I recently read an interview conducted by Ashoka Changemakers with Brian Conley, director and co-founder of Small World News, in an article titled The Future of Journalism. Small World News is a company provides tools to both professional and citizen journalists. Conley hit on some familiar points, highlighting how citizen journalism has spread due to the digital revolution and how citizen journalists can often obtain stories that mainstream news media cannot in times of adversity. I'd like to focus on something that Conley said about what he saw in the future of citizen journalism. Conley advocates an increase in both the quality and quantity of citizen journalists.
"Citizens all over the world need stronger institutions to train, advise, and capacitate them to create media and judge the media being created by traditional outlets in fairness, depth, and breadth.
I believe it will take a bold commitment to a new, innovative, and open journalism of the future by governments, citizens, and foundations to craft a fourth estate—for not only the 21st century, but to ensure a durable, free press on into the 22nd," said Conley.
The media has already been called "the fourth estate" in the past, a titled given based on its ability to keep the government accountable and in check. However, could the proliferation of citizen journalists be the key to creating a stronger, "true" fourth estate? I can see how it would. With citizen journalists everywhere, it would be more difficult for regimes to do anything outrageous without the high probability of a global outcry. The mainstream news media would be crucial too, of course, to provide professionalism, accountability, and more thorough investigative journalism.
Should then, journalism become a standard part of our education system? When I was in high school, I took an English class, which was focused on journalistic writing. I found it a very successful course, which was able to journalistic principles while still adequately preparing students for the AP English Language and Composition exam. Having journalism focused classes could help create a stronger, more vibrant fourth estate.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Are citizen journalists jealous of mainstream media?
Are citizen journalists jealous of mainstream media and do they resent writers who get paid for their work? I read an article called “Citizen journalists? They are just internet whingers” by Fionola Meredith, a writer for the Belfast Telegraph. Meredith, a member of what would be consider the mainstream media, denounces citizen journalists for constantly attacking professional journalists in their comments online. Meredith highlights the cases of Johann Hari, a columnist for The Independent, and Dr. Steven King, who wrote columns for the Irish Examiner. These two professional journalists were legitimately wrong in that they committed plagiarism, but Meredith primarily uses their stories to highlight the fact the citizen journalists love to attack professional journalists on the internet.
Meredith says, “[Citizen journalists] love the Hari and King stories, because they seem to confirm all their wildest suspicions; that paid journalists are too fat, lazy and indulged to do any real work.” She points out her personal experience with criticism from citizen journalists as well as some of the insults they like to use.
Interestingly, Meredith says that the commenters are typically “anonymous” and will make comments as generic as “Zzzzzzz” to indicate boredom. Now, if this is true, then how does Meredith know that the people commenting are actually citizen journalists? They could just be random people with no interest of creating journalist material themselves.
Meredith’s article brings up an important issue: the conflict between citizen journalists and the mainstream media. Although the mainstream media has somewhat bent to citizen journalism by often asking people to e-mail what they think, or pulling citizen journalists’ material from websites such as twitter or YouTube, mainstream media and citizen journalism can be thought of as being in competition. They are competing for much of the same audience.
Meredith claims that “[citizen journalists are] largely motivated by envy that they aren't receiving any cash for their far superior efforts and insight.” I find that an interesting assertion considering the most citizen journalists have other jobs and should be creating material with the knowledge that they will receive no money.
On the other side, are the mainstream media threatened by citizen journalists? Are they afraid that citizen journalists will make the role of the mainstream media less important? I don’t think that the mainstream media will go away since as Meredith says, “The mainstream media may have its faults, but it does at least offer some fundamental standards of accountability, quality and editorial control.” However, citizen journalism has somewhat dulled the role of the mainstream media. Perhaps Meredith herself was partially motivated by this fear. Sure her primary motivation was the attack by citizen journalists as she says, but if it’s not too far of a stretch to assume citizen journalists are envious then maybe it’s not too far of a stretch to assume Meredith feels her profession is threatened.
Meredith says, “[Citizen journalists] love the Hari and King stories, because they seem to confirm all their wildest suspicions; that paid journalists are too fat, lazy and indulged to do any real work.” She points out her personal experience with criticism from citizen journalists as well as some of the insults they like to use.
Interestingly, Meredith says that the commenters are typically “anonymous” and will make comments as generic as “Zzzzzzz” to indicate boredom. Now, if this is true, then how does Meredith know that the people commenting are actually citizen journalists? They could just be random people with no interest of creating journalist material themselves.
Meredith’s article brings up an important issue: the conflict between citizen journalists and the mainstream media. Although the mainstream media has somewhat bent to citizen journalism by often asking people to e-mail what they think, or pulling citizen journalists’ material from websites such as twitter or YouTube, mainstream media and citizen journalism can be thought of as being in competition. They are competing for much of the same audience.
Meredith claims that “[citizen journalists are] largely motivated by envy that they aren't receiving any cash for their far superior efforts and insight.” I find that an interesting assertion considering the most citizen journalists have other jobs and should be creating material with the knowledge that they will receive no money.
On the other side, are the mainstream media threatened by citizen journalists? Are they afraid that citizen journalists will make the role of the mainstream media less important? I don’t think that the mainstream media will go away since as Meredith says, “The mainstream media may have its faults, but it does at least offer some fundamental standards of accountability, quality and editorial control.” However, citizen journalism has somewhat dulled the role of the mainstream media. Perhaps Meredith herself was partially motivated by this fear. Sure her primary motivation was the attack by citizen journalists as she says, but if it’s not too far of a stretch to assume citizen journalists are envious then maybe it’s not too far of a stretch to assume Meredith feels her profession is threatened.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Citizenside - Illustrating some of the potential of citizen journalism.
In her article, Citizen journalism thrives in Occupy Wall Street coverage, Katherine Travers interviews Phillip Trippenbach, Editor-in-Chief of Citizenside, a citizen journalism site. Citizenside is a website that is a conglomeration of citizen journalism. In the interview, Trippenbach makes some key observations about the usefulness of citizen journalism and its future potential.
First, citizen journalism can give extra coverage to issues that are not heavily covered by mainstream media. As suggested by the title of the article, the Occupy Wall Street protests have received a lot of citizen coverage. While the Occupy Wall Street movement has felt that the mainstream media has not given them fair and adequate coverage, citizen journalists have picked up on the protests and posted a large volume of material online. If there is an issue that the mainstream media does not want to or cannot cover, citizen journalists can make up for it.
Citizenside is website that pushes forward the effectiveness and legitimacy of citizen journalism. While the site is still small now, Trippenbach makes an excellent point about its utility. "Yes you can post your videos to YouTube, you can post your videos to Flickr, but your videos on YouTube are competing with the funny cat video that has six and a half million views, or Lady GagGa videos and all that jazz, so it's kind of hard to get attention in a context like that, where as we are specifically focused on news," said Trippenbach. Having a site like Citizenside helps people filter through the internet and find news created by citizen journalists.
In addition to making it easier to find citizen produced news, the website mitigates one of the shortcomings of citizen journalism: reliability. The editors of Citizenside are professional journalists, who do not edit the content created by users, but do fact-check it to ensure reliability.
Citizenside provides a nice example of how citizen journalism can become more polished and a more reliable source of news.
First, citizen journalism can give extra coverage to issues that are not heavily covered by mainstream media. As suggested by the title of the article, the Occupy Wall Street protests have received a lot of citizen coverage. While the Occupy Wall Street movement has felt that the mainstream media has not given them fair and adequate coverage, citizen journalists have picked up on the protests and posted a large volume of material online. If there is an issue that the mainstream media does not want to or cannot cover, citizen journalists can make up for it.
Citizenside is website that pushes forward the effectiveness and legitimacy of citizen journalism. While the site is still small now, Trippenbach makes an excellent point about its utility. "Yes you can post your videos to YouTube, you can post your videos to Flickr, but your videos on YouTube are competing with the funny cat video that has six and a half million views, or Lady GagGa videos and all that jazz, so it's kind of hard to get attention in a context like that, where as we are specifically focused on news," said Trippenbach. Having a site like Citizenside helps people filter through the internet and find news created by citizen journalists.
In addition to making it easier to find citizen produced news, the website mitigates one of the shortcomings of citizen journalism: reliability. The editors of Citizenside are professional journalists, who do not edit the content created by users, but do fact-check it to ensure reliability.
Citizenside provides a nice example of how citizen journalism can become more polished and a more reliable source of news.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
An Introduction to Citizen Journalism
With the advancement of technology and the expansion of the Internet, the phenomenon known as "citizen journalism" has risen. Just what is citizen journalism? On his blog, Digging Deeper, Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist, says, "The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others." Some general examples of citizen journalism would be someone writing about an event or fact-checking a newspaper on his blog, posting a picture of a newsworthy event online, or uploading a video of a newsworthy event on YouTube or another video hosting website.
Examples of modern citizen journalism includes the videos of the Kennedy assassination and of the Rodney King beating. The 90's were a major period for the expansion of citizen journalism with the emergence of the Internet. The Internet was key for opening up the world of journalism because it allowed anyone to have widespread, global distribution that was once only available to professional journalists and media companies.
Citizen journalism is now more prevalent than ever before. It has been citizen journalists who have been able to capture footage and have eyewitness accounts of events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters. When oppressive regimes have banned the mainstream media, citizen journalists have been able to obtain video and information to share with the rest of the world; a large amount of information about the revolutionary events in the Middle East was obtained from citizen journalists.
Hybrid websites that include content from both professional and citizen journalists have become popular, such as the OhMyNews site in South Korea have become popular. Mainstream news media has also begun to reference citizen journalists. It is not uncommon now to see news channels such as CNN or MSNBC bringing up a twitter feed or other content from citizen journalists.
While expanding citizen journalism has offered broader, faster news and tapped into the knowledge and ability of everyday people to report news, it also has numerous criticisms. Citizen journalists generally will not feel the obligation to follow the code of conduct that professional journalists do. They may be biased, less reliable, and have less accountability.
Citizen journalism has changed the face of news and we will see how it continues to shape the way we get news in the future.
Examples of modern citizen journalism includes the videos of the Kennedy assassination and of the Rodney King beating. The 90's were a major period for the expansion of citizen journalism with the emergence of the Internet. The Internet was key for opening up the world of journalism because it allowed anyone to have widespread, global distribution that was once only available to professional journalists and media companies.
Citizen journalism is now more prevalent than ever before. It has been citizen journalists who have been able to capture footage and have eyewitness accounts of events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters. When oppressive regimes have banned the mainstream media, citizen journalists have been able to obtain video and information to share with the rest of the world; a large amount of information about the revolutionary events in the Middle East was obtained from citizen journalists.
Hybrid websites that include content from both professional and citizen journalists have become popular, such as the OhMyNews site in South Korea have become popular. Mainstream news media has also begun to reference citizen journalists. It is not uncommon now to see news channels such as CNN or MSNBC bringing up a twitter feed or other content from citizen journalists.
While expanding citizen journalism has offered broader, faster news and tapped into the knowledge and ability of everyday people to report news, it also has numerous criticisms. Citizen journalists generally will not feel the obligation to follow the code of conduct that professional journalists do. They may be biased, less reliable, and have less accountability.
Citizen journalism has changed the face of news and we will see how it continues to shape the way we get news in the future.
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