What the "digital generation" in Korea looks like
basic info 2007/07/18 01:15 Park Ji-Sung, a 27-year-old Korean soccer star, is one of the biggest celebrities in Korea. He's currently playing for Manchester United in the Premiere League in England. (For those who aren't particularly famililar with the soccer leagues, it's basically like the NY Yankees in baseball and the LA Lakers in basketball). Being the first one from Korea to play in the Premiere League, he's the Beckham, Zidane, and Figo of Korea.
Anyhow, he had this huge outing in Korea. Lots of fans, along with reporters, came to see him, waiting in line for hours and hours before he showed up. How many? A lot more than this.
What caught my attention was the number of digital cameras that were around today. This is pretty crazy even for someone living in Korea like me. Look not only at the number of cameras but also at the variety of the devices. While many are cell phones, others are regular digital cameras, some hybrid devices (like GPS and PMPs combined), and even lots of DSLRs.
Now, let's talk about citizen journalism. In the picture above, can you tell who are the "professional" reporters and who are the citizen journalists? What if these thousands of people go home tonight and upload the pictures and tag them under "Ji-Sung Park"? What if they all start writing stuff under the picture, ranging from a teenage girl writing "I finally saw Park and that makes me wanna cry because I'm so happy", to a little boy writing "someday I'll be a great soccer player like him", to a daddy going "I'm gonna buy my kids the Park jersey today to show them how much I love them", to a marketer contemplating "what kind of media coaching could I perform for my clients to create a brand like his?"
I had a chance to talk to Jay Rosen back in April about the online journalism. I just had set my direction as the first "full-time" blogger in Korea and was wondering if I could live up to people's expectations of being a competent journalist. After all, I was a computer science major and had just begun to study how the "new media" might impact the society. I had never taken a single journalism course, didn't know much about the what-when-who's of storytelling, or couldn't really come up with great attention-drawing headlines. I could never write like professional journalists. Of course, being a blogger, I knew you really never have to be 100% like that, but I always thought I would need some skills well-possessed by many professional journalists.
And this is what Jay said:
"There are two kinds of journalism out there. One's the 'refined' journalism you're talking about. This form of journalism has dominated our media industry for decades now. There's also another kind that is more like 'everyday' journalism, where regular people come together to tell one another stories, transmit information, and add comments. The latter has been amplified by the development of the so-called new media."
So, according to Jay, what these people are doing is the second form of journalism. No wonder, the majority of those pictures aren't gonna be uploaded to newspaper sites or blogs with independent domain names, but to their Cyworld mini-hompies or Naver blogs. We're talking "everyday" here.
You can get a really nice DSLR for about $1,000 now. A decent camcorder for far less than that. These things are being uploaded to the universal brain with a scale of millions everyday.
So who are the journalists? Until every digital generation person gets tired of holding up cameras for minutes with one hand, I would say all of them could be one. Even great ones. Wherever they are.
Anyhow, he had this huge outing in Korea. Lots of fans, along with reporters, came to see him, waiting in line for hours and hours before he showed up. How many? A lot more than this.
What caught my attention was the number of digital cameras that were around today. This is pretty crazy even for someone living in Korea like me. Look not only at the number of cameras but also at the variety of the devices. While many are cell phones, others are regular digital cameras, some hybrid devices (like GPS and PMPs combined), and even lots of DSLRs.
Now, let's talk about citizen journalism. In the picture above, can you tell who are the "professional" reporters and who are the citizen journalists? What if these thousands of people go home tonight and upload the pictures and tag them under "Ji-Sung Park"? What if they all start writing stuff under the picture, ranging from a teenage girl writing "I finally saw Park and that makes me wanna cry because I'm so happy", to a little boy writing "someday I'll be a great soccer player like him", to a daddy going "I'm gonna buy my kids the Park jersey today to show them how much I love them", to a marketer contemplating "what kind of media coaching could I perform for my clients to create a brand like his?"
I had a chance to talk to Jay Rosen back in April about the online journalism. I just had set my direction as the first "full-time" blogger in Korea and was wondering if I could live up to people's expectations of being a competent journalist. After all, I was a computer science major and had just begun to study how the "new media" might impact the society. I had never taken a single journalism course, didn't know much about the what-when-who's of storytelling, or couldn't really come up with great attention-drawing headlines. I could never write like professional journalists. Of course, being a blogger, I knew you really never have to be 100% like that, but I always thought I would need some skills well-possessed by many professional journalists.
And this is what Jay said:
"There are two kinds of journalism out there. One's the 'refined' journalism you're talking about. This form of journalism has dominated our media industry for decades now. There's also another kind that is more like 'everyday' journalism, where regular people come together to tell one another stories, transmit information, and add comments. The latter has been amplified by the development of the so-called new media."
So, according to Jay, what these people are doing is the second form of journalism. No wonder, the majority of those pictures aren't gonna be uploaded to newspaper sites or blogs with independent domain names, but to their Cyworld mini-hompies or Naver blogs. We're talking "everyday" here.
You can get a really nice DSLR for about $1,000 now. A decent camcorder for far less than that. These things are being uploaded to the universal brain with a scale of millions everyday.
So who are the journalists? Until every digital generation person gets tired of holding up cameras for minutes with one hand, I would say all of them could be one. Even great ones. Wherever they are.
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