Week 7 Journalism and new media: Alternative/citizen journalism

Joely Chambers, Kelsey Gill & Sophie Whiteoak

• A form of journalism where ordinary people are able to create their own media content outside of the mainstream media, without the need for ‘professional’ journalists

• They report their own views/videos/articles from their perspective as an every day citizen

• Playing an active role in the media!

Citizen Journalism

• The tab• Buzzfeed• Blogs/video blogs• Wikipedia • Vines • YouTube• Facebook

Examples..

Journalism and the internet, by Sue Robinson 2006

• Online news empowers citizens to take an active role in journalism and have an influence • Could replace traditional journalism through the technological attributes• Technology has great democratic potential, there must be opportunities for reader

interactivity and more profitable business models • Immediacy and timeliness is important for credibility• The average user of online news – middle aged with a computer at home

• Jamieson and Campbell – All journalism and advertising messages interact with each other to influence society’s culture, politics, economics and everyday life.

• Time and Space can be bought and manipulated by new technology. Media can construct reality and news information, to influence the audience.

• Bruns- Journalists need to reinvent themselves and take advantage of internet technology or they will become launching pads for other people with newer information

The introduction, intelligence & vast popularity of smart phones enables members of the general public who are at the scene to report breaking news more rapidly than news reporters. This is then available 24/7 for anyone to view online, unlike traditional mainstream media; where most events are reported at specific times of the day.

A major example of this was Osama bin Laden’s raid and death, one of the biggest news stories of 2011, was reported in tweets by a local IT consultant one day before Barack Obama announced it to the world.

Affects of New Technologies

Through the rise of Internet use & in particular social networks there are various platforms available to the public which they can use to upload content.

The Rise of the Internet

Twitter is a key social network regarding citizenship journalism as some of the most shocking news stories have broken out on Twitter before they have even been reported by mainstream reporters and journalists.

Amateur videos & pictures captured instantaneously can now be uploaded in seconds through Twitter, Instagram, Vines, YouTube and Facebook for potentially millions of people to view. This involves uncensored, sometimes unethical footage that often contrasts against the regulations of mainstream media.

Mainstream Journalism VS Citizenship JournalismIn Thurman & Lupton’s publication ‘Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies’ they discuss how mainstream media is attempting to adapt to compete with everyday citizenship journalism. In the publication, they include interviews from various mainstream media personnel discussing this issue.

The Telegraph’s Ed Roussel concurred: “The cost of production in television is sky high in a world where suddenly anybody can produce video and put it on the Internet. Will what we report now be as good? Probably not. Does it need to be? No” (interview, 2007).

Thus, the interviews published by Thurman & Lupton conclude that in a period of decline for mainstream media such as newspapers and traditional TV news, journalists are keen to embrace new technologies, which are seen to many as the future of news, in order to compete with the increase in popularity of citizenship journalism.

‘This is citizen journalism at its finest’: YouTube and the public sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident 

• An article by Mary Grace Antony and Ryan J. Thomas shows an example of citizenship journalism

• 1 January 2009, Oscar Grant was shot and killed in a subway station by Bay Area Rail Transit officers.

• The actions which took place were filmed on people phones and later uploaded on YouTube.

Positives: • The footage was later used in the

trial to show what had really happened to Oscar Grant.

• ‘thankfully we have the internet to prove what happened’ (observateur, 2009a)

Negatives:• People were outraged that some

people had decided to video someone being killed and with how passive they had been at the time of the killing.

• Anyone could have seen the videos on YouTube, even young children.

An example of citizen journalism through YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgzlHtA0R7o

Criticisms• Critics of the phenomenon, such as Drudge – They are irresponsible non-

professionals, publishing rampant inaccuracies.

• Claim that citizen journalism is too subjective, amateur, and disorganized in quality and coverage.

• News stories created by citizens may not always be factual or a reliable source, e.g. falsely claiming a celebrity has died in order to gain public attention

• Could be unethical without having rules and regulations

• People may appear to be unpaid citizens however, the more famous a blogger/YouTuber gets, the more they are paid to advertise and make new videos

CONCLUSION• Although citizen journalism is a positive feature to

some extent for the general public, there is still a need for professionals as a credible source for factual and trustworthy information

• The example of Oscar Grant shows how there are both benefits and drawbacks of citizen journalism as it acted as evidence in the trial but violent footage was also available on the internet for all to see. So although it is beneficial, are these benefits worth the costs?

References• Antony, M. G. & Thomas, R. J. (2010). ‘This is citizen

journalism at its finest’: YouTube and the public sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident. new media & society, 12(8), 1280-1296.

• Sue Robinson, 2006, SAGE Publications pp.843-849• Thurman, N., Lupton, B., 2008. Convergence calls:

Multimedia storytelling at British news websites. Convergence: the international journal of research into new media technologies. 14 439-455

• Wright, J, 2015, New Tech Aims To Authenticate Citizen Journalists’ Cellphone Footage