auctioned for the MSF charity thus putting them at an equal position to the charity. I understand that they need to do all they can to support their shooters but surely their tactics reflect economic necessity? I apologise to them if I am wrong.
Now if current industry people brought in to choose which project effectively to curate the emphas.is project, what are the chances of something different?
The crowd will have good memories indeed but one failure will harm the scheme so it would be great to use the crowd for the choice of project too?
There has to be a better way of serving the public. The beauty of the market system is that the public will choose not to support things they do not like by not buying and the bad will fail and the good will prosper.
In emphas.is, the financial commitment is first so expectations for what you get in return will be much higher because it is in the future. The social function of emphas.is is to provide photojournalists with funding and I am not sure how sustainable that will be to the public.
I wish it well though as I would love to see this work – if it does, I hope they ban agency photographers from crowding out the emerging talent who are starting their careers. How depressing would it be to see someone say from the VII Network or a Magnum Nominee having to fight with new graduates to get funding on emphas.is thus creating fewer opportunities out there for those working hard to get a platform for their efforts.
The question will be this, if I can give to someone doing magnificent work like MSF who try to make sure 85% goes direct to good causes, why give to photojournalists? Are photojournalists the new charities?
Laurent,
On the Tea Party movement, please google the Koch brothers and watch the Astroturf Wars movie if you can. The Tea Party is not a grassroots revolt agains republican ideals. It is a very sinister ploy by the extreme right to surf their way to power on the backs of the angry masses, and it was carefully orchestrated by some of the richest and most powerful entities in the US. We witnessed similar tactics during the rise of National Socialism in Germany, using strong Christian ideals, rabid fear of Communism, and rampant poverty to unite wide swathes of society.
It would be a mistake to imagine the Tea Party is a popular uprising against the Republicans. As we get closer to the 2012 elections we see the Tea Party talking points realigning with Republican ideals. Despite much of the press on the Koch brothers pegging them as Anarcho-Fascist Libertarians, if you look closely at their history and the candidates they supported in the mid-term elections, none of them were Libertarians in the traditional sense by any strecth of the imagination. The puppet masters of the Tea Party movement want climate change denial to become the norm and more freedom for big business to pollute and do business without the interference of that annoying regulator: the government.
As someone else pointed out above, Americans are not at all motivated to organize any real form of opposition based on facts. They have been brainwashed by an indoctrinated press that invites PR representatives of lobby groups and big business to pose as independent commentators, when all they are doing is pushing the same right wing agenda. To Boot, Americans have been dumbed down by one of the most pathetic public school systems in the modern world, and all but rendered powerless by a system that threatens their civil liberties on a daily basis. Just do a little bit of research on the pharmaceutical industry and their decades-long campaign to ensure that large sectors of the population become dependent on mind-altering psychotropic drugs and you may get a sense as to why the population seems to have been so lobotomized. Americans consume 90% of the world’s ritalin. Television commercials trumpet new drugs on the markets to treat mental illnesses that don’t exist anywhere else in the world, and the craziest part is they target the young. This is the American tragedy so few of its own people are aware of…and you won’t hear about it from CNN, Fox, big business or the government. They all work together to keep the population in line, stupefied, ignorant and too fearful to do anything about it.
Wikileaks is a ray of light in the bleak landscape I paint for you above. It is an affront to power and a shock to those who have been living in the darkness of the cave for so long. As Plato’s theory of the cave notes, it is very difficult at first for one to adjust to reality after knowing only the illusion. It remains to be seen, as the Guardian points out, whether or not this ray of light will lead to a New Information Enlightenment or greater oppression.
Didn’t finish this sentence: “The puppet masters of the Tea Party movement want climate change denial to become the norm and more freedom for big business to pollute and do business without the interference of that annoying regulator: the government,” but they aren’t interested, for example, in abortion rights or gay and lesbian rights, two core libertarian principles.
You have to realize that after the ’60s-early ’70s, the American ruling class was terrified of having their power usurped- and they got busy! The (free) public school system has been conveniently allowed to remain broken for decades on end. It exists solely to supply a subpar education for minorities and poor whites, those who do graduate find there are no jobs to be had (which is why such a blaringly high percentage drop out- it’s a scam and they know it). When I graduated high school in the seventies, the city university system was tuition free! They stopped that cold- major clamp down. We’ve been getting dumber and dumberer ever since. The one income family is an amber encased relic of eons past. Today, everyone’s hustling just to keep their head over water. Health care, if you have it, doesn’t foot the whole bill- god help ya if you’re really ill. Long standing anti-trust laws were gutted so that a certain monied foreigner could buy up TV, radio, and newspapers to spread the fascist zeal. Deregulation became the new religion, unions a satanic cult, and our jobs were sent to Mexico, and then Asia- cheaper still. The Supreme Court has been finely attuned into a right wing bastion of fascist power- they can install a President, declare major corporations… people!
And along came terrorism, and whatever crumbling twig of sanity and common sense that somehow survived and remained came plunging down to earth in embers like bodies hitting pavement on Chambers St. Our Congress is now populated by people who believe that our very planet was created 6,000 years ago, and by those scared shitless to confront them. And whatever hope that still refused to die was rammed headlong into oblivion by he who promised us that very word writ large.
Brilliantly put, Stan….and all this by design. The absolute betrayal of the proletariat by the mythic left is as clear as day now – the last nail hammered in by none other than Obama. Mission accomplished. The balance has tipped, and I dare say, I have little faith Wikileaks will do much to change anything internally for the better.