Response To Digital Exhibitionism

In her paper “Digital Exhibitionism: The Age of Exposure” Ana Maria Munar explores the cultural genesis, use, and effects of social media and Web 2.0. Her argument is that “Web 2.0 has expanded the possibilities of digital creative production by individuals and enabled the digitalization of private life experiences.”

While social media and Web 2.0 are without a doubt the largest parts of today’s World Wide Web, I am often led to wonder whether or not this is for the best. As someone who enjoys and benefits from the use of social media and various Web 2.0 I feel that I have experience on both sides of this issue. Munar brings up a quote by Andrew Keen who states that Web 2.0 has created an “endless digital forest of mediocrity”.  As much as I, like many others, support the democratization of information, I can’t help but agree with Keen. As a student, it is frustrating to do research when most of the top results from any remotely specific search are from Web 2.0 services like Yahoo Answers or WikiHow. Perhaps we, as a culture, overestimated how nice it might be to have a “human” presence on the web. Of course, there is always the counter-point that perhaps I am not looking the right places. While academic databases do exist, they are difficult to access, often requiring a university-approved login or paid subscription.

Wikipedia appears to be one of few successful attempts at this democratization of information. By holding its users to certain standards for their submissions, the website retains an overall academic tone which is easily understood and followed back to more scholarly sources through a system of hyperlinked citations. It is a true testament to Wikipedia’s quality and variety of information that it usually the top result for almost any search. As much of a success story as Wikipedia is, it would be probably be unrealistic to hold other websites up to it for comparison. For example, should all users who upload videos to Youtube be held to higher standards of video quality and editing? While it would certainly create a better viewing experience, it may alienate many of the sites contributors.

With all of this in mind, I am not entirely sure where I stand on this issue. In many ways the issue is so large that it becomes difficult to take a stance at all.