Peer to peer journalism is basically the practice of using yer melon to reality test the crap on your phone.
An example: I have a friend in a mid-high legal role in telecom. This person can be “my guy” to chat with about some issue in telecom I have discovered in the news that is giving me heartburn.
I cannot express my recent realization how bizarrely disconnected we are from our own ability to phone a friend and pick their brains. I mean, schedule it by messenger to manage the anxiety as needed. But it seems sort of important to get a clear view from higher ground these days.
It sounds like you’re talking about getting an expert to gut check a story. That’s a great idea.
Seems relevant:
I’m not sure I’d call it journalism though. Journalism itself often includes: (some) internal fact checking, legal review (cause it’s easy to accidentally say something defamatory), legal defense (because jerks will sue you anyway), editing, and research support.
Exactly! It’s time to circle up and be our own fact checkers to the extent we can.
Everyone knows someone who knows more than they do about something.
I gave it the P2P journalism name mostly to get this discussion going. I figured it would draw in a crowd of the deep geeks who love that stuff.
But really, we can’t trust any information on the internet completely. We need trusted networks of real people in our lives to ground us in lived reality.
I especially like the idea of not just passively being angry or upset at news. Yes I consider too much online venting to be a passive activity, as in ineffective.
Check in with a friend, everyone likes to be asked their opinion and they probably need to be needed right now too.