Sunday, May 11, 2008

What's the buzz??

There is a lot of buzz around the term citizen journalism. It is not new, (it played a part in the American Revolution) nor is it an exclusive area which is only accessible by the qualified journalists of society. From my research, citizen journalism, in a nutshell, is ordinary people compiling multiple forms of multimedia such as photos, articles, videos and even blogs, to tell a story. Stories which may not have been told without the level of technology we have today. The thing is now that technology has been developed to a point where most people can access the internet, in one way or another, which has opened up this whole new channel for communication. The internet also has far less gatekeepers than traditional media which allows for easier publishing (Bruns, 2008).


Having fewer gatekeepers on the internet is both a positive and a negative aspect of citizen journalism. The positive is that, as stated before, more people can publish their works and, as a result produce more hyperlocal content targeted to a certain group which can be distributed to a large network of people who care. The downside of fewer gatekeepers is the quality and accuracy of the content which is distributed. However, there are many blogs and websites which are run by uneducated individuals but are updated by successful business people, entrepreneurs and even ex American government field agents.


But, by having a limited supply of people to check the work and correct in a lot of cases, there are many articles out there in cyber world which are completely useless. This is due to the lack of evidence which is needed in traditional media to support claims, and simply, just to be considered a credible source of opinion and information. This online community is relying on the members of these communities to be the gatekeepers (Bruns, 2008).


Although this lack of gatekeeping can be seen as negative, it also allows more viewpoints to be presented (Bruns, 2008). This type of journalism can also be seen as less biased than the main stream media due to most media companies and publications having a certain set of news values which they follow in order to possibly retain readership and even to potentially appeal to advertisers (Wilson, 2008).


This citizen journalism movement is not overly popular within the professional journalism industry. It is apparent that academics welcome this type of journalism with online publications like the Nieman Report whereas journalists who participated in the ABC Nyheter debate were not particularly enthusiastic about it, with good reason as well. Professional journalism will never disappear but will mainstream publications consider publishing more articles written by citizens? If so, the need for professional journalists will diminish accordingly.


There is a lot of useless information out there which is still deemed as citizen journalism. It includes blogs about elections, world news, local news even the conspiracy theories which have been proved false time and time again. The concept is important and is relevant to the changing needs of 21st century media consumers but there are issues which need to be addressed before we can fully understand the potential of the citizen journalist.


Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.
New York: Peter Lang

Wilson, J. (2008). KCB201 Virtual Cultures: Week 10 lecture notes. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au (accessed
May 8, 2008)

5 comments:

rach_montague said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rach_montague said...

Well said! I can see both the positives and negatives to citizen journalism. Axel Bruns stated in his piece Wonderful Wikis? that a wikis success all depends on "...whether there's an active, diverse, and sufficiently intelligent community of users" (Bruns, 2008). There is certainly an active and diverse range of users however intelligence may be lacking in some cases. There has been much discussion on the wiki and whether its information is reliable. I believe it is a fantastic source for a quick reference but as universities believe it is not reliable enough to base a paper on. This is this very reason why people deter from using wikis (the fact that any old person can change and shape an entry) however that is the very reason wikis are wikis! One must remember though that in the case of providing others with information, even experts can be wrong.

As you have said a lack of gatekeeping is one of the negatives that coincides with citizen journalism but it does allow for more viewpoints. I believe collective knowledge and intelligence is definitely better than the opinion of one or two professionals. I also agree that there is a lot of useless information out on the web but i believe that as more and more people collaborate in these communities the worthless information is eventually filtered.

Bruns, A. 2008. Wonderful wikis?. http://snurb.info/node/797 (Accessed May 12, 2008).

Deena said...

Cassie,
After reading you blog, “What’s the buzz”, I must admit I was quite surprised to learn that citizen journalism is not a new phenomenon, but a process that played a part in the American Revolution. Here I was, thinking citizen journalism was a recent occurrence, due largely to the Internet, produsage and the emergence of a collaborative culture. I think it would make an interesting case study to compare how citizen journalism has changed since its operation during the industrial age to now.

In your blog you also described citizen journalism as the compiling of multiple forms of multimedia by ordinary people to tell a story. After doing some of my own research, I have to say that I slightly disagree with your definition. It is my understanding that citizen journalism is less concerned with accumulating information and more about the collaborative filtering of vast amounts of information. This filtering process involves produsers identifying the information relevant and important to them before analysing, critiquing, debating and possibly building on it. For this reason, I also think that the need for professional journalists will not completely diminish in the future. I think they will continue to play a significant role in providing produsers with original information that they can then sift through to find what is important.

Obsessions101 said...

I too must admit that I was under the impression that citizen had been a reasonably new concept, not one that had been introduced during the American revolution.

All in all, as a communications "fan" I found this article an even balance of academic research and personal anecdotes / opinion but most of all I finished the article because of the interest the topic had for me.

I'd agree with most things you've suggested in this entry however would like to have read more about citizen journalism within say niche cultures themselves. What I derived from this reading is that citizen journalism is primarily focused on the creation of journalistic pieces for a broad audience and it seems your focus is much around political / national / international news.

Perhaps you could also focus on niche journalism within digital civilizations. Even though not as broadly apparent as global news, niche local news definitely has its place and in some instances better examples of citizen journalism then pieces focusing on globally relative events.

The topics that were covered however have highlighted I believe the most important points of specific types of citizen journalism.

Well done.

Phoebe said...

I can see that you have tried (and succeeded) in presenting both sides of what is a very compelling topic.

I do however disagree with your definition of citizen journalism. You definition implies that a citizen journalist is someone who compiles or consumes content but is not compelled to distribute it, which I think is one of the defining factors of citizen journalism - not only is the reader now the reporter, but there is a compulsion or enthusiasm that drives the cycle of produsage.

When discussing citizen journalism, I think gatekeeping must be mentioned and I liked your treatment of it. I wonder if you thought of exploring the concept of the 'gatewatcher'? (Bruns in "Gatekeeping: collaborative on-line news production") It might have provided more balance to your arguments.

I appreciated your comments about journalistic bias as they do differ from my own views. I feel that bias is inherent and that neither model of journalism can really be completely unbiased.

But part of reading blogs is exploring others' opinions, no matter how different they are, and I found I enjoyed reading what you had to say. Your blog was well researched, well-written and logically presented, which undoubtedly contributed to this.