NDM News: Citizen journalism

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Examples

• Having caught Rodney King, an African-American, after a high speed chase, the officers surrounded him, tasered him and beat him with clubs. The event was filmed by an onlooker from his apartment window.
• The natural disaster of the Asian Tsunami on December 26th 2004 was another turning point for UGC. Much of the early footage of events was provided from citizen journalists, or ‘accidental journalists,’ providing on-the-spot witness accounts of events as they unfolded.
• A second terrible event, the London bombings on July 5th 2005, provided another opportunity for citizen journalists to influence the mainstream news agenda.
• The reporting of the terrible events at Virginia Tech that day when 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho, killed people was also affected by citizen journalism, and the footage that student Jamal Albarghouti shot on his mobile phone video camera.
• Twitter and flickr came to the forefront during the Mumbai bombings in India in late November 2008. As bombs exploded across the city, the world’s media got up-to date with events through reports on Twitter and Flickr.
• It was on Twitter again that the story of the Hudson River plane crash on January 15th 2009 was broken to the world.

Theory (audience reception etc.)

As technology improved over the years, incidents of this kind have become more and more common. The power to make and break news has moved beyond the traditional news institutions.emotive. An audience used to relatively unmediated reality through the prevalence of reality TV can now see similarly unmediated footage on the news. Perhaps the news now seems old-fashioned and somehow staged if it lacks the raw, grainy low-quality footage provided by citizen journalists.

Benefits to institutions

They have show the videos that they receive from the public on the news. years. Rather than launch their own challenge, they simply buy the site. Flickr is now owned by Yahoo!, YouTube was bought by Google, Microsoft invested in Facebook, and News Corp., owned by Murdoch, bought MySpace.

Benefits to audience

It is a enormous potential for the audience to expand their view of the world and their understanding of what is happening. The audience has the potential to feel involved in the news by, in a sense, becoming journalists themselves. The audience are able to see uncensored videos of incidents that's been happening around the world.

Wider issues and debates

Do journalists fear for their jobs now everyone is producing content?

Some believe that the mediators and moderators might eventually disappear too, leaving a world where the media is, finally, unmediated. If there will be fewer jobs for trained journalists, will there also be less profit for the big institutions?

Although how to ‘monetarise’ UGC – how to make money for both the generator and the host of the content – is still being debated, bigger institutions have been buying up social networking sites for the last few years.

SHEP

We first felt the effects of the new technologies way back in 1991.If George Holliday hadn’t been looking out of his apartment window and made a grab for his video camera at the time Rodney King was apprehended, none of this would have happened. King’s beating would be just another hidden incident with no consequences. It is not only in providing footage for the news that citizen journalists have come to the forefront. UGC now plays a huge role in many aspects of the media. The desire for everyone to tell their own story and have their own moment of fame may explain the huge popularity of Facebook, MySpace and other such sites. While national news organisations quickly swung into action, it was the citizen journalist, empowered by social networking sites, that first broke the story. If there will be fewer jobs for trained journalists, will there also be less profit for the big institutions? This seems unlikely. content? It is likely that in future there will be fewer and fewer permanent trained staff at news organisations, leaving a smaller core staff who will manage and process UGC from citizen journalists, sometimes known as ‘crowd sourcing.’

1) What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?

The concept of citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic", "guerrilla" or "street"journalism) is based upon public citizens"playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information."

2) What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?

When Rodney King, an African-American, was caught after a high speed chase, the officers surrounded him, tasered him and beat him with clubs. The event was filmed by an onlooker from his apartment window.

3) List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.

Message boards, chat rooms, Q&A, polls, have your says, and blogs with comments enabled.

4) What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?

Professionally shot footage lacks the raw, grainy low-quality footage provided by citizen journalists. User generated content is usually uncensored.

5) What is a gatekeeper?

A media gatekeeper is a journalist or editor who is tasked with the responsibility of filtering information before it is published, broadcast or posted on the Web.

6) How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?

Originally, the job of the media gatekeeper was mainly focused on the mass media, but it has transitioned toward face-to-face communication as well.

7) What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?

They are fearing for their jobs now that everyone is producing content.


What impact is new/digital media having on the following:

• news stories

News stories nowadays come along with some sort of user generated content to show evidence of the event that happened. This usually starts social debates. Also news stories can now be found on-line on social networking sites rather than just broadcasting or print news. 

• the news agenda (the choice of stories that make up the news)

Before, due to gatekeepers, news was censored and what was shown on the news was decided. However, due to new/digital media, uncensored news can be shown on social media sites such as twitter and YouTube. 

• the role of professionals in news

Since a lot of people are now videoing incidents and producing content, the role of professionals in news is under threat as perhaps in the future they won't be needed but only a few to process user generated content.