Creativity

Web 2.0 has broadened the playing field for users who aim to express their viewpoints and ideas. With social networking, users have the ability to publish their ideas and creative content. The potential of the content reaching more users and viewers has substantially increased since the social media boom. In journalism, this has made a positive impact for both sides (the writer and the reader). Jane B Singer's article on user-generated visibility explores the trend of user interactivity and gatekeeping, which promotes the sharing of clear and accurate articles published on the web versus articles that are the opposite. Gatekeeping is a collaborative form of content filtering decided by users who make judgements based on wether the content is culturally acceptable and fair. Reddit is a great example of a community of gatekeepers, in which users "up-vote" or "down-vote" articles that are published based off of their own verifications in determining the merit of the published content. The voting system itself is a creative form of content filtering. Users can use the votes to aid their decision in taking time to read an article or just completely ignoring it to save time.