Here are a couple of examples of citizen journalism in the media of late:
Citizen journalists? They are just internet whingers,
and
Friday 14 October 2011
Citizen Journalism is the Way of the Future
News providers embracing new media, citizen journalism and user generated content.
“On July 7th, when terrorist bombs exploded on London subway trains and a bus, it was a day of intense pressure for our news teams to get things first, but more importantly to get things right. Our initial indication that we were facing more than the ‘power surge’ the transport authorities were reporting came in an e-mail a viewer sent to us. Before long, many more text and e-mail messages containing images and information arrived from the public, and these became an integral part of how the BBC reported the day’s events. Within six hours, we received more than 10,000 photographs, 20 pieces of amateur video, 4000 text message and 20,000 e-mails. People were participating in our coverage in a way we had never seen before. By the next day, our main evening TV newscast began with a package edited entirely from video sent in by viewers.”
“On July 7th, when terrorist bombs exploded on London subway trains and a bus, it was a day of intense pressure for our news teams to get things first, but more importantly to get things right. Our initial indication that we were facing more than the ‘power surge’ the transport authorities were reporting came in an e-mail a viewer sent to us. Before long, many more text and e-mail messages containing images and information arrived from the public, and these became an integral part of how the BBC reported the day’s events. Within six hours, we received more than 10,000 photographs, 20 pieces of amateur video, 4000 text message and 20,000 e-mails. People were participating in our coverage in a way we had never seen before. By the next day, our main evening TV newscast began with a package edited entirely from video sent in by viewers.”
This quote from Richard Sambrook’s 2005 article on Citizen Journalism and the BBC provides evidence as to the necessity of Citizen Journalism in the modern age of advancing technology, including most importantly, the internet as a tool for media communication. According to Bowman, citizen journalism is the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.
Professional journalists argue that the way they practice their craft performs a ‘social responsibility’, or ‘Fourth Estate’ role, whereby ‘the institution of the media keeps a check on the practices of the other major institutions in a democratic society, namely the parliament, the executive and the judiciary. One of the problems with the idea of the ‘Fourth Estate’ is that news production throughout mainstream media has often been tainted by the fact that this media has sometimes been funded by Politicians and members of other industries with key interests in news content and how it portrays these conglomerates. Even today, news producers may have a responsibility to news ‘owners’ or corporations who still have the power to decide what is broadcasted or printed. In 2009, Gentzkow said, “A free and informative press is widely agreed to be crucial to the democratic process today.” (Gentzkow, Glaeser and Goldin, 2009) This gives citizen journalists an advantage in producing news content that is free from affiliation to parliament, the executive and the judiciary.
The emergence of the ‘blogosphere’ has thrown up challenges to the view of ‘mass media’ with suggestions that conventional mass media will be removed or weakened by the proliferation of alternative forms of media. To quote Flew, “One feature of blogs and citizen journalism is that they are typically a lower-cost means of generating content that traditional news practices, such as hiring feature writers, high-profile on-air talent and opinion journalists, and this is certainly attracting the attention of established news media outlets.” (Flew, Terry (2007) A Citizen Journalism Primer. In Proceedings Communications Policy Research Forum 2007, University of Technology Sydney.)
The advantage that the ‘blogosphere’ has over traditional mainstream media such as newspapers is that it is accessible globally. Most mainstream media outlets are somewhat localised, whether it be a state wide news paper, or a television news half hour, a lot of the information provided is only accessible by the limited number of people residing in that area. Blogs on the other hand are available almost everything that has internet access.
Journalists may worry about an increasing divide between traditional media and citizen media, however currently, old and new media can work together to provide news. This is evident again in the initial quote I read to you from Sambrook at the BBC, who said that at the time of the London bombings in 2005, professional journalists and citizen journalists worked in unison to get information out to the public. He continued on the say, “Our reporting on this story was a genuine collaboration, enabled by consumer technology – the camera phone in particular – and supported by trust between broadcaster and audience. And the result was transformational in its impact: We know now that when major events occur, the public can offer us as much new information as we are able to broadcast to them. From now on, news coverage is a partnership.” (Sambrook, 2005)
To reiterate my point, the biggest advantage that citizen journalists have over professional journalists who are working for a corporation is that their ‘free agent’ status allows them to report the whole truth, often without repercussion. With more information available in new news media, it is more likely that the public will be well informed about issues which may affect them, and their community.
Convergence Part 2
“Convergence can be defined as the dynamic approach or partial integration of different communication and information-based market applications. A further aspect of convergence is that it brings out integrated multimedia products and services that render possible the satisfaction of additional and multiple consumer preferences.”
As the internet breaks all distance boundaries in communication, most media organisations have become part of this network, whereby convergence between broadcast, print and online news is the norm, meaning consumers have access to voice, print and video from anywhere at any time.
There are obvious negatives to this type of media convergence, which I discussed in my last blog post. However there are definite positives as well; media convergence leaves room for many technologies to co-exist. Whilst there has been much hype about the so called ‘death of the newspaper’ and major ratings losses for broadcast providers, these mediums do still exist and probably won’t ever be replaced whilst democracy and choice exist.
There are people embracing online content to the point they feel they don’t need other mediums to gather news content, however there will always be people who choose to read the newspaper, watch television news, listen to a radio bulletin, because these mediums are more convenient for them (journalists included). Networking just allows media organisations to meet a broader audience in a variety of ways.
According to Media organizations and convergence: case studies of media convergence pioneers, by Gracie Lawson-Borders, ‘a survey by the Pew Centre for Civic Journalism in 2000 found that 9 out of 10 editors from 360 newspapers stated that more interactivity with readers was key to the future of their business.’
Getting off topic a little, the book mentions one of the most ironic examples of convergence: the success of Amazon.com in using an electronic medium to sell one of the oldest mediums, books. Another successful example of convergence (related to journalism this time, I promise) is the combination of The Wall Street Journal and www.wsj.com, where the company asked consumers to subscribe to the online content in 1996 and by 2003 had more people accessing the print and online content than ever before (2.6 million to be precise). You can read more examples in the book (linked here).
Wednesday 12 October 2011
Junction Point
"Convergence (in online journalism)
1. Combining of media: the internet’s fusion of video, text and sound.
2. Merging of media organisations: a newspaper and a television station can combine their news-gathering resources into a single entity, with journalists producing content for broadcast, print and the internet."
Problems?
If the media is supposed to be forming the fourth estate, whereby it takes on a ‘watchdog’ role over industry, government, etcetera, how will it be able to perform this role in an impartial way? Not only will it have the competing interested of advertisers, it will also have the competing interests of different news organisations and their agendas.
I guess it’s kind of a similar situation to that which commercial news providers are in; they need advertising in order to produce news content, yet does providing this advertising present a bias towards the industries and companies that pay for their commercials to be integrated into or around news content?
This is only a look into one small problem that will occur with convergence. The second of numerous problems is the policy and lawmaking (the details of which I’m shaky on) which apply to broadcasters but as yet don’t apply to internet news agencies regarding content, censorship and many other issues. If television news broadcasters and radio broadcasters are subject to certain rules and regulations, shouldn’t there be similar rules and regulations for internet organisations?
Here’s a great article discussing some of the issues which are arising:
No doubt convergence also has its benefits...
Tuesday 11 October 2011
The Frontier
Read this fellow students!
I think this is a good example of the changes that are occurring in the journalism industry at the moment.
“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ ”
It’s good to see that journalism doesn’t have to mean ‘big business’. The article describes online ‘investigative journalism’ as a fledgling movement, backed in a similar way to public (i.e. Australian Broadcasting Corporation) providers; these websites are nonprofits, supported by the public, donors and a small amount of advertising.
So it’s hopeful these news organisations will continue to compete with more commercial establishments to provide an impartial program of news information.
Monday 10 October 2011
Truth.
“Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing newsprint’s obituary. Yet, as an industry, most of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn’t do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp away. Well, it hasn’t, it won’t, and it’s a reality we had better get used to – and fast. What is happening right before us is a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a Godlike figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel. Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle. Think about how blogs and message boards revealed that Kryptonite bicycle locks were vulnerable to a Bic pen. Or the Swiftboat incident. Or the swift departure of Dan Rather from the CBS. One commentator, Jeff Jarvis, puts it this way: give the people control of media, they will use it. Don’t give people control of media, and you will lose.”
“Most Americans (69%) say that if their local newspaper no longer existed, it would not have a major impact on their ability to keep up with information and news about their community.”
Woah.
This information is from a report by Pew Internet and The American Life Project. Basically the report polled a group of American’s to find out how they gather news about their local communities. The report found that more and more audiences (especially more ‘tech-savvy’, younger audiences – they said it, not me) are moving away from television and print news in preference of online sources. The numbers they’re talking about are significant.
Yet according to the same report, “Newspapers (primarily print) rank first or tie for first as the sources people rely on most for 11 of the 16 different kinds of local information asked about – more topics than any other media source.” The topics included in these categories include government, taxes and civic affairs which I know I would class as ‘news’.
So these are the topics American’s are following less. Can we presume that Australian’s are following suit?
A study by a group of master’s students at the University of Queensland made these findings:
“Seventy-five per cent of the sample identified themselves as Internet users. Nearly 46% of these (or about one third of the sample) were using the Internet for news (9% of them had been doing this for one year or less and 57% had at least three years’ experience with online news).
“Nearly seven in ten of those using online news did it frequently (28% several times a week and 41% every day). A 95% confidence interval reveals that as of August 2004, between 30% and 37% of the Australian population were using the Internet for news.
“Compared to the fact that only 22% of the same sample (or from 19.2% to 25.2% of the population) subscribed to a pay television service, this suggests that the Internet can be seen as having become a major news source in Australia.”
These were only preliminary findings as there hasn’t been a lot of research into internet news consumption in Australia; however it’s interesting to note that most of the group that were polled used online newspaper sites as their main internet news sources – there’s hope yet!
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