Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

54 Online Journalism
actions are traditionally heavily mediated by the press for its
constituents, will play a leading role in the process of disintermediation
as ‘central and local government services are progressively made
available’ over the Internet. The report stresses ‘profound implications’
for intermediaries and mediators.
Journalists add cartographer to the role of news-worker but, in the
universal library that is the web, they also become authenticators
and designers for those who follow the maps they draw. Steve Case,
the chief executive officer of AOL-Time Warner, uses the metaphor
of ‘clutter’ to describe the context of online journalism. ‘Many of
you worry about the growth of what’s called “clutter” on the
Internet … But what this “clutter” lacks is the basic value of analysis,
perspective and insight … The role of journalists – making sense of
all this information – is very important.’ 18 The maps contextualise
and mediate the sources that they point to but the interpretation of
sources becomes the responsibility of the readers themselves.
Immediacy
George Gerbner suggests that the Gulf War was a global media crisis
calculated, or as he has it, orchestrated, to make instant history. 19
The commonplace view that history is written by the victors is here
given a twist on behalf of the side that orchestrates that history.
History is reduced to a rhetorical effect.
As the technology of persuasion grows more complex, the art of
telling stories in the wake of events grows both more complex and
more instantaneous. 20
Deprived of time to consider events as they unfold, audiences are
forced into a ‘conditioned reflex’. Gerbner suggests that in 1981 the
allies were able to achieve this through a range of media devices.
They could control real-time imagery, almost drip-feed it to the
extent that events could be scheduled to meet North American or
European prime-time news. Euphemisms were invented to mask the
real horror, even the danger, of warfare; the oxymoron ‘friendly fire’
fastidiously conceals the bloody confusion of even the most technological
warfare. Audiences are spuriously involved by the suggestion
that they are witnessing spontaneous events (occasionally in real