knowledge economy and workers

Week 5: Communication, Technology and Consumption

In what way(s) will you be a knowledge worker in your field (or a field of interest)?

In today’s information age, communication, technology and consumption play a major role in affecting the 21^st century economy. Due to digital capitalism, every aspect of life is nowadays embedded in technology, hence power shifted and knowledge became the most important skill for labour market these days.

A knowledge economy is ‘one in which the generation and the exploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth’ (Houghton and Sheehan 2000).  One has to mention that new media accelerate the production of new knowledge (David & Foray 2002) whether it is on a social or individual level, assisted by workers who benefit of a deep educational background.

Convergence, diffusion and communication changed the world and helped the term ‘idea producers’ to climb the economical leader. Knowledge workers are on the rise as more and more people are educated and trained to be product, resource and worker at the same time. This means that problems get solved on a mental basis, knowledge workers are the opposite of industrial workers, they ‘think for a living’ which means that only the relationship between their mind and their creativity is essential to society.

Peter Drucker, a political economist, firstly mentioned the term knowledge economy in the 20^th century and related it to the idea of profit and as a consequence also to media, which created human labour through social media.

If knowledge cannot produce there is no profit to be made, therefore information and ideas need to be connected to creativity in order to become result in innovations. Different job sectors are mainly based on knowledge workers, and as media is one of them, journalism is affected too.

As I am a student of English Literature and Media & Cultural Studies, I am very interested in creative work, written pieces and social problems, which is why I chose to make journalism my field of interest, as it covers all of these factors.

 

Driven by technology, journalism went through a change over the past years, just as economy and culture. Journalists always need to be up to date, to do their research and to stay informed at any time in order to share their knowledge with the audience. A journalist’s duty is exactly the latter one, diffusing information so that society can find out and understand what is going on in the world. Journalists link thoughts together, retrieve information and share it, thus they work with their mind and agree to a lifetime of learning and being a more or less reliable resource.
The role of a knowledge worker is to analyse, criticise, reveal connections; all in all to understand causal relationships, which is exactly what is expected of journalists. However, nowadays, these skills are not always sufficient to stand out in their field and produce content. Journalism is mostly about telling a story deriving from other sources and not necessarily creating something original. These problems can nevertheless also be solved on a mental basis as journalists are supposed to identify trends and use different media to produce newsworthy content.

Social media and journalism go hand in hand since ‘twitter’ and ‘Facebook’ made their appearance. Media became a human labour as people are carrying devices like smartphones, tablets or laptops, with them all the time and are able to share information whenever they feel like it. Everybody, no matter what educational background one comes from, can be a journalist these days by posting, blogging or uploading, so those who actually work in this field need to adjust and replace old working habits with the use of social media to be competitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9xI-kAE8A

All in all, no matter the circumstances in which journalists have to work, they are knowledge workers, as their main job is to think and create in order to diffuse information or even be part of an innovation. They cannot be trained in every skill as the informational ground is shifting constantly, but they can nevertheless choose to be good resources by researching and spreading their savoir-faire.

 

 

 

 

References:

Pavlik, J. (1999). New media and news: Implications for the future of journalism. New Media and Society 1(1), 54-9

Kaivo-oja, J. Futures of Journalism Profession. Finland: Futures Research Centre Turku. http://www.innovationjournalism.org/ij6ac/papers/KaivoojaFuturesofJournalismdraft.pdf

Houghton, J., Sheehan, P. (2000). A Primer on the Knowledge Economy. Retrieved February 9, 2011, from http://eprints.vu.edu.au/59/1/wp18_2000_houghton_sheehan.pdf

Flew, T. (2008). new Media an introduction, 3^rd edition. Victoria: Oxford University Press.

Holtshouse, D. (2009). The future of knowledge workers. KM World, p. 29. https://ilearn.bond.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-248820-dt-content-rid-612644_1/courses/COMN12-302_133/Weekly%20Content/Week%205%20-%20Communication%2C%20Technology%20and%20Consumption%20The%20Lecture%20This%20Week/KMWorld1.pdf

David, P., A., & Foray, D., (2002). Economic Fundamentals of the Knowledge Society, Policy Futures In Education An e-Journal. http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/workp/swp02003.pdf

Brand, J. (2013). Digital Media and Society, Week 5 Lecture. Gold Coast, Bond University