Sunday, June 30, 2013

Alternative News Sources And Their Importance In The New Age

By Jeanette Riggs


Alternative news sources may seem contradictory to mainstream media but there is always one thing certain, these will always be critical to the new society. Alternative media are sources of information that could be publicly supported or commercially managed. These could be in forms of movies, magazines and the Internet. These could differ from the mainstream media or MSM in terms of mode of distribution, mode of production and content. While MSM are distributed through wide distribution channels, prior news sources are aimed at maximizing existing sources and at representing marginalized groups.

Advocates of alternative media convinced that mainstream media are biased in framing and presenting information though alternative media may be biased as well. Proponents believe that their being bias is different from the dominant considering the different set of values and framework they use in disseminating or delivering information. Alternative media, therefore, have highly different viewpoint that may not be seen in the mainstream.

As the name suggests, this form of information distribution has independent media outlets with different categories under the context. These can be community media, student media, social movement media and subcultural media but are not quite limited only to those. Each category emphasizes critical aspects for which audiences can be served best in accordance with its aims and interests.

Advocates can rather have self-images by means of self-marginalized information haven. This model gets them to create identities based on the traditional accepted codes of news distribution. This successfully challenges the mainstream media in a ton of ways through different outside sources.

According to one advocate, this is designed not mainly to maximize profit or sell audience to an advertiser in an effort to boost revenues. This simply exists to provide new means of organizing media and to further social activities. But with the growing trend of digital technologies which are not intentionally created as information media, issues pertaining to the dichotomy of the mainstream and this model are beginning to arise.

Digital technologies have paved the way for citizen generated journalism upon which news anchors are no longer necessary in reporting. With the video and camera applications on most cell phones, any individual can update the public about the current happenings by uploading pictures and videos on social networking sites and blogs.

For this reason, the public no longer has to wait for a news telecast in the evening to fresh and current global happenings. People could be immediately informed whether they are browsing their computers or just their cell phones.

Tactical media denote media activism. These are great examples of such type of reporting. They became popular across Europe and the United States somewhere around the mid 90s. These have been utilized by different activist groups including the Institute for Applied Autonomy, Bureau of Inverse Technology, and Irrational.

Alternative news sources have earned a growing interest among audiences due to their wide availability. While broadcast media are still the primary source of information, issues on media bias just never seem to be on the wane. What matters, however, is that people are able to get important pieces of information from these.




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