Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

210 Online Journalism
Communities of interest, often avowedly apolitical, organise
around their town, their religion, their team, their sexuality and a
thousand other factors including the commodity forms themselves
(collectors of vinyl, dolls or books, Star Wars and Star Trek clubs).
Their interest lies in what defines their world or significant elements
of it. Life revolves around that significant object, whether it be the
club, village, gang, church, sport or social club. This structuration of
the everyday and the possibilities for subject identity that it opens is
reorganised and extended by the web. Web users choose a portal
organised around their interest which will colour their daily horoscope,
weather, cartoons, stock indices, advertisements and news
accordingly. Specialist search engines further limit association with
the world at large, itself an increasingly problematised entity. While
such virtual communities are hardly new – since communities
brought together by the text or letter rather than by physical interaction
have existed since the time of Saint Paul of Tarsus and before
– Leigh Clayton emphasises that they are fundamentally different
from face-to-face encounters.
… these forays into what may be considered alternate existences
need have no implications for life extraneous to the web. In this
way many virtual communities lack any real moral dimension.
Morality too is virtual. 2
Such communities, complete with their value systems and organising
philosophies, can now readily seal themselves hermetically into
small constellations of websites and media providers. Some communities
and institutions, including the traditional news providers,
carry a morality forged in the extraneous world into this imaginary
place, others, such as Matt Drudge, create morality anew there.
News, context, moral sense, search engines and links – in other
words the machinery that informs our worlds – are organised around
the community interest and can eventually begin to lose touch with
society at large. The global news providers are not, however, about
to lose their audiences so easily and many of them specifically tailor
output to such affinity niches both on the web and in the world still
served by traditional media.
A powerful grassroots political momentum on the Internet
created ‘new electronic networks, communities of shared meanings,