What is citizen Journalism? For the noobs (Like myself with only a vague and fuzzy idea of the concept), its
Citizen journalism, also known as public or participatory journalism, is the act of citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information,”
You can read more from the wikipedia definition here.
More interestingly, its the criticisms of it that have aroused my interest in this topic. Social media has changed the ball game for all marketing and PR efforts, putting the power of communications in the audience. Social media now has affected journalism too. With journalism’s primary aim of being objective and presenting a fair view, certain citizen journalisms do not adhere by this code.Some might argue it presents the suppressed voices of the people, but at times, it presents a slightly skewed version of the truth.
This has lead journalism.sg to conduct a survey on “How credible are socio-political blogs in Singapore? ” It also begs the question which Mitch Joel asks, “Is witnessing the same as being a journalists?” Especially with events and how journalists should or shouldn’t be given exclusive passes to events.
So how does this affect PR folks? I haven’t been in the industry long enough (2 months and I’m probably a blade of grass in the PR forest) and I’m not too sure how it does in reality. This is solely based on what I have read and my perspective. I would love if someone correct me if I’m wrong (Better to look a fool here than when I’m doing a job interview, lol…) So here’re some examples of what I’ve found and its growing importance…
I think we all heard this one, where presidential candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama , was heard making racial remarks on the blue collared white workers in America. Despite the sketchy sources, it almost proved to be a dent in the Obama camp… Consider also how effective Obama has been using social media with great interaction… Double edge sword… Too much credibility placed on citizen journalism? Dangerous considering how fickle people can be when it comes to voting…
Now don’t get me wrong, what I’ve presented so far may seem to put citizen journalism in a bad light, but really, there are benefits too! Remember the suppressed voice of the people I was talking about?
What better place than to turn to look at Asia… Where freedom of speech isn’t exactly our motto…
Myanmar has seen hard times, with the cyclone this year and the hike in oil prices leading to the suppressed riots last year, the voice of the people had to be heard, just check out this video below…
How about China? With the Olympics coming up, China too has seen rough times. Firstly with the Tibet issue, then with the earthquake and a few months from now, the greatest sporting event in the world, the Olympics. The China brand for 2008 will be interesting to review. China has been known for its “Great firewall of China” and with the citizen journalists using various techniques to go around the authorities, the voices of the people are more prominent than ever.
There also have been certain issues (Which i will not go into detail), but some include the stereotype of the Chinese media by the west and comments by Sharon Stone about the earthquake which have sparked great controversy in the China cyberspace.
However, China has been praised for its transparency in the recent earthquake disaster. Its a great move forward and the Olympics will see if China is gonna “Take one step forward and back” or full steam ahead with openness and allowing citizen journalists to voice their opinions. Check out this video and this wiki fore more details:
So with 2 sides of the coin presented, when is an ideal situation to merge traditional and social journalism?
I think sports are a great way to go (See, one more window for sports 2.0, *smirks*)…
This article on a sports fans network Bleach, whose content is based on citizen journalists. They recently announced a partnership with Fox. Its a great step as sports journalism has always been trying to increase interaction with the audience. Its great check for traditional with citizen journalism, awesome mash up. I’m wondering now if the ESPN Soccernet website has done something like this?
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility…
I love spidey… haha, but don’t do what this dude did… Accusing a singaporean judge for “prostituting herself”… He blogged about it in US but was still arressted. Which makes the law scene pretty interesting huh? Guess we gotta watch what we say…
Here’re a nice sites I found if you interested in going into citizen journalism… here and here
I guess at the end of the day, this new form of journalism is here to stay (Oh man the media monitoring just increased 10 fold…) haha… As usually, this leaves me with more questions…
Will this form of journalism be taken as seriosuly as the traditional and credible media? Will the different cultures play a part? If a country is more suppressed, will it make citizen journalism more credible?
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