Is WikiLeaks leaking...

WikiLeaks is an international nonprofit organization that publishes otherwise classified or unavailable documents online for public use. Since its launch in 2006, the group claims to have published millions of documents, many relating to the U.S. led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also relating to economic crises in American diplomatic cables. Many of its documents have been published and analyzed by leading news outlets, including the U.K.'s Guardian, the New York Times and New York Daily News. But regardless of their popularity there were a lot of discussions about the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is a journalist or not.

Jeff Jarvis of the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism writes: "We in journalism must recognize that WikiLeaks is an element of a new ecosystem of news. It is a new form of the press. So we must defend its rights as media. If we do not, we could find our own rights curtailed. Asking whether WikiLeaks should be stopped is exactly like asking whether this newspaper should be stopped when it reveals what government does not want the public to know. We have been there before; let us never return."

The Guardian, a WikiLeaks partner wrote in an editorial: "There is a need as never before for an internet that remains a free and universal form of communication. WikiLeaks' chief crime has been to speak truth to power. What is at stake is nothing less than the freedom of the internet."

Jay Rosen of the New York University journalism school describes WikiLeaks as the first "stateless news agency." The actions of WikiLeaks, he noted, show our news organizations how "statist they really are" and leakers going to WikiLeaks rather than the traditional media, shows how distrustful people are of the corporate media. This all shows that the "watchdog press has died" and WikiLeaks is filling the void.

Even though some in the traditional media are threatened by WikiLeaks, more and more outlets are acknowledging their journalism. Reporters Without Borders hosts a mirror site of WikiLeaks as "a gesture of support for WikiLeaks' right to publish information without being obstructed." Similarly, a mainstream French newspaper Liberation announced a "mirror-WikiLeaks" site on its website

It seem like WikiLeaks is filling a void with traditional media as the level of distrust of the mass media is now at record highs.

The new boom is around its latest release of classified US documents about the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which opened on January 11, 2002, and remains open under President Obama, despite his promise to close the much-criticized facility within a year of taking office. So although the media fuzz about Wikileaks is not so intensive as it was, they are not going anywhere. New information is leaking and leaking…

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-zeese/julian-assange-at-the-for_b_829194.html

Unauthoriesed intrusion on the PlayStation Network

Sony's PlayStation Network, the infrastructure that allows PS3 owners to play online games, as well as buy movies and other downloadable, has been iniltered by unknown hacker, and the customer details up to 77 million users have been compromised. This happened between 17th and 19th of April, when Sony realised there have been unauthoriesed intrusion on the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. The company shut the services down and undertook an investigation. 
Security analysts said that the problem may mean that hackers have uncovered a fundamental flaw in Sony's networks which will be expensive and time-consuming to fix. The company has suggested that an "unauthorised person" carried out the attack against its servers, during which usernames, passwords, credit card details, security answers, purchase history and addresses are believed to have been stolen.The precise method by which the hacker broke into the systems has not been revealed, though earlier this year the encryption around the PlayStation 3 was cracked. That would have made software piracy on the PS3 simpler, but it's not clear if it would have enabled the wider break-in. 

The Anonymous activist group, which had criticised Sony over its legal threats to people who exploited the encryption crack, when the PSN went down, quickly announced it had nothing with it. But many think that the message left open the possibility that individuals from the group might be responsible. "While it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves AnonOps was not related to this incident and takes no responsibility for it," the statement said. It accused Sony of taking advantage of previous attacks on its network to explain an internal problem with company servers.

Having user emails and passwords could lead malicious users to steal all sorts of other personal details, especially because many people use the same password on multiple sites – a security failing caused by the problem of remembering multiple different logins.

Sony has produced an FAQ to inform gamers about the security breach. It reiterates the huge extent of the intrusion: names, addresses, birthdates, PSN passwords and credit card numbers for any of the network's 77 million customers who provided such information may have been acquired.

With thousands of gamers livid that their details have been compromised, the Sony FAQ does briefly address the question of refunds on subscriptions and purchases: "When the full services are restored and the length of the outage is known, we will assess the correct course of action."

TV vs. Social media

There is ongoing discussion about how television and old media are slowly dying because of the new media. But funny thing has happened in the recent year. Big TV events have been dramatically and conspicuously not dying. The 2010 Super Bowl was the most watched U.S. TV show ever, surpassing the finale of M*A*S*H. 2010 Olympics far outrated the 2006 Games. The Emmys, Grammys and Golden Globes all increased, and on February 27, about 38 million people watched the Oscars. This year American idol has also decided to take advantage of social media by introducing Facebook voting.

It seems like now when we have Twitter, Facebook big events have taken another dimension, invading our living rooms in a more active way. People are not seen only as the passive receivers of content but as a participants. Maybe new media aren't replacing TV but creating a new way to watch it. 
But we mustn't generalize because ordinary, nonevent shows are still losing viewers to video games, DVDs and every other modern distraction. Rather, it seems that mostly the biggest shows are getting bigger.

So maybe the lesson here is not to look at social media as a problem. As no less an old-media guy than longtime CBS chief Leslie Moonves told the New York Times, "The Internet is our friend, not our enemy."

Read more: -http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1971444,00.html#ixzz1HKwnrGOc
-http://techland.time.com/2011/02/24/american-idol-introduces-facebook-voting/#ixzz1HKvMBmDH

Something for the informed information consumer

"We’ve moved to an age where the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see. [...] We need the new information gatekeepers to encode a sense of civic responsibility into algorithms.” ~ Eli Pariser


Read more: http://www.brainpickings.org/page/3/#ixzz1G81QAuNU

The Guardian commercial - Points Of View

A good commercial showing visually in 27 sec. the importance of seeing things from different perspectives. Enjoy!

Social media in the Middle East revolution

With the growth of Internet in the world (I would not say developing world) social media are playing important role in political movements. In the recent events in Egypt in Tunisia protesters used Facebook and Twitter to organize supporters. Millions of fans join the Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said".

On the other hand the Abderrahim Foukara, chief of television network Al Jazeera's Washington bureau said that although social media were important during the protests, they could not have succeed alone, adding that other media also played an important role.

"There were a lot of young people using Tweets and Facebook, and they still are, to convey a sense, in the case of Libya, of the atrocities being committed against civilians.  But in the case of Egypt for example, you needed a television medium, whereby Egyptians can have a conversation with each other in real time in a way that put what was going on in Egypt in context, not just for people in Egypt but also for other people around the region," he said. 

Another view of the situation was posted by the Egyptian journalist and blogger Mona Eltahawy saying that those calling the Middle East movements Facebook or Twitter revolutions are not giving the credit where it is due.
"Facebook and Twitter did not invent courage. And I think we owe it to these incredibly courageous people. I mean look how many people are being slaughtered in Libya, to recognize that this courage has been there for decades, whether people outside of those countries saw it or not. Facebook allowed you to see it. Facebook allowed them to connect. But at the end of the day, it's their courage to go out on the street and topple those regimes that must be saluted, before we salute anybody else," she said.

So what kind of role does new media have in the time of revolution and battle? Where are the limits to how much the recent unrest can be attributed to social media platforms? 

Sources:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Social-Media--117312843.html

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Social-Media-a-Critical-Tool-for-Middle-East-Protesters-117202583.html

Introduction post

My name is Ivana Naceva and am a 25 year old postgraduate student at the Faculty of social science in Ljubljana, currently studying cultural studies - religion and culture. I was born and raised in Skopje, Macedonia, but at 18 when the time for choosing an university come I decided to go and study abroad. Obviously Slovenia was my choice. I live here for almost seven years and its quite good so far.

The title of my blog is New Me-dia and Society; New Me standing for doing this for the first time. Everything looks and feels exciting for now so I hope this enthusiasm will stay with me throughout the whole process :)

I have to say that when I read about this lecture I was really thrilled that something like this is happening on our faculty (things have become a little boring in the recent years) and that I will have the opportunity to be part of it. The importance of media nowadays and the enormous influence that they have on every single one of us is quite obvious, so learning and discussing about it its a MUST DO for everybody. Being aware of this position that media have in society can help us raise and see above the natural state of things. So lets use this lecture and make the best of it!

Thats all for now... I greet you all!