Continuing On

I have learned a lot about citizens and how they take part in journalism everyday. I have done research and discovered things that I normally would not discover.

In doing this not only have I enlightened myself about citizen journalism, but I’ve also learned what it means to be a professional journalist.

Now a days in Journalism you really need to learn to set yourself apart from other people. It is because of these news networking sites or blog websites that we need to do this.

While it is true that we do in fact need citizen journalism. We also need to know that we need professional journalism.

Not one can get rid of the other because we need them both. They  almost compliment each other in a sense.

(Exposing the Power of Citizen Journalism)

In the video above you can see exactly the impact that Citizen Journalism has and why it is important  for us to have and to be involved with.

While Citizen Journalism does have a great impact on us the receivers of this news so does Professional Journalism as well.

Without professional journalism the citizens wouldn’t know what stories they should post on their blogs or websites. They wouldn’t know how to contribute.

As long as Professional Journalism remains around then Citizen Journalism will continue to thrive as well. The one can not live without the other.

The Forms of Citizen Journalism

There are currently five total forms of citizen journalism that people use to communicate news everyday.

The first of these being commentary. Commentary is the minimum level of participation in citizen journalism. Forums, newsgroups, chatrooms and instant messaging have enabled online discussion on just about any subject of interest.

For example:

• in the day following the September 11 attacks nearly one third of all American internet users read or posted material in chat rooms, bulletin boards and online forums.
• weblogs have increased the signal of this activity, with some advocating the blog form as the next generation of newspaper.

The second form is filtering and editing. With the massive information that is available to us all, as well as the competing demands of media attention, the door has long since opened for alternative forms of editing. Filtering, sorting, ranking and linking.

This process is similar to editing in the sense of editorial judgement and selection.

Many news site today, such as MSNBC and CNN employ a similar “top ten most read” where all the sites visitors’ choices are accumulated into a popularity ranking.

The third form that we see heavily in citizen journalism and professional journalism is fact checking. In both professional journalism and citizen journalism the act of verification is a frequent activity and what follows is a community effort to uncover the truth.

Most times in journalism, journalist enter the fray in an effort to uncover the truth.

According to journalist Dan Gillmor “fact checking is tomorrows journalism.”

The fourth form of citizen journalism that we see is Reporting. People who constantly use the internet are eye witnesses, or first-hand accounts. They for the most part participate in the fact gathering and reporting process. Sometimes even conveying the breaking news.

Weblogs and forums brought first-hand accounts and photography to again the events of September 11. Without our citizen journalist out there in the field doing the reporting. The media would for the most part have censored most of the things we saw that day.

 

The fifth and final form of citizen journalism is Audio/video broadcasting. With the rise of the web it has ultimately inspired the audience to play the role of audio/video broadcaster. Making this possible with websites like youtube, dailymotion and googlevideo.

International channels like CNN also allow for people to broadcast their own stories and news.

What is it?

By definition Citizen Journalism is just that. Citizens contributing and giving there input on news.

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.

One thing that is growing increasingly popular among citizen journalist is crowdsourcing, which basically uses readers to create a news story.

Information is gathered not by journalist but through an alternate medium such as the web. There has also been in increase in community journalism sites. Where people can sign up for an account and post things they feel would be helpful or informative.

Websites like wordpress and tumblr have made it all the more easy for citizen journalism to be easily accessible and created by all people.

 

Most professional journalist will infer that because of this new cultural revolution in the way news is presented to an audience, that it will be the death of professional journalism. Which is not true. It will only be the death of Profesional journalism if we let it be.

The public still and will always have a a distrust towards the media, but you can’t believe everything that you read on the internet.

The shift towards crowdsourcing goes to show that there are ways to involve the community in journalism without having them write the story. Making the public active participants in journalism rather than the creators will save professional journalist.

There are reasons why citizens have taken matters into their own hands. Which is mostly due to the fact that they were dissatisfied with the way the news they received was presented to them or interpreted, therefor fueling them to feel the need to create their own blogs and websites which accurately depicted this news in their eyes.

The Real Impact

Citizen Journalism has made a huge impact on our society in the very short time that it has established itself. It has for one; given the media a whole new set of fact checkers.

Not only are citizens being informed, but they are the very ones who are doing the informing. They are taking what they see on the news and putting it into their own words. Applying it to their own lives.

Arianna Huffington on Citizen Journalism

With tools like the web becoming more and more accessible to people, it makes posting and updating all the more easy. With more and more people becoming involved in what can be seen as a cultural revolution the need for citizen journalism based websites has risen along with adjustments to online style and its content.

It has very much become a participatory culture

Henry Jenkins says that in a participatory culture not every member must contribute, but all believe they are free to contribute when ready and what they contribute will be valued.

An example would be: youtube, wikipedia and commercial spoofs. Because of participatory culture, advertising has changed. Things like…

• appreciation of work
• perpetuating content further

Pew research says

• 92% of Americans get their media from multiple sources
• 6 out of 10 get their news from online and offline news sources
• of those who get their news online, 75% get news forwarded through post on social networking sites or email and 52% share links to news with others via those means.

 

Can professional journalism be replaced by our Citizens?

The answer to this question is simple. No.

Citizens can not replace what is professional journalism for citizen journalism. While most people do rely heavily on twitter and Facebook to receive any type of current news; Newspapers, Magazines, and Books are all important mediums that are not going anywhere.

Now a days being a Journalist is not as easy as it was even 5 years ago. With new social media websites being created all the time, journalist really have to stay on top of things.

All the more, citizen journalism isn’t so bad and its something that we need. People like to hear other peoples opinions on topics, you can’t always listen to the news which is always more biased when it comes to political issues.

Vice Versa, we also need professional journalism as well. We need to be able to seek and find trusted news sources to rely on for the most important news stories.

The way we hear

Now a days when people hear the latest news or are up to date with whats going on its not because they watched the daily news or even opened up their local newspaper.

It’s because they logged on to their Facebook or read the latest trending topic on Twitter.

Essentially this is where the line is drawn between citizen journalism and professional journalism.

Citizen Journalism has really come to be since the internet was established back in the middle of the 1990’s. It is a way for someone who is not a journalist for instance to express their views on certain topics.

Another major difference that you will see between citizen and professional journalist isn’t always obvious.

Profesional journalist are required to follow a certain “ethical code” of objectivity where as citizen journalist do not have to follow an ethical code and are therefore free to post for the most part what they wish. Their biased opinion.

According to BBC’s statistics…

• page views for wap usage are growing at %100 year on year
• UK users account for %65 of wap usage

Basically wap usage stands for wireless application protocol. which allows people to access basic information on the internet such as news summaries, through there mobile phones.

Citizen Journalism is definitely making a difference when it comes to how we see news and it shows no signs of deprecating anytime soon.

It has only just begin.