Citizen journalism allows every member of society to share opinion, report news and provide information and stories for others. But the debate still lies as to whether this freedom is a threat, or a godsend. Long gone are the days where a fully qualified, professional journalist reports to us breaking news every night at 6pm. Well, the journalists are still there every night on our television screens at 6, the audience however are elsewhere. We are logged on to our online library of information where amateur journalists keep us up to date, minute-by-minute of breaking news.
With citizen journalism, we are each entitled to share images, video and stories online, and have it be read. The problem, however, lies in the credibility of the information we are being provided.
When it comes to sourcing news and information, most of us are simply seeking convenience; hence citizen journalism is a convenient way of reading the news (anywhere, at anytime). The struggle lies when traditional forms of media such as newspaper and magazines are unable to keep up to date with the ever- evolving media consumption patterns of their audiences, and hence lose out to the more contemporary forms of media such as Twitter and Facebook.
Before we go jumping on the next blog we see that’s claiming to report us the truth, we should probably take a step back and remember who the originals tend to do it best. After all, isn’t that why we are at university?
I think that the threat of citizen journalism is a 'godsend'. The current state of media ownership means that often the same opinion is reiterated throughout the world. Citizen journalism not only provides us with convenience but also provides us with the ability to see both sides of the story and form our own opinion. As for the issue of credibility most social networking sites facilitate the ability for users to cross reference breaking news if they are unsure of its accuracy (eg the #tag function on Twitter). In saying this I don’t think that traditional journalism is dead but I do think they have a massive challenge on there hands to compete with the instantaneous nature of the net.
ReplyDeleteYep yep yep... Citizen Journalism is here loud and proud and I completely agree Corryn, people need to realize that even the newspaper needs to be cross referenced, so why would you not cross reference citizen journalists? I mean everything you read in mass media, watch on tv and told by people around you of any importance... should be referenced and researched so that you are getting all the facts. Social networking does allow for this, but then again, it is interesting to research what is been filtered by the internet and journalists alike?
ReplyDeleteI also believe that citizen journalism is a ‘godsend’. It allows news to travel fast and we are usually finding out about current situations as they are happening. Last semester I was researching citizen journalism and I came across an interesting news article. An Australian tourist was overseas during the time of the Indonesian Tsunami in 2004. She was in a safe area but had blogged about this natural disaster. ABC had been sent this blog and they did not believe or trust the source of this information. Hours later they were informed from a reliable source that this blog was true. This just goes to show how was news can travel through citizen journalism and that it can take hours for News Companies to find out about what is happening around the world
ReplyDelete"Godsend" is a bit much. Granted it has definitely been a good thing in that it has shown the big boys how to do it and do it well. Now that most if not all major news corps. have an online presence with a constantly updated blog and twitter feed, why do we still need citizen journalists?
ReplyDeleteWatchdogs of the watchdogs? Possibly. When media outlets get it wrong and tweet misinformation, that certainly hear about it and heads tend to roll. Only recently a news network had tweeted that Steve Jobs had died (about a week before he did) and 3 people were fired because of it. We do need a certain amount of watchdogs to watch the watchdogs, but whether the amount of citizen journalists around is necessary is another question.
Citizen journalism is indeed a new form of media that's out there. I think godsend is a bit much, but it does represent the next step forward in the world of media representation of events. Fact checking can now be done by just making sure that most blogs report the same facts (much like cross referencing newspaper articles) and tools such as twitter make it much easier to do things like this.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with the above comments in that fact checking is something that is a problem in media as well. Although some sources claim to be reputable, there have also been cases demonstrated in sources such as Al Jazeera where the content has been modified at the request of the government. This indicates to me that to some extent many of the problems that people see in citizen journalism (the axe to grind, the poorly checked facts) apply to regular printed media as well, except that we are encouraged to trust the word of journalists.