Referring to the Wikipedia page on News Media; I will analyze the legitimacy of the process involved in creating a Wikipedia page. College and University students are well advised to avoid visiting Wikipedia for credible information to support their opinions on a topic area, for good reason. Wikipedia is essentially the collaboration of opinions from anyone on the internet, similar to a water cooler chat at work. Wikipedia does not require much from people for credibility in order for them to post a page; usually a couple references thrown in and a grammar check will make you a published author in the world of Wikipedia. The website being open to anyone online to create or edit information does not ensure that the information is at all accurate. What is required of a publisher to create a page is that they cite statements that may be argued; they sure make it easy since there is no definite guideline for what material 'may be argued'. It would be wise not to regard pages on Wikipedia relating to real people who are either living or dead because the workers at Wikipedia require much more legitimate sources for those papers than any other. Slander is taken most seriously and the pages that do not substantially prove their case are deleted as soon as they are published.In order to analyze how accurate Wikipedia pages are, I decided to select to look at the Wikipedia page on News Media since it covers my topic area of interest and is a large topic that would require plenty of detail and background. My first concern when I come to the News Media page on Wikipedia is that it features an image at the top of the page representing an event that occurred in 2004 which means that the page is quite dated. It is important to realize that the timeline for information is a lot tighter than printed media because information changes everyday and since there is no lengthy process to author on a Wiki page, there is no reason to use an example that is five to ten years old. The fact that this article in particular has not used current material means that is has not been revised up to date and in a field where new events occur every second it is crucial to address new material in order to be recognized. If I were undertaking a research paper on News media I would not give this page a second look as it does not help me focus on what is going on with News media to date.
Another issue with the News media page is that it focuses on broad outlines of different media; television, broadcast,internet, etc. There is a brief paragraph at the end that discusses news coverage and the way it is covered by the media. The way that the page is formatted is very similar to an encyclopedia where the information present is not usually saturated around a specific idea, just a politically correct summary of what the topic represents with brief definitions and few relevant examples. Wikipedia appropriately markets itself as a free encyclopedia. According to Jensen (2012) Wikipedia makes efforts to do what many encyclopedia companies do not, that is to encourage more participants to edit and author and to constantly keep information up to date. The issue is, not every Wikipedia page is kept as up to date as most encyclopedias as they tend to revise and put out a new edition every one to two years. This is truly evident if you visit the news media page. The page has received some criticism that would be helpful to the author(s) and future authors of the page. One writer argues that News media is not a common word and should not be used as such. It would be wise for the author(s) of the page to have described how the word news and media work together to form a common term that could be used, with enough background information on the development of the term to justify using it in an academic paper. A student looking to find information on how news media works was unable to pull anything from the page seeing as it mainly covers the what where and who and neglects to address the why and how that is crucial for understanding a topic. The talk section of Wikipedia is very helpful and should be addressed by authors who wish to add opinion to the topic. It is apparent that background information is the key to helping people understand the topic you cover. while the article by Brown (1996) argues that old media will diminish as new media rises; it is crucial that both go hand in hand. In order to post something of validity on the internet, you must have found some kind of factual information from a primary source i.e. a document, journal, article, or news broadcast. Facts are derived from past experience and research so it is imperative that old media be used to cover information through new media. Jensen suggests through experience that old media are often overlooked simply because society prefers fast and inexpensive which is supported by the trends in the type of media used and purchased. Wikipedia users tend to borrow their material from recent sources because it is easy to find free samples online. The author(s) of the news media page should have used a combination of information from old definitions of news and media, but also looked into new theories about news discourse and media analysis in order to provide readers with enough information to find a starting point and a personal opinion on what news media is all about.
No comments:
Post a Comment