As we’ve seen over the length of this year, the digitization of media has empowered individuals to communicate with the world. As sources of information have increased, a struggle for relevance and credibility has ensued with many venerable institutions falling victim to upstarts, usurpers, and the rest of the crowd who are now able to reach a mass audience cheaply and easily.

In this network of identity and reputation, old standards of operation are becoming obsolete. The institution of journalism, perhaps justly proud of its self-styled public watchdog role, nonetheless has long observed various rules of conduct that are not strictly in the public interest. The era of the mainstream media being able to conspire to smother a story is rapidly drawing to a close as digital sources of information gain credibility.

A crucial source of that new-found credibility is the increasing occurrence of peer groups and social networks sharing information with each other digitally. Through the attribution of identity, the distribution of information through social networks and other referral mechanisms gains a specific, and personal, context. In this system, users are both publishers and brokers of information, and the ideas, updates or stories that are being shared can pass freely throughout their network with their imprint.

In many ways, this is nothing new. Individuals have always shared information with each other, and people’s identities have certainly been bound up with the sort of information they may have had to share. Personal relationships have meant a lot in getting a message distributed, and they will become ever more important now as the scope of possible relationships increases. The number of people who can influence a large crowd is no longer limited to a relatively tiny percentage of journalists and public figures. Institutions attempting to navigate the social waters will have to bear this in mind when charting their course.