Monday, February 13, 2012

The Press Sphere Model


Jarvis approaches the shift in the distribution of information that has occurred.  He describes the change in how news organizations relate with readers, the government and companies.  The way that the media and its readers interact has changed.  Jarvis explains that the flow of information is no longer a one-way street.  Instead, news sources, archives, government, companies, witnesses and the press all share information back and forth.  Readers post links to background information, and a multitude of perspectives are shared in a story.  News coverage is no longer about a newspaper presenting the facts on an event or a topic.  With the Internet, it is a conversation between many organizations, people and interest groups.
I wasn’t really confused by this model; it actually made complete sense to me.  Though basic, it seemed to cover the way news and articles develop fairly well.
Looking at his rough sketch of the ‘press sphere’ model, I was reminded of a similar model from my political science class.  The cobweb model has many of the same groups in bubbles and it talks about how interests within the country come to compromise and maintain a balance in creating public policy decisions.  The overlap shows that people can be in both groups, which is the same as in Jarvis’s model.  Jarvis says, “Witnesses can join in the process directly. Background might come via links to archives.”  A member of the press can also be a witness or observer.  Meaning readers are also writers.  This ties into my relation with the news and becoming a blogger.  As we are reading more articles, we are also writing more.  The interplay between readers and writers on the Internet is much more prevalent then ever before.

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