Citizen journalism is a relatively new movement in journalism that corresponds with the age of communication and technology that inhabits people’s worlds today.
Citizen journalism is a type of journalism practiced by everyday people. Citizens, some without proper journalism training, are using this modern technology to publish their journalistic work.
It can happen spontaneously or deliberately. Citizen journalists can use their cellphone to capture newsworthy events they are involved in or watching or they can can go and cover something in their community as a planned activity.
This vision is heavily technology-based and the reason is to push it as a form for the Internet. This is also a political agenda. Many newspapers used correspondents in traditional media. The citizen journalism movement wants to avoid the comparison to make it look like they are doing something innovative.
Columbia Journalism Professor Jay Rosen describes citizen journalists as people who were formerly the audience.
According to the We Media report written by Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman, participatory journalism is defined as “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.”
What are the Tools of Citizen Journalism?
The primary tools used in citizen journalism for capturing or documenting the news are a cell phone, digital camera, video camera and a blog. There are many examples of text, too.
A cell phone contains many crucial parts. It can be used to receive and send calls about spot news stories. Mostly all cell phones today have built-in cameras, which are vital to recording an event. There are also cell phones that give you the option of recording sound. This can be extremely helpful for on-location interviews, recording thoughts or an important fact you wanted to capture.
The digital camera is one of the greatest technological advancements in recent times. Forget the slow process of film; if a person takes a picture of something and wishes to post it on the web, it does not take more than a few minutes because of software designed to upload photos.
Like film, digital pictures are just as good or arguably better. Transferring pictures to a computer takes less time than buying a coffee. There are also digital cameras with HD video recording capabilities.
Video cameras are smaller than ever before, making them easy to transport. Many news websites like CNN have citizen-reporting video footage sections. Video cameras have different formats to record with, such as direct to DVD.
Many, if not all, video cameras are digital today. These types of cameras are becoming less expensive, and are easy to use when transferring video to computer. The crudeness of the video is also part of citizen journalism; this is not broadcast quality every time.
Citizen Journalism Tools Not Mandatory
They just make reporting a lot easier and will help your audience understand the message you are trying to convey. However, with these tools, a citizen has the opportunity to capture breaking news.
Weblogs are a recent tool of participatory journalism taking form. Weblogs are web pages created using simple software. Dan Gillmor, author of the 2004 book We the Media, says the content and purpose of weblogs vary.
“They range from personal diary to journalistic community news to collaborative discussion groups in a corporate setting,” he writes.
An example of weblog use would be a citizen blogging about a city council meeting he or she attended.
In the We Media report, Bowman and Willis describe weblogs as “frequently updated online journals, with reverse-chronological entries and numerous links, that provide up-to-the-minute takes on the writer's life, the news, or on a specific subject of interest.”
A problem with these blogs is that they are full of opinionated commentary but they can be “personally revealing or straightforward and fairly objective.”
When considering using these tools, it is important to remember the cost. Depending on the citizen’s intent, it can be cheap or very expensive. Not every citizen journalist will use an iPhone or the latest video camera for their reporting.
Future of Citizen Journalism
In an era when anyone can be a reporter or commentator on the Web, “you move to a two-way journalism,” says John Seely Brown, chief scientist of Xerox Corp, in the We Media report.
“The journalist becomes a forum leader or a mediator, rather than a teacher or lecturer. The audience transforms from being a consumer to a pro-sumer, which is a mesh of consumer and producer.”
Even though recognition of this new form of journalism is taking place, there is still a long way to go, Gillmor says.
“We need much more experimentation in journalism and community information projects. The business models are, at best, uncertain — and some notable failures are discouraging. Dealing with the issues of trust, credibility and ethics is essential; as are more tools and training, including a dramatically updated notion of media literacy.”
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