Wednesday, 26 October 2016

Will the media survive this information global phenomena?


The recent conduct of the media in the U.S seems to determine already who the winner in the forthcoming elections is between  Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. This was similarly the case with the Zambian media in the just ended August 11 2016 elections. Both the state and private media's conduct in Zambia during the just ended elections has left their own credibility hanging in the balance.

Through out time, the media, particularly a free press has been a respected and trusted institution of democracy. Today, the notion of a free remains much of a fallacy. Many of the world's media today remains under the control of a few barons who control and bankroll their operations. Such media represents the narrow interests of such elitists and oligarchs than the ordinary citizens whose interests they purport to champion. Both the public and the private media face this power dichotomy.

But most importantly,  this era of competitive global knowledge/information economy has exposed how the media will need to strive to survive.The advent of the Information age, the emergency of a Knowledge economy and society, including the magic touch of social media has created an open society where citizens no longer need middlemen such as the media to transmit or receive information.

It is clear therefore,  that the media has been ambushed by this information global phenomena forcing it to be relegated to stint of rumor mongers and gossipers.The adage "information is power" stands even true today in this competitive information and knowledge economy where whoever controls, manages, mines, formats and preserves this information has the power. The media no longer holds monopoly to this.

Thus, Librarians, knowledge managers, data managers, data miners, computer programmers, software engineers and other information professionals have the opportunity to replace the traditional media to become the new game changers in this knowledge economy, if only they can position themselves strategically to seize this power.

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