“Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Web site.”
–From Wikipedia

Founded in the year of 2001, Wikipedia has attracted millions and millions people to visit it, edit it and revise it and after only six years, it is now one of the twelve most-visited websites worldwide. To me, the most attractive feature of Wikipedia is that no matter you are a primary student or a professor in Harvard, you can edit whatever you know and disseminate them via Wikipedia to everybody in the world. Wikipedia is not only a provider of information but also a platform for pushing everybody who can access it around the world to become provider of information. As it is mentioned in Stacy Schiff’s article “Wales’s (Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder) most radical contribution may be not to have made information free but—in his own alma-matricidal way—to have invented a system that does not favor the Ph.D. over the well-read fifteen-year-old.” So personally, the greatest contribution of Wikipedia is that it forms a concept that “the key thing is getting it right” but not keeping things in the hands of authorities or so-called experts. Just like the development of blogs makes us now live in the day of citizens journalism, Wikipedia allows citizens act as expert and authority. In the world of Wiki, the mass enjoy the equality once controlled by few people, like Stacy Schiff said “Wikipedia, which began as an experiment in unfettered democracy, has sprouted policies and procedures.” I think it may be the reason that some countries like mainland China dare not to open Wikipedia to its citizens. (the Chinese version of Wikipedia is often blocked or with error)

As blog is considered as a threat for print journalism, Wikipedia is also a challenge to traditional academia. Because the sources of Wiki are lacking of accuracy and authority, more and more educators and scholars worry about that Wiki will disseminate misinformation to the students. Andy Carvin cites in his article that “even though Wikipedia may have some value, particularly from the value of leading students to citable sources, it is not itself an appropriate source for citation.” But just like traditional journalism can’t be replaced by growing citizen journalism, to me, this informative search engine can be a helpful assistant for student to do academic research but not replace traditional serious research. When I first use Wikipedia for my paper last semester, I find it’s really useful for me to get specific and completed information which I am looking for. Besides the content, Wikipedia also provides large numbers of external links to the related websites. Thus it saves much time for me to find the facts and I can focus on the other parts in the paper.

In order to get information for my final project, this time I also make use of Wikipedia as a basic source of my research. Firstly, I typed the key words “homosexual” and then I got a really long page about Homosexuality. The content of the page is consisted of eight main parts and many of them have subdivisions. But because I want to focus on the homosexual in Hong Kong, I get nothing from this page(except one sentence about homosexuality in China). I searched in the Wiki again with the key words “homosexual+hk”, however, no page with that title exist. Instead, I got a related results list and found some information about homosexual in Hong Kong in the page Homosexuality in China. So based on the content in that page, and the information I research from the other Hong Kong homosexual websites, I create a new page with the title “Homosexual HK”(it’s really a simple one). And now I type “homosexual HK”, the page I made will come up. It’s the first time that I create a page in Wikipedia, and this experience let me start to understand the example that Andy makes in his article, which I never thought before. My simple page may be used by some people who are not seriously reading as source but in fact I can’t ensure the credibility.

But I don’t consider this problem of Wiki is the fault of this search engine. I strongly agree with Astephens’s response to Andy Carvin’s article that “If we are teaching good information management and researching then students should know to include more than one type of source.” Wikipedia is only a tool but today in the age of Internet, people can’t absolute ban students from using the new tools, moreover what we should do is to find out a correct information management and researching as Astephens mentioned. After all, just like Chris Champion says after Andy’s article “the purpose of assigning research is not always to find the answer quickly.” That is to say Wikipedia should have not born the responsibility of teaching people how to do research correctly.

To the question is Wikipedia a way of journalism, for me, the answer is no. Just I mentioned before, Wikipedia is a tool for people to get information. Maybe this feature of Wiki is similar with journalism, but Wiki is never asked for social responsibility as media is requested. The item in Wikipedia can be edited and revised thousands time after it published but for journalism, at most time, once news is published, it becomes a finished product for criticism and if it was wrong, it is wrong forever. I don’ think journalist can edit or revise his/her news which published yesterday times and times without any apologizes and any price. That is to say the credibility and accuracy for journalism is more important and necessarily and obviously, Wikipedia nowadays can’t meet requirements.

After one week research on homosexual issue in Hong Kong, I find that nowadays the homosexuals in Hong Kong, no matter gays or lesbians are active in the social affairs and the supporters even those who are from church also try their best to fight for the equal rights for the homosexuals. There are a lot of websites, blogs, and forums which are related to the issue. I choose six from them which will help me on the final project.

In-media
In-media of Hong Kong is an independent media website which works on pushing the development of democracy and social motion in Hong Kong. They pay attention to all kinds of social affairs which are related to the social development. Homosexual issue in Hong Kong is always a hot topic in their agenda. Recently, they are a main party in the debates between RTHK and the Broadcasting Authority. As I mentioned in the outline last week, there are dozens of articles about HK homosexual issue published in the website of In-media. I believe the power from In-media will influence the mass’ attitude towards gays.

Abai

Abai is a Chinese comprehensive website which offers latest news, arts information, articles on homosexual to the Chinese gays. It searches the information on homosexual all around the world and very convenient for me to catch the latest news not only in China or Hong Kong but many other regions such as Russia, Canada and Australia.

News From Now

“Now” stands for National Organization for Woman which is the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States and female homosexual is a main part of their career. As we all know, the homosexual issue experienced a big change in the United States in the past ten years. This website shares large numbers of information on how homosexual people in the U.S.A fight for their equal rights, which I think, are valuable for HK homosexual development as well as my project.

Sexual Orientation Equal Resource

It’s a blog of the Association for the Advancement of Feminism in HK (HKAAF). This association is devotion to fight for women’s rights including the equal opportunities for lesbians. Its website and blog provides information of regulations on homosexual issue in HK and introduce many legal rules and cases from other countries such as the U.K and the U.S.A. It’s quite helpful for me to know the legal items and the government’s attitude in HK on homosexual as well as the corresponding rules in the other countries.

A Cup of Cybercoffees 

It’s an individual blog of a gay (I suppose the author is a gay, but I am not sure.) in HK. From his/her blog, I read many touching stories of his/her and the author’s friends. Besides his/her feelings as a gay, I also read their opinions and attitude towards the society of HK.

Rainbow Station  

Rainbow Station is known as the most activist homosexual organization in HK. It is active in the social affairs and plays a significant role in push homosexual action in HK. In its website, it often updates the members’ actions and also news, articles from supporters and opposites. It’s an informative website for me to know the motions of HK homosexuals. But I don’t know why its RSS icon doesn’t work.

At the very beginning of J.D. Lasica’s article, he points out a common question for all Netizens that “As the number of blogs and niche news sites continue to soar, how do you keep on top of everything?” In fact, heaving under the weight of billions of web pages, it’s really a chore for modern people to keep up with the internet. But a tiny orange icon— RSS and “newsreaders” such as Yahoo reader, Google reader, virtually solve the problem.

Since 1999, the RSS was firstly issued to the Netizens, today most websites have RSS feeds function for readers to subscribe their contents, and more and more people enjoy convenient reading from RSS feeds and newsreaders software. But different websites get different flavors when they make use of the feeds.

To me, NYtime.com has a clear and complete RSS feeds section. Besides the homepage RSS feeds, it offers several RSS feeds for use in news readers and blogs. The section is divided into two parts News and Features, and there are several subdivisions for each of the two roots, including business, education, health, international, book reviews, arts, fashion and so on. Some of the subdivisions have their branch RSS feeds, for instance, “international” is divided into: Asia news, Europe news, Middle East news, etc. Thus readers can choose different RSS feeds according to what we like to read.

The BBC feed factory also does a good job in this part. It has two main parts “our top feed” and “entertainment”. “Our top feed” subscribers will get latest promos from the homepages and “entertainment” offers latest collective site features. So in sum, BBC and NYtime.com basically have the same concept in offering feeds. They both generally divide those “feeds” into two parts and make it more selective for readers. Personally, it’s a warm design for subscribers.

The Standard Hong Kong takes a more simple way in using RSS. A very small blue icon is in the left category of its homepage and it’s the unique icon for Standard’s subscription. Although it is not as detailed as NYtime.com, for me, it’s really simple and convenient for readers to handle. Just one action, we can get the latest news from Standard.

The South China Morning Post is an interesting website which hides the feeds in its technology section. You can click the technology button (if you have the password to login) and then click the flash icon marked with “click here” and then you will get a page named “Podcasts”. Podcasts are audio files - typically MP3s - available for download over the internet, that is to say, we can subscribe the audio files via Podcasts as subscribe articles and blogs via RSS. I do think it is a trend that Netizens could subscribe all types of files such as audio ,video as well as words but I just find out the Podcasts feeds from SCMP and I am not quite sure whether it has RSS feeds for other files or not.

RSS is really a good tool for people to manage time and make our surfing on internet efficiently. Besides the well known advantages that clearly listed in the article Feed 101, to me, RSS feeds make reading online become more individual. As World Wide Web worked by one man, Tim Berners-Lee(by the way,he is really a great person), in the age of personality, Netizens today enjoy the individual reading experience. People read in their own way and focus on the subjects that they are interested in without interruption by ads or other articles. We don’t need to wait for a long time and just get our favorite words, photos and even videos, and what’s more we don’t need to find the articles and latest news which we spent a lot of time to search from fancy websites pages, but the news come to us as J.D. Lasica said.

It indeed changes the reading habit and the way of getting information on the web. Apart from the strong points it brings to readers, RSS feeds and Newsreaders also have some weak points for reading online. As for me, I started to use RSS feeds to subscribe the news from last year, after that, it become seldom for me to go surfing to websites, on the other words, it’s seldom for me to read the articles that the feeds don’t provide to me. I missed many other things that in the websites pages which might have drew my attention and only focus on few parts of the “www”. Secondly, because most of the RSS feeds only take the content of articles without comments, personally, the communication and sharing function of internet is weakened by Newsreaders to a degree. And I strongly agree with one of our classmates says in his blog that “If readers choose only to read news on the browser without going to the websites of the organisations, opportunity of earning revenues from advertisements will certainly be reduced.…for news organizations, it might be a risk”. No ads are really benefited for the readers but for news organizations and the IT companies, it might be not that optimistic.

All in all, I enjoy the tiny orange icons which bring joys to readers and challenges to the newspeople. Anyway, it has already become a part of our lives.

A hubbub broke out recently between RTHK and the Broadcasting Authority in Hong Kong. The Broadcasting Authority’s labeled of an RTHK television programme on gay marriage as unsuitable for family viewing hours on Jan 20^th. This TV rule caused hot and open debates over the issue of homosexuality in this city.

Many homosexual groups and civil rights activist groups, such as Rainbow Station and In-media are condemning the action of broadcasting and they consider that this rule “had hindered civic education in Hong Kong.” The Rainbow Station, a website for lesbians, even started a protested action over internet called “one person one protest” in order to fight against the discrimination over homosexuality from government. Lots of local commentators and writers also react to the news. Large numbers of articles and voices on the topic of homosexuality are published during last mouth.

For me, it’s an interesting and considerable phenomenon which tells us the changes of the attitude towards homosexual issue in Hong Kong. From 1991, male homosexual behavior was legal in Hong Kong. Since then, the debates over the same-sex marriage have never stopped. But homosexual supporters’ actions upgrade and become more public step by step in recent years. For example, in 2003, the Catholic Church of Hong Kong released an article condemning homosexual marriage. As a result, a group of protesters rushed into a church and interrupted the service. Those actions (including the latest protested issue) demonstrated that during the past ten years more and more gays and lesbians in Hong Kong are “coming out” gradually. Meanwhile, more and more supporters of homosexuality make voices today in Hong Kong.

But although they made great progress during the past several years, the homosexuals and their supporters in Hong Kong still have thousands of obstacles in front of them. So I am curious about firstly whether the changes of this issue are related to the handover of Hong Kong, so after 1997, HK residents including the homosexuals are aware to fight against for their own civil rights; or secondly, the handover actually plays a negative role in the development of those social actions. Because, in fact the same-sex marriage has become legal in the UK since 2005 and there are 13 countries and regions in the world admitted the same sex marriage.

A large numbers of people complained that they could not log in websites or could not update their blogs when the earthquake in Taiwan disrupted the internet access. Nowadays, many people can not live without internet which really plays a significant role in almost all the fields in citizens’ lives. To me, internet doesn’t only provide abundance of information or widen the space of journalism. What’s more, it changes citizens’ expression habits even living habits. And this change can be seen obviously in mainland china these years.

First of all, citizens get more chances and freedom to express themselves than any other periods. In my opinion, human being has the nature to express his/her own opinion towards the issues around them. But the traditional media were controlled by professional journalists, editors, and TV and radio participators. Thus the freedom to talk and expression is actually dominated by few people before the age of internet coming. Common people do not have a legal space (in mainland china, the situation is more serious) which is big and convenient enough to challenge the reporting and opinions from newspaper, magazines as well as TV programs. We get used to listen to but not think when things happen. However, web provides the space. Just like Keith W. Jenkins said in his article that “web is a tool to talk to another”. Internet indeed gives the roots a forum to express themselves, meanwhile stimulates the citizens to observe the world more seriously and deeply. In the past ten years, countless internet forums were built in China, such as Xicihutong, Tianya, and thousands of people log in those forums more than one times to post their articles and read the other’s stories every day. To the year of 2004, the blogs has become hot, and more people join the troop of expression themselves. It is said that there are about 17.5million bloggers in China today. The citizens who are the actors and actresses of news that journalists reported in the past are writing down their own stories via internet. This tool helps the citizens to think and write as journalists. They challenge the journalism; what is more important, they get the wisdom and right to challenge the authorities.

This phenomenon reduces the power of traditional media and asks for higher quality of journalism. Because of the political situation of China, the freedom of expression is still under control of the government. Although citizens could contribute to newspaper and magazines and so on, people’s voices are supervised by the rulers, and the supervision was easy to achieve before the coming of internet That is to say people only knew the issues that the government wanted you know; and just say what the government wanted you to say. So in the past, for many cases, victims had no idea to redress an injustice and get the support from public. But internet overcomes the problem partly.

More and more people start making use of the internet to state their conditions that can not be published in the traditional media and fight for their own rights. “Heaven Garden( blocked yet) ” is a website built for the female victim , Huang Jing(黄静) who died at home last year. The local police treated her case as naturally death but her parents pointed out some doubtful points which were accepted by policemen and court. Some of the protesters built the website to fight against the government’s behavior. Although the website was blocked, the influence of the case has already spread out. And there are also some successful examples like Liao Mengjun’s(廖梦君) case. His father still maintains the blog and fight for his son. (The EastSouthWestNorth, an English blog, excerpts some parts of his blog too). Those are no longer little-known cases, via internet, more Chinese start to pay attention to these stories and think about the things which happen to the people far from them. So to me, internet is widening the citizen’s eyesight and is changing people’s (including journalists’) thinking step by step in China.

Enhancing the readers’ power, internet requires more from the journalists actually. I strongly agree on one comment that said after Keith W. Jenkins’s article “Professional journalists still do more original reporting than bloggers do, but the pros don’t do as much as they think they do, and the bloggers do more than they get credit for.” To me bloggers can’t replace the journalists, because of the limitations of time, resource and energy. But with the supervision and competition of readers, journalists should be more professional and credible.

Friday morning.

New Media Class.

JMSC,HKU

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