Publicism - blockchain based free press
Free press is under siege.
All over the world political, criminal, and terrorist forces try to silence journalists. Among the countries that suffered largest declines in press freedom last year were Bangladesh, Turkey, Burundi, France, Serbia, Yemen, Egypt, Macedonia, and Zimbabwe.
But also in democratic countries like the Netherlands we can not take free press for granted. Money of local advertisers increasingly flows abroad, to commercial platforms like Facebook and Google. This causes pressure on the existing publishing companies, which used to assure investigative journalism, diversity in media, and a free press. New technological developments accelerate this process.
But new technology can support free press too.
We now see the first blockchain based services creating new forms of cooperation between people. A blockchain is a distributed trust platform. The data structure makes it possible to create a digital ledger of transactions, that is shared among a network of computers, without the need for one central server or authority.
For journalists blockchain technology will make it possible to share content, protect IP, get recommendations and organize fair micro-payments and transactions.
With Publicism we aim to make these services very accessible by creating dashboards that are easy to use for every journalist around the world.
Steemit.com could be one of the platforms for Publicism to rely on. Our research questions evolve as we build and create. One of the main research questions right now is how to secure the anonymity and pseudonymity of the news-bloggers on blockchain services like Steemit and others to come. If you have any ideas, don't hesitate to contact us.
Publicism: for free journalists in the 21st century!