"The first casualty when war comes is truth,"
— Senator Hiram Johnson
User generated content is obviously having an impact on all corners of life. I figured that it would just be a matter of time before user generated ads started hitting and, sure enough, we have three coming up in this year’s Super Bowl. I predict (always a no win) that next will be a company (perhaps Google/YouTube) that will create a platform for simple ad creation that bridges between the "creator" public and corporations looking for innovative ideas. I don’t know how this would work but it will be coming (don’t know if it will be fad or permanent). Users could create copy, viewers could vote and corporations could use this filter to select innovative new ideas. Just a thought…
Where user generated content is really having an impact is in Citizen Journalism (no surprise). When Katrina hit, the first footage out was from the public. Recently, it has taken another turn…some would say for the better and others for the worse. Raw footage of Iraq has been steadily coming online (YouTube, etc) and the New York Times just did a piece on Anti-US Attack Videos Spread on the Web.
This has the government up in arms as well as those people supporting the war. The anti-war crowd sees this as a way to get graphic realities out to the public around the US spin machine. I personally find the videos shot by insurgents hunting our soldiers to be a bit too graphic for my tastes, but it does have the result of showing some of the brutal realities of the war there. What it really does is give the public unfettered access to a broad array of content and perspectives on the war. This is not what the Bush Administration wants or needs at this point. I wonder how we, as a society, would have responded (and supported) WWI and WWII if graphic shots of trench warfare and beach landing scenes (like Finding Private Ryan) were scattered across a medium like the web back then?
This war is obviously much more controversial and the rationale for its genesis is not as universally supported. Just as opinion of the Vietnam war was shaped by the rise of color television, Iraq is being impacted by the internet. Ironic that the internet had its genesis with the Pentagon. I’m guessing they would have killed off the project if they had know that this would be the result…