Week 4 – Citizen Journalism Seminar August 12, 2008
Posted by annaw77 in Seminar.trackback
This week please read these articles:
1) Mark Glaser (2006). Your Guide to Citizen Journalism. (Please also read the open comments section at the end of the article).
2) Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis (2003). We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. (please read Chapter 5)
3) Salam Pax. Where is Raed? (Please have a look at the whole blog, and pay particular attention to the blogs in 2003).
Citizen journalism is a relatively new phenomenon that is undergonig rapid growth. We will speculate on the impact that citizen journalism will have on mainstream media, both for their content and their sheer number. In this seminar, we will discuss the multiple forms that citizen journalism can take. We will also discuss different perspectives, some of which suggest that citizen journalism is necessary for a robust democratic society and to challenge traditional media’s hegemony. Other perspectives suggests that citizen journalism is inherently fraught as the ‘industry’ is not bound by journalists’ code of ethics of independence and objectivity, and therefore cannot be viewed as a credible news source.
When reading the articles, consider the following questions:
1. Will citizen journalism improve the quality of news media generally? In what ways?
2. Can citizen journalism be regulated and still function?
3. What do you see to be the future relationship between traditional media sources and citizen journalism?
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Hi everyone. Thanks for an interesting discussion this afternoon. We spoke mainly about the ‘high-end’ of citizen journalism, that is informed, considered opinions that are worthy of discussion and response. But we didn’t really touch on the ‘low-end’ of citizen journalism, such as inflamatory or innappropriate comments. At what point does citizen jounalism (for lack of a better word) become rubbish? I guess that’s the down side of not having a formal editing process (although rubbish is still published which has been edited!) What do you think?
Hi everyone
I would also like to thank everyone for the discussion today. I think it is great how everyone always makes an effort to participate….or maybe you guys just have an opinion on everything:)
As Anna just wrote we didn´t really get into the `low-end’ of citizen journalism. When Anna and I prepared for the class today we spoke about how “rubbish” comments spoil the hole concept because this comments are useless and in the long run it will stop people from reading a certain blog (that is if the rubish comments become dominating on the blog)
I here think of racially offensive comment, untrue comments, personal verbal attacks on other blog writers and unreadable comments due to grammatical mistakes and bad language.
My first thought was to somehow control what is being posted but then the concept of citizen journalism dies right? or do any of you guys have an idea to how citizen journalism can be regulated and still funktion effectively?
Any thoughts?
This afternoon’s discussion was pretty interesting especially I am an active participant of citizen journalism even in our local regional news back home and most on the time on blogs and internet sites where they solicit opinions. Citizen journalism tends to be “low-end” when the information being related is something unreliable and not a first hand information, either it is a lapse-sided information to discredit someone or something for a personal interest or just a hollow information to make a person or situation famous. The kind of media technology that we have right now is designed for collective intelligence(CI) thus this citizen journalism is just another kind of CI, where the more we contribute awareness of real community situation the richer and more reliable the report would be provided with first hand accounts and evidences.
Good point ramfelsean, the majority of citizen journalism does tend fall into the ‘low-end’ category. But on the positive side, it isn’t masquerading as ‘news’, as does much of the ‘low-end’ traditional jourmalism.
And in relation to Benedikte’s point, I suppose most websites would have a moderator and a reporting mechanism so that innappropriate comments can be removed. Can this be considered as an informal type of regulation? I’m not sure moderation can really be considered to be regulation in the context of our discussion. Any thoughts?
I remembered during our discussion, someone mentioned if more than a couple of people post about the same event or issues on a certain topic than it is quite certain that the information is correct. Therefore, I should think that if a majority of readers or participants could share their views and have a discussion on a topic than it becomes news worthy. It is also known as collective intelligence (CI) as pointed out by Ramfel.
As for the regulations on citizen journalism, I observed that there is no such system at the moment. Almost anyone could create a blog or post their comments on other people’s blog as long as they know how or has the technology to do it. The worst which could happened is that those who disagree will post something back to refute what was previously posted. Or people just ignore those comments which they think are not even worth the effort to response.
I do not consider moderation as a regulation based on what we have discussed so far. This is due to the fact that people are stopped from viewing the blogs or comments from those blogs. There is no rules or a set of regulations for ‘offenders’ to be held respensible.
Does that make sense?
Hi guys,
Talking about regulation and control, I still believe that it somehow against the spirit of citizen journalism. People talk, report, discuss or comment in blogs because they found there is no space in the traditional media where they can speak their thought or their point of view, due to the gate keeping and control mechanism in traditional media. So, if regulation and control also applied in online media, it will end up like what we have with traditional media. I think accuracy of information based on consistency and frequent comparison by the reader will prevent citizen journalism fall in to “low-end” category. And about inappropriate comment or verbal attack, I think it is part of discussion, and the persons or subject in question can also defend themselves from the attacker in the same way (i.e. through on line media).
How do you think guys?
Dear guys,
everyone has gotten key points. much is made of the lew- end of citizen journalism, we must admit it should have a room to exsit and display, even though, people in a critical way think that they are rubbish..
Everything in the world shold have two sides. when you say you grabe the truth and the right direction, but it should be revealed that the other side is not the truth and the wrong direction. if the other side do not exsit, how can you see you are the truth and you are right.
In fact, people makes rules and declares that is the law , that is the truth, everyone should follow it, otherwise you drop in a wrong way.
so I think though the low-end Category convey the thoughts which make people feel uncomfortable, it is still a voice from their deep hearts, which were they want to speak out, they should have their own audiences, but not all ordinary people.The chance oughts to give low-end citizen journalists , so it just represents the slogan ” that
everyone is the citizen journalist in the OHMYNEWS web.
sometims there is no apprent boundary between High-end citizen journalism and Low-end citizen Journalism. Because As we know the same people can play two different charactors in the same time .
The Natural rule always tells us it should keep the harmonious Balance between two Sides , only that way they can develop together. I think it should make sense when we talk about the low orHigh- end citizen Journalism.
I’m not sure that just because many people believe something to be true we can then accept it as a truth prima-facie. Isn’t Collective Intelligence just a fancy way of saying mass opinion? Or am I missing something? Ultimately, when we talk about peoples’ opnions, we are talking about their ‘perceptions’, which are far from being ‘truths’.
I do believe that the appearing and developing of the citizen journalism is revolution and will be another milestone for the media! For it has transformed “Multimedia” into “We Media”, which using blogs or commentary online to contribute the media industry.
Personally, I like one term to define the citizen journalism which is “grassroots journalism” Because of the grassroots journalism, it break the traditional limits between the producer and receptor. In some parts, it means we got a relatively democracy media form that make the reposts of traditional journalism are more objective and reasonable.
I want to say something about Anna’s issue in some way. I guess due to the citizen journalism live in different stratum, they are the witness when the issue happen, they captured the right facts at the right time, obviously they are witness and experience the truth in some how. Actually the factual report is open to approach and display the truth, but because the blogosphere’s universality, the more reader visit the news the more perspectives it got. By and large, all the problems occurred after they publish the accident to the personally website. However, the collective intelligence does not on the way off the truth. They are not the fans to the news, but all the supportive actions from their critical think through the issue. The first hand evidence of the citizen journalism is so persuasive without any polish. How can we do not trust what we see and what we heard?
common sense-wise the true citizen journalism comes when the contributor of a certain scoop has the real intention on relaying a meaningful and true useful information to the people in the community. At the moment it’s the common concerned-citizen who often captures and experience a first hand event than the mainstream journalists, it is very obvious that the future of news broadcasting relies on how ordinary people relate reliable information to mainstream broadcast outlets so news can be dessiminated in a faster and efficient manner. Examples can be sighted like the recent video taken by a rescuer of the ill-fated Spanish aircrash.
I like to second that. That is citizen journalism or grass root jurnalism is here to stay and it is major part of the future. With the rise in technology, people or the public is able to react faster and at a wider range. So they are more capable of reporting what has happened at the scene even before the authorities or traditional media are there. Most of the public also does not have hidden agenda or motives to twist the facts or evidence presented in a shot or image captured. The only issue concerned is the angle or perspective from which certain news is presented. Therefore it is the discretion of the readers or beholder to interprete what they see or hear.
I’ve finally found this page (the link from the ’seminar schedule’ page doesn’t work).
Firstly, I’d like to second what Annaw77 had mentioned about collective intelligence. Like I’ve mentioned during the seminar, many people believing in something does not simply mean that it is true. It is a dangerous way of determining truth (or facts for that matter)! As usual, I’d like to give an example, before people established that the earth is round (let’s take it as fact for now – until someone else proves it wrong), the earth was accepted to be ‘flat’. Was that the truth? Another example, a modern one – there was this ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ game show some time ago. On the show, a ‘help’ option that allows the ‘polling’ of audiences was available to contestants. It was not always effective.
Secondly, I quote tang12 “Most of the public also does not have hidden agenda or motives to twist the facts or evidence presented in a shot or image captured. The only issue concerned is the angle or perspective from which certain news is presented. Therefore it is the discretion of the readers or beholder to interprete what they see or hear.”
The truth is that we do not know if ‘most of the public’ have hidden agenda or motives – much less decipher which ones have and which ones don’t. Next, I agree it is the angle or perspective which ‘news’ is presented which gives rise to interpretation by the reader/viewer. So, if a piece of ‘news’ is presented in a particular way by a ‘public’ that seems to have a negative connotation about something, noone can effectively determine the intention. Which brings us to the last sentence (”discretion of the readers…to interpret”).
An example, we sometimes do receive emails about apparently outrageous issues (i.e. eating of foetuses, etc). Do we believe them at first sight? More recently, a photo was taken which supposedly showed a carcass of ‘Bigfoot’ in a container. The people behind the photo claimed that they had confirmed that ‘Bigfoot’ exists! It was later confirmed that it was not ‘Bigfoot’ after all.
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080813-bigfoot-sighting.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/08/21/bigfoot.hoax/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail
Anyway, I do agree that the traditional media may take a longer time to report than ‘citizen journalists’. That could very well be because of the processes that occur before a piece of ‘news’ is being broadcast to the audience (i.e. fact confirming, editing, etc).
I must say that while having an ‘ethics guideline’ may not guarantee conformity, it may well beat having none at all.
I’ve finally found this page (the link from the ’seminar schedule’ page doesn’t work).
Firstly, I’d like to second what Annaw77 had mentioned about collective intelligence. Like I’ve mentioned during the seminar, many people believing in something does not simply mean that it is true. It is a dangerous way of determining truth (or facts for that matter)! As usual, I’d like to give an example, before people established that the earth is round (let’s take it as fact for now – until someone else proves it wrong), the earth was accepted to be ‘flat’. Was that the truth? Another example, a modern one – there was this ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ game show some time ago. On the show, a ‘help’ option that allows the ‘polling’ of audiences was available to contestants. It was not always effective.
Secondly, I quote tang12 “Most of the public also does not have hidden agenda or motives to twist the facts or evidence presented in a shot or image captured. The only issue concerned is the angle or perspective from which certain news is presented. Therefore it is the discretion of the readers or beholder to interprete what they see or hear.”
The truth is that we do not know if ‘most of the public’ have hidden agenda or motives – much less decipher which ones have and which ones don’t. Next, I agree it is the angle or perspective which ‘news’ is presented which gives rise to interpretation by the reader/viewer. So, if a piece of ‘news’ is presented in a particular way by a ‘public’ that seems to have a negative connotation about something, noone can effectively determine the intention. Which brings us to the last sentence (”discretion of the readers…to interpret”).
An example, we sometimes do receive emails about apparently outrageous issues (i.e. eating of foetuses, etc). Do we believe them at first sight? More recently, a photo was taken which supposedly showed a carcass of ‘Bigfoot’ in a container. The people behind the photo claimed that they had confirmed that ‘Bigfoot’ exists! It was later confirmed that it was not ‘Bigfoot’ after all.
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080813-bigfoot-sighting.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/08/21/bigfoot.hoax/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail
Anyway, I do agree that the traditional media may take a longer time to report than ‘citizen journalists’. That could very well be because of the processes that occur before a piece of ‘news’ is being broadcast to the audience (i.e. fact confirming, editing, etc).
I must say that while having an ‘ethics guideline’ may not guarantee conformity, it may well beat having none at all.
I’d like to comment about the idea of truth in citizen journalism, (although I prefer to use the term accuracy instead of truth). I think the strong point of citizen journalism, is that we have the possibility to see one event (in this case, news) from many perspectives. So it doesn’t necessary mean “when many people believe something to be true we can then accept it as a truth”, but we can decide what the events really are (to us personally) based on many facts that the bloggers or citizen journalist provide for us as a reader. In this case, consistency of the news from the bloggers become a very important factor. I think this is better than single point of view that the traditional media provide.
And I think we have to apply some critical thinking for ‘ethics guideline’ issue. Just see the fact, that even though traditional media said that the have ethical guidelines, some times they presented the news based on the advertisers’ or authority’s interest (i.e. news with bias).
Having said that, I still want to emphasise that it doesn’t mean that traditional journalism is a bad thing and not worth to read/ watch/ listen. Instead, both of it have a complementary function to each other.
As provided whether we like it or not the trend of new media in journalism is through citizen journalism. It is a matter on how the “we media” be responsible enough on how and what information we want to relate. If the world continues to experience technological revolution as it is for the past 60 years then participatory culture is just on the right track. Citizen journalism being a branch of participatory culture, is destined at the moment to expand as it goes with time and technology. 10 years ago it was a luxury to have a mobile phone, 4 years ago you are hype if your mobile is colored, with video and camera features. Now your phone must be a 3G thus giving us opportunities to use this technology as tool to be a citizen journalist, not just a citizen journalist but a responsible citizen journalist.