User:Cfeldmar/sandbox

Response to Peer Reviews

My peer reviews main response was to fix my tone. I have already messaged our Wikipedia expert for tips on fixing the tone of the article and will take his advice to change a lot of the phrasing in my draft to better represent a Wikipedia article. I will also take the time to hyperlink a lot of the phrases in my draft so that readers can easily find out more information about it. I am going to continue to find new sources to add more quality information to the article. Thanks for the suggestions!

Democratic Media First Draft

Notes: Some of the phrasing/structure might need changes as I continue to find new sources with new information. Some parts might include too much opinion. Need help with section headers. Need to add hyperlinks to important terms.

Need for Democratic Media

Community Media is any form of media that functions in service of a community such as a local newspaper or radio station. A lot of these community media sources are dying off as consumers demand for them dwindle. Some theorize that community media could become popular again if they implemented the ideas of democratic media. Letting the people have a say in the media they consume could help to regain viewership in community media and fight against the new wave of large media outlets. Allowing this mass participation through democratic media could cause the people to become more involved in their own democracies and bring light to the issues that they care about. Some argue that these large media outlets have also had a detrimental affect on our society as they care more about the ratings and money than reporting the facts.

Media has also had a large effect on history. Behind many different historical events and social rights issues the media was often a driving factor in causing change. The media can use their power over the public's perception to influence their opinions and choices. The mass media is one of the main factors that determine the public opinion which oftentimes leads to public action. Providing this much power to media sources whose primary goal is money can cause a lot of problems. Some argue that converting to a democratic media would help to inform the people and bring the power back to the people by letting them influence the media that they consume.

Another viewpoint is that in order to truly be considered a democracy a country must have a democratic media. The believers of this viewpoint argue that a country who considers themselves a democracy should not have a media controlled by the powerful and privileged elite. They argue that a media run in this way will misinform the public and show what will support their own agendas. A system run this way could have catastrophic affects on society and the publics perception as they will only be told what the elite want. This could lead to misinformation, poverty, or even war.

Democratic Media Struggles Around the World

Africa

African journalists are often beaten up, arrested, or even killed by both the government and criminals because of some people's views on freedom of press. The country of Zimbabwe in specific sees journalists arrested regularly. Many of the news sources within the country have been banned such as The Daily News being banned in 2003 and the weekly Tribune being banned in 2004. These news outlets were all shut down by the government for various different reasons such as violations to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and for hiring unaccredited journalists. The Zimbabwean government also limits the international press's ability to report from within the country.

In 2010, South Africa had a large stalemate over a proposed bill between the African National Congress (ANC) and print media who both had differing views on the role of media within society. The ANC argued that local news often misreported the news and the local print media argued that they accurately depicted the news and wanted to move towards a more democratic media. The argument displayed two different views on the role of media within society as the ANC believed that media should have little freedom and be controlled by the government while the media sources believed that media should have complete freedom and be based on democracy. Within Africa, there are many policies made by the government that favor certain demographics over others. Often when the media reports on these policies to inform the public, they are threatened or shut down by the government.

Democratic Media Sources/Ideas

Democratic Media as an article is lacking a lot of information and sources. I hope to add reliable sources in order to make the article more comprehensive. I also hope to add some new sections to the article such as the evolution of democratic media, the practicality of democratic media, or criticisms of democratic media. By adding these new sources and sections I hope to remove the warning flag that pops up when you open the article.

Sources: CARPENTIER, NICO; LIE, RICO; SERVAES, JAN (July 1, 2010). "Community Media: Muting the democratic media discourse?". Continuum. 17 (1): 51–68. doi:10.1080/1030431022000049010. ISSN 1030-4312.

Drew, Jesse (2014). A social history of contemporary democratic media. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-07499-2. OCLC 910301196.

Cammaerts, Bart; Carpentier, Nico (2007). Reclaiming the media : communication rights and democratic media roles. Intellect. ISBN 978-1-84150-163-5. OCLC 475343965.

"African journalism and the struggle for democratic media", Making Journalists, Routledge, pp. 173–196, 2006-03-13, ISBN 978-0-203-08802-9, retrieved 2022-09-19

Carpentier, Nico; Dahlgren, Peter; Pasquali, Francesca (2013). Audience Transformations (1st ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9780203523162.

Lynch, Jake, and Annabel McGoldrick. "Peace journalism: a global dialog for democracy and democratic media." Democratizing global media: One world, many struggles (2005): 269-312.

Splichal, Slavko. "Ownership regulation and socialisation: Rethinking the principles of democratic media." Javnost-The Public 6.2 (1999): 5-24.

Herman, Edward S. "Toward a democratic media." Media literacy: A reader (2007): 36-53.

Botma, Gabriël J. "Going back to the crossroads: Visions of a democratic media future at the dawn of the new South Africa." Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 32.2 (2011): 75-89.

McFadden, Patricia. "Examining myths of a democratic media." (1998): 653-657.

Choose Potential Topics

Article 1: Citizen Media: This article is very outdated and has little to no section on social media which is the most popular form of citizen media presently. In the talk page of this article people have laid out similar plans of updating the outdated article, but no one has actually done it. If I were to select this article I would hope to add a section on twitter and a section on Instagram in order to make this article more modern.

Article 2: Participatory Media: This article is also fairly outdated and could use some modernization. The talk page of this article has only one message in it so not many other editors have worked on this article. I would hope to add a section about YouTube as it is integral part of participatory media.

Article 3: Democratic Media: This article is lacking a lot of citations and sources. I would hope to add some more information while also adding enough reliable sources to make the article more helpful and factual. The talk page of this article has only one message so it has not had a lot of editors working on it. If I select this article I would hope to add a section on examples of democratic media as right now there is only sections on the definition and the background.

Article 4: OpenGov: This article has a flag that one of the major contributors has a close connection with the subject so one thing I would do is go through the article and see if anything has bias and fix it. I would also try to add a criticisms section as there is not one currently. The talk page of this article has one very recent message about some potential changes, so this article could be getting some of the changes it needs soon.