Page 336 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2
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Onl ne Publ sh ng | 1
online PuBlishing
The introduction of new do-it-yourself (DIY) digital publishing software and
the emergence of online communities engaged in both creative and collective-
intelligence endeavors have created new opportunities for—and raised new
concerns about—public expression and the circulation of knowledge. Contem-
porary debates about online publishing raise important questions about who
should have the right to determine/police access, accuracy, creativity, ownership,
reliability, and value in a networked era and they point to the changing roles,
standards, and styles of reading and writing in American society and around the
globe.
ThE DEBaTEs
On the one hand, there are those who see user-friendly online publishing
tools—blogs, wikis, Web video—as contributing to the emergence of new modes
of multimediated, nonlinear, and interactive writing that provide new creative
freedoms and possibilities for artistic and public expression. These same tools
and platforms also potentially provide opportunities for historically marginal-
ized communities to gain voices by circumventing traditional publishing routes
that had previously ignored or misrepresented them, or spoken on their behalf.
All of these possibilities are championed as both challenging the status quo by
redefining who has the right to publish and whose voices have the rights to be
heard as well as contributing to new democratic possibilities for exchanging
ideas. On the other hand, critiques of digital publishing have ranged from the
reactionary to the critical. While some complain about a decline in standards for
both writing and reading—of poor grammar, inaccurate and “undesirable” infor-
mation, and an erosion of expertise—others point to the limitations imposed on
true creative and public expression by transnational corporations threatening
to prosecute perceived intellectual property and digital copyright infringements
(more reactionary voices have pointed to the increased opportunities for intel-
lectual property theft that accompany digital publishing endeavors). Addition-
ally, critics have argued that the creators of Web 2.0 and other writer-friendly
technologies continue to set the standards by which these technologies can be
used and narrowly define modes of creative expression. Moreover, opportu-
nities for participating in these new publishing worlds are still hampered by a
digital divide that limits both access to technologies and knowledge of how to
use them. In this regard, the Internet still remains largely a domain for middle-
class white men.
CrEaTivE FrEEDoms
One of the key debates concerning digital publishing has been the degree and
types of new creative freedoms it affords both professional and nonprofessional
writers (even as these same technologies blur distinctions between professional
and nonprofessional writing). Arguably, free online software and services like
Blogger, Drupal, and Wordpress allow users to easily create, customize, and