Posts Tagged: citizen journalist

For this week’s readings, the focus was the on the empowering of citizen’s as journalists and its effects. More specifically, the readings looked at what affects the empowerment of citizen journalism has, can, and may have on politics.

My first question of the week asked if the empowering of citizen journalist meant a draining of power from government institutions. Based on the readings for this week and our class discussions, I would say that if anything there has been a breaking of control that governments and their officials have on what information they want to get out into the public sphere. Some examples from class include the Republican National Convention’s attempt to make a site similar to mybarackobama.com and the story from Here Comes Everybody regarding the senator who expressed racist views at the birthday party of another political official.

In addition to these examples are the various news stories and youtube videos about politicians ranging from the extra audio from President Bush and Senator Kerry when they forgot their mikes were still attached to the Tea Party’s candidate Christine O’Donnell appearances on various MTV interviews. All of these examples illustrate the loosening of content control and the resulting possibilities to increase watchdog efforts on not only politicians, but on anyone involved with some form of publicity. The Brett Favre scandal comes to mind.

Unfortunately, and this is probably because this is a relatively new movement, what I have yet to see regarding the growth of citizen journalism and watchdoging is a power to help keep them in check. I have not heard of any group forming to act as a counter balance. Initially, it could be argued, the government was a counterbalance to citizen journalists since not all citizen journalists have the best intentions. However, with the drop in control the government has over certain areas I could see there being an imbalance at least temporarily. I suppose there is always crowdsourcing to make sure the facts are kept straight. There are numerous examples of it working across the internet so it is a matter of watching how crowdsourcing works in this context.

My final question for this week was related to the Shadow Government experiment in Iceland and how it might be replicated in a large country. Taking into account all of the articles this week, it looks like the Icelandic government is willingly giving power to the people; allowing them more direct input into new policies. I do not know enough about this and it is still too new to see how this will turn out. Also, presuming that it does work would it be possible to use a similar system in a country like the United States? A factor that I see being looked over by some people when they talk about using methods in other countries is how that country meshes. For example, the Scandinavian countries are relatively homoginistic culturally than say the United States. This can have a huge affect on how policies are received by a nation’s population. Either way, I am excited to see how this experiment plays out over the next few years. There is definitely potential in how they are using the increased connectedness of people.

The definition of a journalist is much like the definition of interactivity; there are many different ways to classify it but in the end which one really matters. It seems that citizen journalism takes on personal meaning for many of my classmates and it seems the future of journalism is clear but is it what we want? I am all about being able to produce your own content but in many cases, people walk a blurred line. My questions this week were very broad but they are questions that I have and still don’t completely know the answer too.

1. Has the concept of news agenda setting changed with the development of citizen journalism? Does interactivity play a role in what is produced?

As far as agenda setting, I think citizen journalism has played a factor in what “the news agenda” is and what people see. However, it is a much broader spectrum of news stories. Nonetheless, there are still the stories that take precedent because of its nature and how it will help/hurt the country. Citizen journalists provide more opinions and response to news stories as well. The professional level for many of the citizen journalists is not on the same level as a research journalist because the credibility and reliability for many comes from an unbiased opinion and the voice of many citizen journalists is swayed.

2. The article states “citizen journalism is seen to present a challenge to mainstream corporate media, it is tempting to conceive as of a “movement” with intrinsically oppositional characteristics,” is the motivation behind citizen journalism an intrinsic need or an extrinsic product of society?

I think the intrinsic motivation is a result of  extrinsic motivation from society. We live in an age of living free with the ability to produce information on the internet and the will to seek out information on our own. Many people want the freewill to form an opinion for themselves without watching the news that many feel is censored. Yes, we all have the right to all of the above freedoms but do not abuse them. It seems websites like digg.com allow for the use of free voice but that is not always a good thing with this site. Basically, people are motivated from their own internal purposes but what I am saying is those purposes and needs have been formed by an external factor: society!

3. Has the idea and revelation of interactive media contributed to the citizen journalism phenomenon because of the active engagement the audience has with news mediums

I think it all depends on how interactivity is defined yet again. In the case of citizen journalism, is interactivity a product or a process? The use of interactivity on the web has contributed to citizen journalism because they are creating and producing the news, sports, entertainment, etc in a way that is gathering large user audiences. Interactivity as a process also is very important because it effects politics and the bigger process. User engagement is always important which makes me think it has contributed to citizen journalism? In the end, I am a journalist, I want professional credibility so digg.com, I have an opinion but you will not see me post it on your site.

1. As new and old media continue to struggle to find their combined place in the news world, journalists are now not only competing with other news outlets, but also citizen journalists. What are some of the concerns surrounding the integration of citizen journalists to the newsroom and should traditional outlets and professionally trained journalists some how be responsible for policing or monitoring this content?

2. With so much information and news available online, studies have shown that users are seeking out specific stories based on areas of interest rather than visiting a site for its entire content. Based on this knowledge, how can online news sites better direct users to different areas of the site instead of only momentarily holding their attention?

3. One of the biggest concerns facing the news industry today in regards to online journalism is how to continue to fund the industry. With 42% of users saying they “never click on online advertisements,” generating a news revenue is proving increasingly difficult. While a small percentage of users were willing to pay for content, only 35% of those surveyed said they had a regular news site they visited. With a majority of online news readers demanding free content, how can the news industry generate a profit in order to continue disseminating news? How can the news and advertising industries make online advertisements more appealing and thus more “clickable?”