Introduction to Web 2.0

Early web pages were static, much like book content – "read only" mode ... Interactive elements soon crept in such as bulletin boards and data-submission forms. Around 2004, users began taking the driver's seat, actively altering content and debating points with other readers. The jargon for this movement is "web 2.0," as if the Internet were a software program in its second release. Other terms you'll hear bandied about include "participatory web" and "architecture of participation".

Insider talk aside, it boils down to this: with the most basic computer skills, cybersurfers can tinker with some web pages. Examples of this trend include:

• Collective intelligence sites like Wikipedia. A "wiki" allows many users to edit and add content, pooling intelligence.
• Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter that encourage group communication through microblogging, link-sharing and threaded discussions.
• User-generated-content sites like TripAdvisor and parts of Amazon.com that rely on free reviews from users. Also called "crowd-sourced" ... most often by downsized journalists.

We'll discuss the evolution of Web 2.0 sites further throughout the term, as well as the heralded rise of Web 3.0, the semantic web (sites capable of something more closely resembling human thought. For example, in the future, Wikipedia might be able to answer a question, rather than supplying a variety of links, based on keywords).

Citizen journalism

A blogger is a one-woman band: author, photographer, videographer, cartographer, designer, publisher, advertising exec, marketing guru, legal department, etc. That's the pain of the genre – but the beauty too. You're the boss: free to flourish and flounder both without a lot of hoop-jumping.

 

The title "citizen journalist" increasingly applies to people paddling in the datastream like this. This elastic term stretches from reader-comment sidebars to pro-curated sites of user-generated content and blogs writ so large they rival the mainstream media. Take FiveThirtyEight: A site run by a baseball-stats nerd, a poker player, and a documentary filmmaker has a readership akin to the Houston Chronicle's, according to Joshua Benton at Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab.

Media's converging online in a swirl. Text rubs shoulders with broadcast video now. Bloggers turn pro and pros crowd-source. Indie media is the future, insists pundit Mark Cooper. "It is the independent, citizen and community media that provide the seeds of an alternative journalism, he claims in The Huffington Post. "These alternatives tend to be structured viral communications, in which a light touch of hierarchy can go a long way. The examples are well known, beyond blogging, which tends to be the least organized form of expression. We find things like Wikis, online posts, collaborative production and distribution in peer-to-peer networks, opens source software, crowd sourcing, and new forms of copyright, like the Creative Commons, etc.

"The critical challenge for these outlets is to become trusted intermediaries. The critical challenge for society is to figure out how to tap into the immense energy of the public sphere in cyberspace while preserving key journalistic attributes someplace within a much-expanded public sphere. To build trust, the new journalism will have to produce a steady stream of output that readers find authoritative, correct and useful."