The future of Journalism – Citizen Journalism

The terms citizen journalist and citizen journalism have become familiar within a Web 2.0 context since new media technologies have created the opportunity for a wider range of publishing options. The term citizen journalism refers to individuals or groups who are not connected with ‘professional’ publishers or journalism organisations collecting, editing and making available, news material which may not be in reach of desk-bound reporters. For example, BBC receives over ten thousand pics, tips and clips on a normal day, and major news events can generate over one hundred thousand.

But what are the implications of ‘citizen’ sources for professional journalists? Since the emergence of citizen journalism earlier this century, it has been contested by professional journalists, academics, and citizens themselves. Academics Duffield and Cokley have published a book I, Journalist in defence of the journalism profession. The book argues that in a world where media professionals will be replaced by a democratised free exchange of information, a demand for the journalistic ways of thought and professional media skills stands to increase. Bruns identifies the move from gatekeeping, which utilises traditional journalistic perspectives of news judgement, to gatewatching, which involves characteristics of open participation and communal evaluation associated with produsage.

I have looked at some examples of new kinds of content being created by citizen’s such as those working with The Uptake, Global Voices and Current. The Uptake encourages users to ‘take action: become a citizen journalist’ by completing a form simple online detailing your experience and equipment. The Uptake’s slogan is ‘Will news be done by you or to you?’ This shows how news in being created in the interest of the consumers not the producers.

The Knight Citizen News Network (KCNN) learning modules for both professional and citizen journalists is an interesting initiative that I came across which is an initiative of the American University School of Communication’s (AUSOC) Centre for Social Media . The (AUSOC) led me to a recent article written by Jessica Clark , the director of the Future of Public Media Project and Pat Aufderheide. The report Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Public  shows ways that we can expand who produces and who consumes public media, and take advantage of new stakeholders such as independent media producers and engaged online communities.  The report is reviewed by Henry Jenkins, an academic and  influencial blogger in the media industry.

The article discusses identifies five user behaviours (choice, conversation, curation, creation, and collaboration) and explores how user-led digital technologies are fostering participation. Choice relates to users actively seeking out and comparing media on important issues, through search engines, recommendations, video on demand, interactive program guides, news feeds, and niche sites. Conversation relates to comment and discussion boards such as Twitter and FriendFeed managed via shared tags. Curation relates to users aggregating, sharing, ranking, tagging, reposting, juxtaposing, and critiquing content on a variety of platforms. Creation relates to users creating a range of multimedia content (audio, video, text, photos, animation, etc.) from scratch and remixing existing content. Finally, collaboration relates to users adopting a variety of new roles along the chain of media creation and distribution.

These five media habits are said to be ‘fueling exciting new trends which offer tools, platforms, or practices of enormous possibility for public media 2.0 such as Ubiquitous video , powerful databases, social networks as public forums, locative media (Mobile GPS devices), and persuasive gaming’ to name a few. Professional media makers are now tapping user-generated content as raw material for their own productions, and outlets are navigating various fair use issues as they wrestle with promoting and protecting their brands.