Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence is the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as variation-feedback-selection, differentiation-integration-transformation, and competition-cooperation-coopetition (Por).

In the simplest way, shape and form, collective intelligence is the knowledge of everybody and anybody. It doesn’t boil down to being as simple as that, but for the sake of ease of understanding, that’s how I am going to define it for now. Collective intelligence can be found in many different outlets, particularly from the web. Look at a site like Facebook. Facebook is a place where you archive your own thoughts, photos, videos etc. for everybody that you are friends with to look at. What can all of your friends do to these posts? They can put their two cents in on whatever you posted and all of a sudden it’s collective intelligence.

At first, I thought that collective intelligence wasn’t really something that was affecting journalism. However, upon further review, I figured out that it was indeed affecting journalism in more ways than I could explain in this word limit.

The first way I want to talk about is through open journalism. Now I know I mentioned this last week as well, but everything is connected in one way or another and this is just a perfect example. Last post I associated open journalism with user generated content and in this post I am going to connect collective intelligence to open journalism. Thus, basically connecting user-generated content and collective intelligence, because in most cases, collective intelligence is a form of user generated content. So, what is open journalism? Well its societies contribution to journalism. We read an article or watch a video from a news source and comment on it with our personal reactions to said article. People even read the comments and draw their own conclusions based off of those comments creating more collective intelligence than I can wrap my head around.

Wikipedia is one of the biggest sources of collective intelligence out there right now and it has become an outlet for sorts for all different kinds of news. Journalists, although many will refuse to admit it, constantly turn to Wikipedia for information and news all the time. Granted there is really no merit to what is being said, but because of how instantaneous updates can be it is one of the most readily accessible sources for any story. Take for instance stories that have appeared over time in the Los Angeles Times and how they have included the text “according to Wikipedia.” If you think it’s just on filler articles as well you would be dead wrong. The words have appeared on articles about Barack Obama (Shaw 2008). There was even a study conducted at one point that compared information found on Wikipedia and information in Britannica to see how valid the site actually was. In the end it was closer than you may think. The average errors per Britannica page was three while the average error for a Wikipedia page was four. One more error per page and people still discredit it as a reliable source. Granted there are some pages on Wikipedia that will have fabricated information, but the bottom line is that you are responsible for what you put on paper and if you have to take one extra step to make sure it is true then why not use Wikipedia?

So now that we know Wikipedia can be a reliable source for collective intelligence what about social media? Now I know what you are saying, “No way can he make a case for social media as a news outlet. It’s just a bunch of schmucks saying what’s on their mind.” Well I’m going to tell you that in some cases it is, but in fact it can be a good source for news information. In fact some of the biggest news stories have been broken through social media over the last year. The deaths of Amy Whinehouse, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and even Osama Bin Laden were all broadcast over twitter before major media outlets picked up on them. Remember when the U.S. pilot landed that plane on the Hudson? Well guess what news source broke that news first, twitter.

Due to the speed of a Twitter post, it is becoming a major source for breaking news everywhere. Even in sports it is leaving its. Athletes such as Brian Dawkins, Shaquille O’Neal and Donald Driver have all announced their retirement through Twitter. Shaq Daddy took it a step further and after announcing it, broadcast a formal announcement over the site Tout, which eventually bombed. All in all, it won’t be long until we see more and more breaking news stories broken over sites like Twitter and Facebook as the trend has already started.

Works Cited

"Collective intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence>.

Flew, Terry. New media: an introduction. 3rd ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

"Has the Internet Killed Print Journalism? - YouTube." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MaGHrPI_0>.

Laird, Sam. "How Social Media Is Taking Over the News Industry [INFOGRAPHIC]." Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://mashable.com/2012/04/18/social-media-and-the-news/>.

Por, George. "Wordpress." Blog of Collective Intelligence. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://blogofcollectiveintelligence.com/about/>.

"Shaq top 10 quotes - YouTube." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWqPnEGzfK8>.

Shaw, Donna. "Wikipedia in the Newsroom." American Journalism Review 30.Feb/Mar (2008): 40-45. Print.

"Top 10 News Stories That Broke on Twitter | Breaking News for Black America." Breaking News for Black America | News One. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://newsone.com/2000159/top-10-news-stories-that-broke-on-twitter/>.