Dec
15
Navigating media maze for citizen journalism
3rd year journalism student Sarah Mageean, from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston is focusing on citizen journalism and social media. Attending the recent OPEN09 event, Sarah is seeking people’s opinion on citizen journalism.
As part of an email conversation I mentioned that as part of the free flow of information online, citizen journalism is a vital element and something which deserves more exposure rather than less. How reliable is it? We might gauge its reliability on two levels. 1) is there a ‘tribe’ present 2) can the authors position, or an indication of neutrality be identified given such an anonymous space as the web.
While good at adding breadth, the failure of citizen reporting is it’s lack of contribution to traditional journalism. It largely fails to add depth to an issue. However, issues and themes get a voice and a platform, where media orgs and traditional journalism had previously couldn’t afford them the space. Does one owe anything the other?? coverage will greatly increase as the proliferation of citizen journalism becomes part of teh media mix on our mobile and home devices.
The impact of citizen reporting on traditional journalism? It will be partly at the expense of traditional media titles and outlets – the survivors of which will find ways to adapt and provide value. Where news has previously not been selective and personalised, users now have a choice to find a media mix of traditional and new journalism. The immediate impact will be dramatic while traditional media finds ways to adapt to new modes of delivering content.
What does social media brings to citizen journalism? It rapidly divides and personalises news content, and it gives prominence to news items with the greatest mass appeal – this is a disadvantage – Journalism becomes a means to activate a community of interests. In the long tail, all content is given an audience over time, and users seek to comment and build on a piece
The ways to social media? Start with Live web, geographic applications, voting, adding reviews, sharing and annotating content — using platforms, qype, facebook, twitter, linkedin and others.
In the future, citizen journalism and social media will develop with a lot of synergy, as personalisation and targeted, geographic aware, fragmented and intricately shared content becomes common place.
