Course overview

Skills: none Concepts: citizen journalist, use of Usenet, Wikipedia, blogs, Twitter and Facebook by citizen journalists, news archives, the interaction between citizen and mainstream journalism, UsenetThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Citizen journalism1Improving Internet technology has enabled on the scene reporting by millions of citizens around the world.

We will see important examples of citizen journalists use of Usenet, social media and blogs.

On balance, citizen journalism has promoted humanism and democracy, but the Internet is also a tool of repressive regimes and terrorists.

Finally, we see that citizen journalism may be used by mainstream journalists.

Where does this topic fit?Internet conceptsApplicationsTechnologyImplicationsInternet skillsApplication developmentContent creationUser skills2This presentation illustrates political and other implications of the Internet.

Citizen journalismWhat point is this slide making?

The Internet has made citizen journalism possible.

Events can be covered by citizens with cell phones.

Lets look at a few examples.3

Pre Internet citizen journalism, March 1991Do you recognize this event?

Rodney King was stopped by police and beaten.

The beating was video taped by a man standing on the balcony of his nearby apartment.

The video was widely televised and several of the police officers were tried.

The acquittal of four officers triggered rioting in which 53 people were killed and over two thousand people were injured.

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They try to close all mass media, they stopped CNN an hour ago, and Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But, thank Heaven, they don't consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot about it. Now we transmit information enough to put us in prison for the rest of our life.

Polina AntonovaKremvaxProtests in MoscowVideo clip, 3m 13s, (highlight at 1m 40 s :-)Internet citizen journalism, August 1991

Perhaps the first example of networked citizen journalism was during the August 1991 coup attempt in which eight high level Soviet officials tried to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

The coup attempt was met by civil resistance and contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

There were two days of confrontation between demonstrators and troops, during which all Russian media except Usenet news were shut down by the authorities.

Russias Usenet network was run by Relcom, a small unix consulting company in Moscow.

Relcoms Kremvax, the central computer in the network, exchanged Usenet posts with computers in 70 Russian cities and with one in Helsinki several times each day.

Relcom staff actively reported news as well as transmitting it.

The quote on this slide is from Polina Antonova, a Relcom staff member who was also reporting news.

I had coincidentally organized a conference in Moscow the week before the coup attempt, and had met and gotten to know the Relcom staff at that time.

As such, I was able to serve as a conduit to-and-from them during the coup attempt.5Historical archiveHistorical archive of Soviet coup attempt traffic

I was lucky enough to have met the Relcom networkers while at a conference in Moscow shortly before the coup attempt.

As a result, a Danish colleague and I reported back to them every hour or two on what was being said in the Western media an early precursor of live-blogging.

We captured all of the Usenet traffic both within Russia and to and from the West during the days of the coup attempt, and preserved it in an archive at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Years after the event, the material remains available to scholars, journalists and others.

In this photo, Boris Yeltsin is giving a speech while standing on a tank that was brought in to control demonstrators in a square in front of a Russian government building.6

Wikipedia: the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attackCitizen journalists frequently report on Wikipedia.

Take, for example, the Wikipedia article on the 2008 Pakistani terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.

7Visit the Wikipedia page todayThe initial page

The topic began with two sentences posted by Kensplanet at 18:20 on November 26, 2008.

He revised his initial post 5 times during the next ten minutes, then others began to contribute.

The situation escalated rapidly and many people edited the wiki during the next day.

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Wikipedia after 21 hours 44 minutes4,780 words

942 edits149 anonymous93 unidentifiable

By 15:44, 27 November 2008, the article was 4,780 words long with many links.

During this time, there had been 942 edits.

199 people had made only one edit, but two contributors had made over 50.

Kensplanet, who started the article, had made 57.

The organization of the article had evolved from two sentences to 6 major sections with 5 sub-sections.

Today the article is longer and more complex.

9Subsequent refinement

Collaboration using Wikipedia continued after the event.

Today the article is much longer and more complexly organized.

It contains analysis as well as reporting and includes links to hundreds of other documents and 197 references.

As you see here, it is regarded as quite thorough, objective, complete and well written.

That is noteworthy given the divisions of opinion between many Indians and Pakistanis.

No doubt it will continue growing in length and complexity.10

Continued relevance32081views in the last 30 daysThe article continues to be relevant.

It has been viewed over 32,000 in the last 30 days.11

"Thank you Facebook"Social networks: Arab Spring, 2011Blogs and social networks Twitter and Facebook were used extensively during the Arab Spring demonstrations.

Like the Soviet coup attempt coverage, they provided internal and external information.

Internally, they announced protests and meetings, issued warnings of police and army attacks, and so forth.

At the same time, they provided instant news reporting to the outside world.12

Arab Spring archive, 2011Bloggers as citizen journalistsMany bloggers are citizen journalists.

Global Voices is an international community of over 500 bloggers and translators who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world.

They were founded at Harvard in 2005, and they emphasize content that is not ordinarily seen in international mainstream media.

They have archived their extensive coverage or the Arab Spring revolts in Tunisia,Morocco, Libya,Bahrain,Syria andYemen.13

Citizen/conventional journalism@acarvinConventional journalists often take input from citizen journalists.

Foremost among them is NPRs Andy Carvin, an innovative mainstream journalist who uses citizen reports in his coverage.

As shown in this graph, Carvin posts frequently on Twitter, but he is not a passive observer of events around him.

In fact, he does much of his reporting from home by following trusted citizen journalists who are on the scene in foreign countries.

He combines their reports with those of other sources in his reporting, and he always attempts to confirm and verify what he reports.

He is shown here reporting from the Middle East during the Arab Spring.14Journalists covering the Syrian civil war

On the Media interview, 1m 27s

The bookIn this excerpt from an interview on NPRs program On The Media, Andy Carvin and Sky News editor Neal Mann speak of reporting from Syria.

Carvin tells how he uses the Internet to gather information from his Syrian sources.

(The excerpt was taken from: Tweeting graphic videos from Syria, OnTheMedia, February 10, 2012http://www.onthemedia.org/tags/andy_carvin/).

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Twitter for Goodis a how-to book with tips and case studies for organizations and individuals that want to use Twitter for good. It's oriented toward social action, but many of the recommendations are also relevant to any organization that wants to use Twitter for public relations, marketing, and customer or community relationship management.Summary

We have seen that citizen journalism began with video taping and Usenet news, before the Internet. More recently, citizen journalists have used Wikipedia, blogs, Twitter and other social media to tell their stories.

Citizen journalism also informs conventional mainstream journalists.

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Usenet (optional material)Usenet news was an early threaded discussion system.

Usenet computers exchanged batches of thread posts typically several times each day.

In developing nations, these exchanges were typically done using dial-up phone calls.

Kremvax was located at Relcom headquarters in Moscow and exchanged posts with computers in 70 Russian cities.

Periodically, they received a call from a computer center in Helsinki, and exchanged posts.

Traffic that had originated inside Russia was sent to the West and Western traffic, including the news updates my colleague and I wrote, were sent into Russia.18Self-study questionsHow does the current Wikipedia article on the Mumbai terrorist attacks compare with the article at the time this presentation was created? Has it continued to evolve? (You can find many statistics under the History tab on the Wikipedia page).

We have looked at four examples of citizen journalism. Describe another one.ResourcesVideo of the Rodney King beating (9m 40s): http://youtu.be/4OauOPTwbqkFor more on the Soviet coup attempt including articles, quotes from participants and a link to the historical archive of all network traffic: http://www.cs.oswego.edu/~dab/coup/News coverage of the Soviet coup attempt with an interview of me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VAHy76QO7o&feature=player_embeddedGlobal Voices extensive archives and The Guardians review of the Arab Spring http://bit.ly/xIShqtWikipedia page on the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2008_Mumbai_attacksWashington Post article on Andy Carvin: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/npr-andy-carvin-tweeting-the-middle-east/2011/04/06/AFcSdhSD_story.htmlPBS interview of Andy Carvin discussing his methodology (7m 28s): http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/nprs-andy-carvin-on-tracking-and-tweeting-revolutions.htmlTweeting graphic videos from Syria, OnTheMedia, February 10, 2012 http://www.onthemedia.org/tags/andy_carvin/Video interview of Andy Carvin (65m 5s) http://www.onthemedia.org/blogs/on-the-media/2013/jan/29/brooke-gladstone-live-andy-carvin/Andy Carvins book, Distant Witness: http://amzn.to/150FyQZ

Tweeting Graphic Videos From SyriaWNYC, New York Public RadioOn The Media2012Audio86753.305 - Copyright 2012, wnyc.org