Jarvis

In his blog, “The Press Becomes the Press Sphere”, Jeff Jarvis has some interesting explanations for the shifts of power within the media. Jarvis describes the press-sphere as, “When we put the public at the center of the universe…we see the choices we all call upon: the press still, yes, but also our peers, media… search, links, original sources, companies, the government. It’s all information and we curate it and interact with it with the tools available.” According to Jarvis, the press no longer controls news like it used to. He believes that news used to be filtered through the press, but today we receive our news from a multitude of sources. In my opinion, his view is overly simplistic. It is undeniable that the way we receive news is changing. The internet has transformed the way information is transferred and shared. However, it is extremely inaccurate to state that the press was the only way news was spread ‘back-in-the-day’. Jarvis stresses the importance of the communication between peers as a source of news. Although it is easier to communicate with one another, our peers have not changed that much. We can connect and talk to people across the world with a touch of a button, but we still gravitate towards people who share our views and opinions. People were able to communicate by phone, and before that through letters. A prime example was during World War II. A lot of the news circulating in the states was inaccurate. The most accurate sources were letters written by soldiers. To this day, these personal accounts are used to gain a better understanding of what really happened during the war.