Blogs or Reliable Journalistic Pages? What does journalism mean? According to the explanation of the term: Journalism is the gathering of news and information, and its dissemination through the mass media with the aim of informing citizens as correctly as possible. Journalism includes the subjective view of the one who practices it, from the way the gathered information is structured or presented, to its direct commentary. Anyone who practices journalism as a profession (journalist) is subject to the code of journalistic ethics of the editors' association to which he belongs.
The fields covered by journalism cover all aspects of political, social, economic and cultural life. The profession of journalist is considered by some to be a profession from the perspective that the journalist performs social work, works for the benefit of society as a whole and contributes to its proper functioning (e.g. by exposing scandals).
This is where blogs come in, as independent and alternative sources of information that invaded our lives with the spread of the internet.
The online community has reportedly listened and adopted these different sources of information (blogs, social media), with the result that blogs are currently more than “reliable journalistic pages” and “real journalists.”
Here comes the dilemma that has been heard more and more lately, especially after the scandals that reported the transmission of fake news by “reliable journalistic pages,” “real journalists,” and social media. What can we trust anymore when credibility is inversely proportional to bribery or political propaganda?
Who can define the standards of correct information or the promotion and non-promotion of articles?
Most scholars, as well as many journalists, consider that blogs offer a new form of alternative journalism that contributes substantially to the democratization of public communication. This is justified by the fact that someone who writes on a blog is not limited by any norms and can express his opinion on a subject from a different perspective than the generally institutionalized and dominant one, without at the same time being limited by his superiors on how to express himself on a subject.
Of course, the institutionalized views and norms of the powerful in each society do not look favorably on the freedom offered by each individual's blog as it stirs up the stagnant waters. We have read about dozens of (known) criminal investigations and prosecutions for defamation and everything else you can imagine.
According to Michel Paul Foucault, the state legitimizes, establishes and has overall financial and administrative control over the operation of different types of confinement structures such as prisons, concentration camps and psychiatric hospitals for many and various reasons. One of these, in addition to ensuring “normal” social coexistence, imposing and maintaining order, is the maintenance of normalities and therefore the maintenance of the existing. For those who did not understand in simple words, the state needs deviation because by showing it it can determine and maintain its normality.
With their appearance, blogs essentially came to disrupt normality, “normal” social coexistence, the imposition and maintenance of order. We have seen that the freedom of expression offered by the internet is not liked by authoritarian regimes, see the blockades of Turkey and the Great Firewall of China.
The introduction to Zafiris Karampasis' academic research "Blogging in Greece: Profiles, motivations and practices of Greek-speaking bloggers" PDF states:
“Blogs are an innovative communication platform that - for the first time in history - allows anyone with simple access to the internet, completely free of charge and with just a few clicks of the mouse, to publish content of any digital format potentially to the entire world. This unprecedented possibility - which is part of the general framework of what has become known as “web 2.0” or “social web” - is radically transforming the global communication landscape by expanding the public sphere while constituting a phenomenon of enormous proportions that is gradually gaining more and more attention from the media, scientists, the market and, above all, ordinary people who see blogs as a means of self-expression, socialization and self-empowerment of their speech.”
Epilogue:
From all of the above, an endless expansion of information with many more stakeholders is evident. This is good but it is also bad. Although according to Mr. Karabasis' research: the "typical Greek-speaking blogger is a 30-year-old man who lives in Athens, has a university education and works", anyone can write whatever comes to mind and thus the responsibility of the end user, recipient of information, increases. We live in the age of information and Big Data. Many of the largest technology companies invest a lot of money in the analysis of information, since it can be used as a means of dominance, to predict, to direct, to be used for commercial purposes and much more.
The information that bombards us daily, whether it comes from journalistic channels or from blogs, contains very valuable things but also unlimited garbage that is looking for recipients.
What do we do? Personally, I don't believe that there are recipes, I don't believe in beacons and ranking services like Alexa.
The analysis of Big Data and the presentation of the results is funded (or even subsidized), just as journalists are funded (or subsidized) (to be fair, not all of them are subsidized).
But one thing is certain: Doubt is the beginning of every science.
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Other sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
https://autonompsycho.espivblogs.net/
