Software Art Project - Peer-To-Peer News Network
The Open News Network (O-N-N) endeavors to bring together the creative and communicative potential of Internet users in order to better represent the opinions of each individual in the media landscape.
Going beyond the established frontiers of news distribution and media technologies, members of O-N-N communicate using peer to peer networks to try to get individual opinions established in the real world.
Are journalists still necessary in the age of the Internet? With O-N-N the reader becomes the author.
Background
Through their presence in the public, influential media conglomerates determine which topics are newsworthy. At the same time, due to economic reasons, they have to focus on their largest audience groups. This leads to a focus on the lucrative „average consumer“. This economically driven process reinforces the over-simplification of the news media. Many people cannot identify with this „average” arrangement and feel like they are not represented in the media landscape. At the same time, everyday life and private life are becoming more and more a part of public interest: On the internet, the press and television present themselves to the average person and become „stars“. There appears to be a desire to share ones experiences and opinions with the general public. The usual media technologies which have the journalist as a gatekeeper, who decides what is or is not published does not conform to this new trend. This is where O-N-N steps in.
The Open News Network (O-N-N)
You can download and install the O-N-N client software from the o-n-n.org webpage and become an O-N-N member. As a member you have your own news site and user profile, which can be easily configured to your own requirements. You can also choose your own Internet address, e.g. kunst.clickormiss.net or YourName.sceptic.net. As long as your PC is online your news site will be available at this Internet address. You can compose your own news or notices. These will be published on your own news site and then transmitted to all of the servers of the other O-N-N members where they will be fully and automatically redacted depending on the personal profile of each member. All sites extend these texts automatically with extra material (text, pictures and links), which are obtained from the Internet via search engine and is based on text analysis and classification. Diverse extended dossiers will be archived locally and also made available to the Internet. Thus the dossiers will be thematically similar but will differ optically. Automated and targeted media notices will be sent to journalists with references to the various dossiers. The frequent appearance of the same topics on different servers will get the attention of journalists and can push the topic into the real world of traditional media. When a dossier is accessed by people or search engines, extra links to similar news articles from O-N-N will be integrated into the document. The more members that belong to O-N-N the more frequently the information will multiply and also the more importance it will gain. Interconnection- and archiving strategies within O-N-N should push the articles into the top spots for Internet searches.