Last year, I did a presentation in the Tactical Media class, based on research I did for Fred Johnson on citizen journalism. Here’s my notes…cleaned up considerably!
According to the Wikipedia entry, there’s a difference between citizen journalism and participatory journalism. Public journalism is professional journalists, “for the people,” changing the way they approach doing stories:
“…make journalism whole again, by stressing things that have been left out…things like civic participation, deliberative dialogue, cooperative problem solving, taking responsibility…making democracy work.” (Rosen, p 7 Public Journalism: Theory & Practice)
But public journalism movement died out (2003)…but citizen journalism, “by the people” gained speed, especially around 2004 Presidential election. Examples of citizen journalism online include:
- Wikinews, which is part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia.
- Now Public and the English version of the Korean OhmyNews website, where 80% of content by “freelance, ordinary citizens”
- CyberJournalist.net: CITIZEN MEDIA INITIATIVES LIST
Once I cleared that up, I decided to delve more into real citizen journalism – so I started to read Dan Gillmor’s We the Media (2004). He describes blogs as real time “feedback loops” but spends a chapter just giving the roots of the citizen’s media of today.
Here are some of the historical background of the movement highlights:
- Thomas Paine, pamphlets
- Muckrackers (late 1800’s), Sinclair
- Is there an affect of advancements in media distribution technology on media itself?
- early/middle 1800’s, development of postal system boosted newspaper distribution
- 1844, telegraph sped up “collection & transmission”
- Radio, then TV, lured away newspaper readers
- Cable (& cable news channels) stole local/big network tv news watchers
- NOW – computers/internet
- affect of “open source” nature of web/HTML on style of information on internet
- “creation of media in new, less expensive ways”
- Talk radio as the predecessor of the blog
- Change from “one-to-many” to one-to-one and many-to-many
- “digital printing press and worldwide distribution” (www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.htm)
- current informational technologies lead to mass customization and elimination of the middle man (media convergence, Toffler, www.cluetrain.com)
It also struck me as interesting that Gillmor describes the web as “Read-Write”; he points out that media consumers are using RSS readers and multiple windows to create their own “product” or “newspaper” and with the higher levels of transparency comes a loss of privacy and misinformation.
Here’s a short list of Gilmor’s tools of a citizen journalist:
- email lists
- blogs
- wiki
- SMS (text messaging) – outside US, China…SARS…the “smartmob”
- Mobile connected carriers
- Internet “broadcasts” – podcasts?
- Peer-to-peer
- RSS – “User is in control”
And here’s some of favorite passages:
Blogs can be acts of civic engagement:
“This evolution is also about reinforcing citizenship. The emerging form of bottom-up politics is bringing civic activityback into a culture that has long since given up on politics as anything but a hard-edged game for the wealthy and powerful. The technologies of newsmaking are available to citizen and politician alike, and may well be the vehicle for saving something we could otherwise lose: a system in which the consent of the governed means more than the simple casting of votes.” (89)
Blogs can focus on niche that Big Media doesn’t have time or inclination to cover:
“What the third-party sites such as independent blogs showed was the value of niche journalism in politics. The issues of our times are too complex, too nuanced, for the major media to cover properly, given the economic realities of modern corporate journalism. Typically, even good newspapers devote at most two or three stories to candidates’ views on specific issues. Television
news operations, especially at local stations, tend to ignore the issues and politics outright.133 Moreover, there are simply too many political races, from the local to national levels, to cover
even if TV news stations cared. This is a golden opportunity for citizen activists to get involved, to help inform others who do care about specific topics. Maybe the masses don’t care about all
the issues, but individuals care about some of them. “The monolithic media and its increasingly simplistic representation of theworld cannot provide the competition of ideas necessary to reach
consensus,” wrote Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and blogger, in an essay entitled “Emergent Democracy.”(103)
Other the other end of the perspective, I found a few articles more doubtful about citizen journalism replacing mainstream media:
Citizens Media: Has It Reached a Tipping Point? By Jan Schaffer
“Citizen content does not create an either/or paradigm. It’s an “and.” Citizen-contributed content can do much to enrich traditional journalism: It will complement as well as compete with mainstream offerings. Citizens can serve as guide dogs as well as watchdogs.”
Citizen Journalism is Dead – Vincent Maher
Maher contends that bloggers are “15 billion people all documenting their own lives for themselves, their friends and those who cared.” He breaks it all down to the 3 deadly E’s of citizen journalism:
- Ethics – no code
- Economics – bloggers adding ads (Google Adsense Amazon) and organizational links to their blogs will affect what they write about
- Epistemology – a lack of established hierarchies of editorial process
Poynter Institute (for Journalism)
“It’s great that newspapers host these sites. It’s a wonderful service for community. They are often interesting, vibrant and exciting. But it’s not journalism. So don’t call it that. Journalism is an independent act of gathering and assembling information by an organization. The work is completed in service of the audience. The journalists’ loyalties are with the reader and viewer. You might question the independence and loyalty of various news organizations, or even all news organizations. But at least, in theory, you expect those values to guide the process of gathering news….. In this media saturated world, in this era of viral marketing, how’s the average consumer supposed to know the difference between real journalism and a cleverly disguised press release or a marketing campaign?” – Kelly McBride
[But on an ironic turn, I also found some interesting blog comments associated with McBride’s article.]
So, once I had looked a little about both sides of the issue, I tried to find a couple examples to focus on, especially ones using new media. One that keeps popping up is Current TV, best known as Al Gore’s cable station, where all the news bits are called pods and you actually see a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. An article in The Nation on May 16, 2006 (before the channel premiered) was very critical of Gore’s project:
“Now the audience–Current hopes–is in a position to answer that question, uploading videos, ranking what they see, fusing the choice of the Internet with the quality of TV. Current’s online “assignment desk”–where would-be contributors can visit for ideas–contains a few promising suggestions, including “Current Citizen Journalist” (“Shoot a story that traditional news media won’t touch because it’s too big, too small, or too something”) and “Current Change” (“Who’s out there making positive change in the world?”).”
The article also questions whether Current TV can create an audience for more substantial content:
“Opening the gates won’t necessarily trigger more sophisticated content.”
“People, especially those who watch TV, tend to be attracted to less intelligent, coarser, less thoughtful programming.” Steve Rosenbaum, creator of MTV’s Unfiltered
In a similar thought process, the Associated Press’ new service, ASAP, follows these same assumptions about the under 35 audience: From ASAP site:
“asap is AP’s new multimedia service featuring original content designed to appeal to under-35-year-old readers, a coveted but elusive audience, and to connect with them – on their terms…asap recognizes the need for young people to understand what today’s news means to them, and it emphasizes the kind of lifestyle coverage we know can be under-utilized readership drivers.”
But getting back to Current TV, some folks quoted in The Nation article, including Cara Mertes (the exec producer of the PBS documentary program POV), believe Current TV could be a step toward ‘democratizing the media’:
“Is it using media to further democratic ends, to create an environment conducive to the democratic process through unity, empathy and civil discourse? Or does it mean handing over the means of production, which is the logic of public access. In that case, you get a shouting match, a bunch of stuff nobody is watching.” – Cara Mertes
I couldn’t find much more on Current, now that’s it’s been on the air for months, but it did get a bad review from Wired.com: /p>
“To that end, Current TV is filled with promos and interstitials touting media democracy, with phrases like “Don’t take it. Make it.” But in reality much of the so-called “viewer created content” is produced by media professionals who are willing to accept Current’s modest pay scale … for the exposure.” - Niall McKay
The other specific area I focused on was the impact of political blogging. There was a rather big decision right around the time of my presentation by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). I dug back into a NY Times article in March when the issue first came up in this session of Congress:
“The Republican commissioners interviewed agreed that it would be difficult to place a value on most political activity conducted online, and thus to determine whether it fell under the campaign contribution limits. “If you have a very successful blogger who attracts a lot of attention based on the commentary he or she is undertaking, and maybe that activity is coordinated with a candidate, what is the value of that?” said Michael E. Toner, the third Republican member of the commission.”
The whole issue began with the BCRA – Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act 0f 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law (image from senate.gov). In this act, public communications was defined as “any communication by means of television (including cable and satellite), radio, newspaper, magazine, billboard, mass mailing, telephone bank or any other form of general public political advertising. Communications over the Internet are not included in the definition of public communication.” What came quickly into question, in the blooming world of the Web, is whether internet communications are excluded from that definition; if internet communications aren’t considered public communications, they were subsequently exempt from regulation. However, two little loopholes emerged: (1) someone getting paid to advertise for a particular cause/candidate through the internet communication and (2) internet communications without disclaimers (political spam versus online discussion communities).
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s decision last year called for the rollback of the BCRA rules immunizing the Internet from campaign finance laws:
“But Kollar-Kotelly disagreed. “To permit an entire class of political communications to be completely unregulated irrespective of the level of coordination between the communication’s publisher and a political party or federal candidate, would permit an evasion of campaign finance laws,” she wrote, and ordered the FEC to revise its rules.”
– CNet News.com 02/15/05
Bloggers have been avidly chatting about it ever since. On March 24th, a CNet article announced FEC start of the process of re-evaluating the definition of public communications, with a keen ear to these voices and the more formal voices like Sen. Reid, who introduced legislation to overturn Fed Judge decision to consider internet communications as “public communications” and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), from the House Judiciary Committee, who wrote an interesting op ed article that supported blogging as free speech.
In the end, most people got what they wanted; internet communications were not considered public communications, but there were some provisions to keep the blogosphere from becoming a new free media for paid politicking. Here’s the text of a great sidebar on a CNet News.com article summing up new FEC rules:
• “Paid political advertising appearing on someone else’s Web site would have to be reported, regardless of how little or how much it costs. But that responsibility would lie with the candidate, political party or committee backing the ad–not a Web site accepting the ads.
• All ads that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate or solicit donations would have to carry disclaimers.
• Bloggers and other individual commentators wouldn’t have to disclose payments received from candidates, political parties or campaign committees–but those groups would have to report payments to bloggers.
• No one except registered political committees would be required to put disclaimers on political e-mailings or Web sites. The e-mail requirement would kick in only if the committee sent out more than 500 substantially similar unsolicited messages at a time.
• The media exemption enjoyed by traditional news outlets would be extended to “any Internet or electronic publication,” which could include everything from online presences of major media companies to individual bloggers.“
(FEC 2 page summary (03/27/06)FEC Full Filing and Washington Post article on FEC vote)
Why is all the elections stuff interesting to a citizen journalist, you ask? I think an article in High Tech Magazine said it best:
“But a growing number of bloggers are incorporating to gain protection from civil suits, he said, which means they could be prohibited from political activities unless they qualify as legitimate journalists. A section of current law known as the “media exemption” says campaign-related expenditures aren’t regulated if they’re made by certain types of journalistic outlets. But the definition is relatively narrow and covers only a “broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication”–it does not specifically include Web sites.”
As of now, there’s still some current House & Senate bills still floating around as of March 9, as well as a bill from the Center for Democracy & Technology, Internet Free Speech Protection Act of 2005 (03/02/06).
In the end, I have to admit I’m on the fence about the potential of the impact of citizen journalism (using new web tools) on mainstream media, but here’s some further reading I’m planning to do around this topic:
Public Journalism (by professional journalists, with civic ideal in mind)
Jay Rosen – What Are Journalists?
Robert Jenson – Writing Dissent
Jay Rosen, Davis Merritt, Lisa Austin – Public Journalism: Theory & Practice
Nerone – Last Rights; Revisiting the Four Theories of the Press (last chapter: The Changing Information Environment)
New Media & Web 2.0
Lev Manovich – The Language of New Media
Oh and here’s some of my citizen journalism top bookmarks:
Dan Gillmor’s blog | Bayosphere
Beyond Broadcast Conference at Harvard’s Berkman Center (May 12-13)
Hypergene MediaBlog » Interview with Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC Global News Division
All about Participatory Journalism – how audiences are changing the future of news and information.
We Media
We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information.
BBC Article on Citizen Journalism
Broadcasters around the world are assessing the impact citizen journalism could have on their operations.
cybersoc.com: guest blogger Richard Sambrook: citizen journalism
Open Source
Center fo Social Media: Many to Many; Public Media and the Blogosphere (Video from Felicia S.)
NPR : Regulation Considered for Political Campaigning on Internet
Congress and the Federal Election Commission are considering new regulations to govern campaigning on the Internet. Some say the Internet is the last bastion of free speech and unfettered democracy in political fundraising. Others says it’s only a matter of time before those blocked from direct involvement in elections set up shop on the Internet.
Federal Election Commission Rulemakings on Internet Comm as Public Comm
This page provides links to documents relating to recent and ongoing FEC rulemakings.
PressThink
Nieman Reports
We the Media
Originally posted by Danielle Martin at April 14, 2006 03:28 PM on http://www.CTCVISTA.org
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