It would not be surprising if Hanson Hosein’s fingers dropped off from excessive levels of twittering, perhaps a common injury for players in a the new media landscape. To the envy of some his resume might even spur the interest of a few young people: war reporter, Emmy Award winner, director of the Masters in Digital Media at the University of Washington, a independent documentary maker and guru of the social networking realm.
Whether it is making his films, like Independent America, that encourage the underdog or his natural and genuine manner in the classroom, young people like him.
“They loved that I was an all do-it-yourself kinda thing,” Hosein said about the response of young people to his projects. “They want natural, authentic communication.” Hosein got his sea legs after seven years as a reporter on NBC. After a few stints in Iraq and around the Middle East he left to be a do-it-all-yourself filmmaker, a change that represents the overall shift in the media industry, from a few dominating players to the now democratized world of media.
So does Hosein think that established news organizations, like his former employer NBC, take young people seriously?
“They wish they could,” said Hosein, “but they don’t speak the language that is going to reach them.” The planned and polished newscast has failed to captivate the young. One just needs to take a look at the often made-up news anchors, with the concerned face of an actor, which changes instantly to the rehearsed chitchat that fades the show out. Genuine and natural are far from it.
Surprisingly, when it comes to newspapers, Hosein is more optimistic. With the media crisis hitting newspapers before T.V they are further down the path in adapting to the new-media climate.
“I like what the New York Times is doing,” Hosein said of the elderly paper’s use of multi-media, social networking sites and blogs (Full disclosure: After the interview I became an intern at the New York Times). “It seems to be beginning to pay off.” Although it may spike the interest of young people, making money off it is another issue.
Another way to grab the mind of a young person, according to Hosein, looks more like entertainment and a 140-character message then a 30 second newscast or pedantically laid out newspaper
“It might be a mixture of entertainment and news, like John Stewart,” said Hosein, “or using the media young people gravitate towards – cell phones, text messaging, social networking sites.”
In Hosein’s opinion, young people pick up their information by piecing together samples from the Internet, friends, T.V or something they just come across. They no longer rely on one place that has it all, which has been the case for media of old. This is a theory that is supported by Harvard professor, Thomas E. Patterson, in his study on young people and news.
“They are grazing,” Hosein said about the news gathering habits of the young. “They are getting it in snippets from a diversity of sources, not from one centralized place.”
But for Hosein one of the most important elements of this discussion is teaching media literacy to the younger generation. News-media is a central part of democracy but falls below the radar, unlike the three levels of government and voting. If anything, intentionally consume news to be an aware citizen.
Young people have also been born into a world dominated by media, a benefit and a curse. With demcratized media, they need to know how to weigh each opinion, as well as how to communicate themselves.
“Because we are so saturated by media we need to teach critical thinking and ethics in how to communicate,” said Hosein. “They can reach the entire world with a film before they can vote.”
As for Hosein’s beloved Twitter, he admits that the social networking site is not the big hit one would think. Young people basically lack the tools to use a site that must be updated constantly. Expensive data plans are not what an average young person has access to but perhaps that will change.
“Twitter has really become a marketing tool for older people,” said Hosein, “I can’t believe young people have not gravitated towards it.”
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