The media
field is undergoing tremendous changes after the boom of the web and web
enabled technologies. The latest trends enhance the productive capacity of
media industry. One among them is Crowdsourcing, which means obtaining needed services, ideas, or
content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and
especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or
suppliers. This process can occur both online and offline. It combines the efforts of crowds of
self-identified volunteers or part-time workers, where each one on their own
initiative adds a small portion that combines into a greater result. Crowdsourcing services continue to be
the disruption of traditional industries, such as the graphic design or
photography industries.
The possibility of "mass amateurization" that the internet allows is growing
faster. With blogging and
photo-sharing websites, anyone can publish an article or photo that they have
created. This creates a mass amateurization of journalism and photography,
requiring a new definition of what credentials make someone a journalist,
photographer, or news reporter. This mass amateurization threatens to change
the way news is spread throughout different media outlets. Websites
like iStockPhoto provides a platform for people to upload
photos and purchase them for low prices. Clients can purchase photos through
credits, giving photographers a small profit.
With the advent of new technologies like
professional-quality digital SLR cameras at a consumer price and Crowdsourcing technologies,
the stock photo industry was turned upside down. Now high quality stock photos
can not just be created by professionals, but by aspiring amateurs and
hobbyists as well. The crowd rushed in to fill a void in the stock photo
industry creating whole new groups of suppliers. As a result, dramatically
lower prices created whole new market segments to purchase those photos.
As the crowd started transforming the industry, prices dropped dramatically.
Many communities even generate free photographs under the creative commons
copyright. Suddenly stock photos were affordable by the masses. Maybe it is a
small businesses, hobby bloggers, or even for non-commercial home use.
Crowdsourcing technologies
are today starting to transform the translation industry in much the same way
that the stock photography industry has been transformed over the last 10
years. These new technologies introduce a whole new group of translators and
can dramatically lower translation costs. As a result, the ability to translate
content will no longer be limited to companies with large budgets but will be
open to small businesses and even micro-writers such as hobby bloggers.
Anyhow the advancing trends in the Crowdsourcing sector
show that rather than a massive replacement there might be replacements of
Photographers in media industry.
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