#Wienblogger Meetup, 26th of February, 2015
“Freedom of Speech in the 21st Century“ with lead speaker Annette Scheiner from ORF,
“No news is good news” – is a popular idiom we all know. It means, that without information to the contrary you can assume that all is well.
1st #wienblogger Event 2015
Alinea Partners Consulting is proud to be sponsor of the WienBlogger community. The first #wienblogger event in 2015 was held on the 26th of February on the premises of Alinea Partners Consulting in Vienna. Former ORF television reporter Annette Scheiner, who hosted from August 2002 to 2008 the ORF-Auslandsmagazin “World Journal”, kicked-off the discussion about “Freedom of Speech in the 21st century”.
Annette has always been a supporter of freedom of speech. Recent incidents in Paris and Copenhagen have made her an even more enthusiastic advocate of this fundamental freedom. From her point of view, the biggest threat comes from terror groups and extremist movements, which are fighting against freelance journalism. As an unfortunate well-known example, she used the assault on the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”.
She continued with another threat to freedom of speech – namely data piracy. The fact, that nowadays data piracy is higher than ever, endangers the current generation in their freedom of speech. The young blogging community is becoming more careful and beware on digital expressions of their opinion – this shouldn't happen. Through the globalization of communication, responsibility has to be taken. Ethical principles like thoroughness, accuracy, transparency, independency and fairness should be ensured when using the internet, but the personal expression of opinion should be unrestrictedly guaranteed. The blogging community is well on the way to take action and involve the society in their discussions.
To protect freedom of speech, Annette suggests that bloggers as well as reporters should adhere to common standards of communication listed below.
Blogging
Bloggers are the innovative, open minded and critical social media users of our society. They reveal their interests, thoughts and experiences by publishing them online. Some of these are very popular and able to monetize their published content, others are just blogging as a hobby. Usually bloggers retain publicizing content of their interest and keep spreading their own opinions, enriching our society by independent beliefs. The most important fact is that their freedom of speech is not threatened.
Shitstorm
The internet is changing fast and billions of users are able to share their opinions through various channels. By commenting on some blogs or articles, every user of the internet may share his or her opinion. This often implies an invitation for criticisms, which does not favor published content of others, to the contrary, they start or support a so-called „shitstorm“. A shitstorm is more than just a vivid discussion, it often tends to be abusive, even bullying and is spread viral very fast, reaching a great amount of users on the internet. To be honest, there is no rule of how to avoid shitstorms at all, there will always be proponents and opponents of a certain topic. Therefore it’s recommendable not to worry too much about negative reactions and to respect the freedom of speech for everybody.
Corruption and abuse of money
Monetized blogs tend to publish content that contributes to increase profits, which is often due to manipulation through the investors. There are a lot of rumors that popular newspapers are paid by certain shareholders, partners, sponsors and other parties for publishing content of their interest. Of course there is at least a germ of truth, as advertisement is a common use for the synonym propaganda. The fact is that publishing ambiguous topics to mislead the society knowingly misses the point. We, dear readers, have to be aware of manipulated publications and keep being critical, even scrutinizing if something is not clear. The freedom of speech is popular among freelance journalists and professionals as well as hobby bloggers. Therefore it’s highly recommendable to ask for the views of the writer and to be aware of his or her ambitions. Impartiality in writing is generally important, though this is a lot easier to accomplish in areas like sports or fashion, to assure impartiality in areas like politics is a real challenge.
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