About a week ago, I heard sirens and a helicopter hovering around at the end of my street. At first I couldn’t be bothered moving from my comfortable position on the couch but then decided to investigate so I grabbed my camera and headed to the scene. When I got there, I was shocked to discover that a light plane had crashed on the nearby beach, there was emergency rescue crews everywhere but no news teams were on the scene yet. I decided to snap some photographs from where I was standing and when I got home thought about sending them into the local paper.
One of the photographs I took of the crash
I went online to the Sunshine Coast Daily’s website and was suprised to find an article and pictures from the crash so soon. As I examined the pictures closer I noticed the caption below indicated that the photographs had been taken by a witness on their mobile phone. The witness then sent the photos through to the newspaper via SMS and they were first to break the story.
The immediacy of new media technologies such as the internet and mobile phones challenge traditional corporate business models today. Traditionally, to have your story and photograph printed in a newspaper you would have to be an experienced journalist. Today however, these new technologies have influenced a new way of reporting to empower ordinary people and give them a voice to become citizen journalists.
“Citizen Journalism or Participatory Journalism is an evolving form of journalism through user generated content. When any common man in his capacity as a citizen of a nation takes up the initiative to report things or express his views about happenings around him then the occurrence is popularly termed as citizen journalism,” (Merinews, 2009).
Citizen journalism has emerged to challenge the traditional corporate news companies as many individuals now feel that these companies do not act in the best interest of the people. Through the internet’s blogs and social networking sites, individuals can write about or express their views and opinions on news and events without having any formal qualifications. Although many people consider this to be a good thing, it also raises the question of credibility; something that will no doubt need to be addressed as new media technologies continue to advance. The Bell (in Baym, 2008) note, “We need certain tastemakers, or editors, between sender and receiver. This is where (the good) blogs and online mags/forums come in handy. There is simply too much out there to take in so we need to help each other.”
Helping each other out
Despite the issue of credibility, there are many positive factors evident through citizen journalism such as leaving articles open for discussion, editing and commenting. The internet allows individuals to connect with not only other readers, but with additional professionals from various fields who can all contribute their own expertise to particular stories or issues in a social pool of knowledge reflecting the notion of collective intelligence. Jenkins (2008) argues, “Collective intelligence recognizes that there are diverse forms of expertise and that we learn more if we draw on as many different minds as possible rather than placing our trust in singular minds.”
It seems as though citizen journalism does what journalism should do at its most basic level; present a balanced story that is open for discussion and debate.
Care to start one now?
Reference:
Baym, N. 2008. Online Community and Fandom. http://www.onlinefandom.com/wp content/uploads/2008/02/onlinefancommunity.pdf (May 1, 2009).
Jenkins, H. 2008. Sharing Notes About Collective Intelligence.http://www.henryjenkins.org/2008/02/last_week_my_travels_took.html (Accessed May 1, 2009).
Merinews, 2009. Citizen Journalism. http://www.merinews.com/citizen_journalism.jsp (Accessed May 2, 2009).
