It is no secret that technology has completely revolutionized the way we operate as human beings and the ways in which we relate to and communicate with one another. Our society is openly dependent on and addicted to this new digital world and no facet of information seeking or distribution means remains unaffected. The creation and eruption of mass media has left an enormous effect on the field of journalism. The production of journalism has expanded to a new level in the variety of instantaneous information it circulates as well as the amount of perspectives it encompasses and its range of accessibility. Technology has also altered the existing communication and power structures between journalists and the public. This has both allowed us to revise reality as it happens and has also created a host of ethical concerns regarding desensitization.
The power and immediacy of the Internet has created a far more influential mark on this field in the depth of information it allows for. Instant gratification is the hallmark of most of what we enjoy now. The sheer speed in which we snap a photo or record a video and post it to a variety of social media sites has exponentially increased the amount of news that is at our disposal. We don't have to wait for a boy on a bike to throw a newspaper onto our stoop each morning, we simply turn on the TV or turn to social media or online news sources. In seconds we span a range of articles on a range of topics, yet even as we stare at screens for potentially 11 hours a day, we can't come close to comprehending all of the information that's out there simply because we are overloaded. We have access to it all, but lack the time and attention span to sort through it and determine what's important and what's not.
Globalization has been hugely impacted by technology, yet we remain separated by our screens rather than united by them. So many of the problems in the world today come from a lack of understanding across cultures; while our world trade networks are more integrated than ever before, we remain completely isolated as human beings.
While the ease of technology seems to eliminate the physical distance between people, it is possible that it instead creates moral distance, decreasing our capacity to empathize with suffering and feel obligated to help others. We are assaulted by a barrage of disturbing images and videos every day, and some believe that this repetition has caused us to become desensitized to human suffering. The idea of compassion fatigue is that we have no room left to feel for those we see in these images, they become neutral and we become indifferent. However, many argue that our minds cannot overflow and that we turn away from these images because we feel helpless or they deviate from our conception of the world as a just place. Whatever the reason, it would seem physically impossible for us to react financially, emotionally or otherwise, to every single image of suffering we face due to the sheer amount of them. While the media has given us artificial eyes and the illusion of omniscience, we lack artificial hands and sometimes even the tangible use of our own to reach out to one another.
The definition of a journalist has also drastically shifted; anyone with an iPhone or a Twitter account today can be a journalist and participate in the creation and modification of news by posting something on social media. News has become a dialogue among thousands instead of a script fed to the public by a few journalists. Viral videos have allowed many to be held accountable for their actions. The video of Ian Tomlinson who died after being pushed to the ground by a police officer during G20 protests in 2009 ended up being a vital tool to the Guardian newspaper in their framing of the event. Because of footage taken in the heat of the moment at a pool party in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a Texas officer was suspended for the way he broke up the party after he was shown to have drawn his gun and violently wrestle a teenage girl to the ground. Amateur footage has given us an accurate depiction of the reality of issues such as police brutality all over the world, yet also reminds us to investigate the credibility of our sources as there are so many.
Technology has ensured radical changes in the way we gather, process and transmit information, in its volume and scope. News has become participatory and attainable like never before. While we are virtually connected all over the globe, a growing void between reality and “hyper reality” draws disturbing consequences from this new journalism. We live in an information revolution, left to drown in the amount available to us as we seem to focus more and more on ourselves and fleeting attention-grabbing pleasures and less on the world as a whole.
