The three issues I will be discussing are: knowing the
audience, copyright, and open sources.
In the NYPD article the agents knew their audience and tailored their
Wikipedia website in order for their actions to not be seen as harsh, but to be
understood by the public in a non-demeaning way. NYPD took out words such chokehold and
replaced them with headlock. This gave
the words less of a harsh meaning and allowed for the NYPD to be portrayed as
being the victim. The copyright issue
here is that the Wikipedia pages are not copy written. This allowed for the NYPD to change the
history about police brutality on their page.
Since Wikipedia is not a proprietary model because anyone
can access and change the information; therefore this makes it an open
source. Having unmonitored access to
change information on a highly used webpage allows many misinformation to be
passed on and inaccuracies to happen.
Many things have changed since the Internet first came
out. Not many people had access to it
and it was very limited. Now everyone
has access and this is not necessarily a good thing. Due to the liberties we now have on the Internet
there is so much false information out there, and depending on the audience,
people believe it.
References:
Mandiberg, M. (2012). The social media reader. New York: New York University Press.
NYPD caught trying to literally rewrite history of police brutality on Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved June 2, 2015, from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/13/1370674/-NYPD-caught-literally-trying-to-rewrite-their-history-of-police-brutality-on-Wikipedia#
References:
Mandiberg, M. (2012). The social media reader. New York: New York University Press.
NYPD caught trying to literally rewrite history of police brutality on Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved June 2, 2015, from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/13/1370674/-NYPD-caught-literally-trying-to-rewrite-their-history-of-police-brutality-on-Wikipedia#
Enna, you're right. There is a lot of false information on the web. As someone who has worked in the press and now works in PR, it's something we struggle with every day. Many people do not care if a post was made by a reliable group as long as the content is shareable.
ReplyDeleteShareable content is king. PR pros and writers who know their audience, know how to garner their attention and keep it will do better than most others.
Good writers and social media campaign managers also know that the importance of a single word. I'm guessing that's why NYPD is accused of changing Wikipedia posts. Changing just a few of those words can change the public's perception of what happened. Since Wikipedia is open sourced, it's permitted. That's one of the reasons why Dr. Bisha, if you've taken her courses, will not let you cite the source for any of her papers.
If you dont know this, you know it now, not everything you read on the internet is true. Wikipedia can be updated by anyone. The NYPD have one guilty mindset. Why someone omit something that they have knowledge about? Tells me they knew what they did was wrong.
ReplyDeleteI believe the reasoning behind the police changing the wording of information on Wikipedia is because they don't want those around the world to view this situation as a personal vendetta against citizens. I believe that the police want those around the U.S. and other countries to not fear them but respect their authority without abusing their power. Though actions speak louder than words, their purpose (not justified) for changing the words is an act of painting a more legal and positive picture for the public around the world to know.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about people believing stuff they read on the internet. Which correlates to the NYPD, some people will believe what they changed and some won't. Some people may see it as them trying to cover up, and some may see it as fixing false accusations.
ReplyDeleteI liked your point about changing words to make things seem worse or better depending on the person or situation. However, all media does this. In Journalism, we learned that news outlets and reporters alter things all the time. Unfortunately it is the society we live in and everyone wants to look like the "good guy" and are willing to do whatever it takes to spin the story in that manner.
ReplyDeleteI think you wrote a nice post, more details never hurt though! Good job.
The internet especially Wikipedia is not known to be reliable. The original writer could be any body and the original witter could have changed the case from its original form.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that the internet has changed things very much. It's not entirely reliable, of course, but for what part of human history has reliable information been readily available to anyone? For a huge part of history, information was tightly controlled by elect groups of craftsmen, the ruling elite, or educated people, and the majority of people had no access to it other than word-of-mouth. We like to think that the printing press changed all that, but propaganda has always abounded in print as well as online. Perhaps, once upon a time, you could go to a library and find several books about a subject, which had been reviewed and published by experts in the field, so you could trust that the information was fairly accurate. But if you were reading a book that was two years old, and someone had written a paper a year earlier disputing several claims and your library hadn't gotten around to ordering it, you would have no clue.
ReplyDeleteNone of this means that the internet is a more reliable option than previous ones. However, the internet is good at helping researchers find the most reliable and recent information there was. I think that's worth something.