Response: Week 9

Earlier in the week, I posed some questions regarding the implications of the explosion of citizen journalism. I first asked if the increased role of amateur journalists would override the classic agenda setting theory. Traditional journalism valued the power that the news media had over the production and distribution of news. The old, one-way communications model gave all control to professionals, and left consumers of the news to passively absorb whatever stories journalists determined were the ones that people should be talking about. With the rise of citizen journalism, “ordinary” people are given the unprecedented opportunity to determine what news is worthy enough to be talked about. It seems like the current landscape of journalism points to a combination of professionals and news consumers having a hand in setting the agenda. Take CNN, for example: the new page on its website, known as “NewsPulse,” supports this new, fluid agenda setting theory. CNN still chooses which stories to publish and distribute on its site. At the same time, the hierarchy of stories is based on popularity with its readers. The stories are organized by a combination of total comments and reader feedback and the number of times the story has been shared on Facebook. This system allows the stories generating the most user conversation to rise to the top, while the stories the public determines are more trivial are buried at the bottom of the page. In this sense, the news media are still setting the initial agenda by publishing the stories to the site, but it then allows the agenda to change based on which topics are generating the most conversation among its readership. This implies that the audience is continuing to have a larger influence in determining what society talks about.

Likewise, this supports my second question about citizen journalists adapting the unofficial role of news editors, in terms of selecting what news stories take precedence and are re-worked. The gate-keeping process of journalism is certainly shifting from the hands of online editors and moderators to the general public. How does this influence democracy in journalism and promote transparency and civil engagement? We briefly touched on the impact of citizen journalism-influenced transparency when we discussed the Digg revolt. Digg users certainly exercised their civil engagement when directly affecting the decision-making process of what the site posted online. When users believed their freedom of speech was compromised, due to the censoring of what comments and feedback were published, it caused the media source to re-evaluate its role as editor. Citizen journalism has the power to bring light to stories and information that news media may skew or attempt to bury.

There is also something to be said for the blurring of the lines between op-ed material and hard news online, as citizen journalists become powerful contributors to the field. At the beginning of the week I questions whether journalism is starting to revolve around social commentary, as opposed to a strictly hard news value approach to content. After class discussion, I think the traditional value of hard news remains constant, but the presence of three-way communication within online forums is now a vital part of the conversation, and doesn’t necessarily reflect hard news value. The conversation among users and citizen journalists adds to the editorial content of the news site, thus promoting a mixture of opinion and objective news reporting within journalism.