DURING recent rioting in Tibet, millions of viewers watched events unfolding, often viewing raw footage posted online from mobile phone cameras of anonymous users.

When Kevin Rudd made his apology speech to the stolen generation last month more than 50,000 people watched the speech on YouTube. And Barack Obama's State of the Nation address was turned into a song by Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and shared by more than six million MySpace users. These recent events point to a new trend of the "social media generation" using their medium of choice, the internet, to change the way information is received and distributed, shifting news gathering towards a more self-service model. Young people are no longer merely consumers of news, they are also distribution channels, and even DIY journalists. Traditional news filters are being replaced by social filters, as young people now habitually pass interesting videos and news items among them...

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