Through Education People Can Be Transformed in Politicaly Active Citizens

8/17/2019 Through Education People Can Be Transformed in Politicaly Active Citizens

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Through education peoplecan be transformed politicalyactive citizens

Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory","democratic", "guerrilla"or "street journalism" )is the concept ofmembers of the public "playing an active role in the process of

collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news andinformation," according to the seminal 2! report We Media:How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information#uthors $owman and %illis say& "The intent of this participationis to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide'ranging andrelevant information that a democracy reuires"

itizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which are practiced byprofessional journalists, or collaborative journalism, which is

practiced by professional and non'professional journalistsworking together itizen journalism is a speci*c form of citizenmedia as well as user generated content

The idea behind citizen journalism is that people withoutprofessional journalism training can use the tools of moderntechnology and the global distribution of the +nternet to create,augment or fact'check media on their own or in collaborationwith others or e-ample, you might write about a city council

meeting on your blog or in an online forum .r you could fact'check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and pointout factual errors or bias on your blog .r you might snap adigital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town andpost it online .r you might videotape a similar event and post iton a site such as /ouTube

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_Journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_generated_contenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTubehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_Journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_generated_contenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube


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+n What is Participatory Journalism, 0 1 asica classi*esmedia for citizen journalism into the following types&

3 #udience participation (such as user commentsattached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or videofootage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local newswritten by residents of a community)

2 +ndependent news and information %ebsites (onsumer4eports, the 1rudge 4eport)

! ull'5edged participatory news sites (6ow7ublic, Third4eport, .hmy6ews, 1igital0ournalcom, 8round4eport)

9 ollaborative and contributory media sites (:lashdot,;uro: presidential election

Those journalists became part of the public, or civic, journalismmovement, a countermeasure against the eroding trust in the

news media and widespread public disillusionment with politicsand civic aAairs

+nitially, discussions of public journalism focused onpromoting journalism that was "for the people" by changing theway professional reporters did their work #ccording to eonard%itt, however, early public journalism eAorts were, "often part of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camera#Integrationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reportshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reportshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Reporthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NowPublichttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Third_Report&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Third_Report&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OhmyNewshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigitalJournal.comhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GroundReporthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuro5hinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsvinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KenRadiohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1988http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camera#Integrationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reportshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reportshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Reporthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NowPublichttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Third_Report&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Third_Report&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OhmyNewshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigitalJournal.comhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GroundReporthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuro5hinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsvinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KenRadiohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1988


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Bspecial projectsB that were e-pensive, time'consuming andepisodic Too often these projects dealt with an issue and movedon 7rofessional journalists were driving the discussion Theywould say, "etBs do a story on welfare'to'work (or the

environment, or traCc problems, or the economy)," and thenthey would recruit a cross'section of citizens and chronicle theirpoints of view :ince not all reporters and editors bought intothis form of public journalism, and some outright opposed it,reaching out to the people from the newsroom was never aneasy task" $y 2!, in fact, the movement seemed to bepetering out, with the 7ew enter for ivic 0ournalism closing itsdoors

%ith todayDs technology the citizen journalist movement has

found new life as the average person can capture news anddistribute it globally #s /ochai $enkler has noted, Ethe capacityto make meaning F to encode and decode humanly meaningfulstatements F and the capacity to communicate oneDs meaningaround the world, are held by, or readily available to, at leastmany hundreds of millions of users around the globeG 7rofessorHary'4ose 7apandrea, a constitutional law professor at $ostonollege, notes in her article, !iti"en Journalism and the#eporter$s Pri%ilege& that&

IiJn many ways, the de*nition of journalist has now come fullcircle %hen the irst #mendment was adopted, Efreedom of thepressG referred uite literally to the freedom to publish using aprinting press, rather than the freedom of organized entitiesengaged in the publishing business The printers of 3KK< did note-clusively publish newspapersL instead, in order to survive*nancially they dedicated most of their eAorts printing materialsfor paying clients The newspapers and pamphlets of the#merican 4evolutionary era were predominantly partisan and

became even more so through the turn of the century Theyengaged in little newsgathering and instead were predominantlyvehicles for opinion

The passage of the term EjournalismG into common usage inthe 3@!s occurred at roughly the same time that newspapers,using highspeed rotary steam presses, began mass circulation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benklerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benkler


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throughout the eastern >nited :tates >sing the printing press,newspapers could distribute e-act copies to large numbers ofreaders at a low incremental cost +n addition, the rapidlyincreasing demand for advertising for brand' name products

fueled the creation of publications subsidized in large part byadvertising revenue +t was not until the late nineteenth centurythat the concept of the EpressG morphed into a description ofindividuals and companies engaged in an often competitivecommercial media enterprise

+n 3???, activists in :eattle created a response to the %T. meeting being held there These activists understood the onlyway they could get into the corporate media was by blocking thestreets #nd then, the scant = seconds of coverage would show

them being carted oA by the police, but without any conte-t toe-plain why they were protesting They knew they had to createan alternative media model :ince then, the +ndymediamovement has e-perienced e-ponential growth, and +Hs havebeen created in over 2 cities all over the world

:imultaneously, journalism that was "by the people" beganto 5ourish, enabled in part by emerging internet and networkingtechnologies, such as weblogs, chat rooms, message boards,wikis and mobile computing # relatively new development is theuse of convergent polls, allowing editorials and opinions to besubmitted and voted on .vertime, the poll converges on themost broadly accepted editorials and opinions +n :outh ;orea,.hmy6ews became popular and commercially successful withthe motto, "Mvery itizen is a 4eporter" ounded by .h /eon'ho on ebruary 22, 2, it has a staA of some 9'plus traditionalreporters and editors who write about 2N of its content, withthe rest coming from other freelance contributors who aremostly ordinary citizens .hmy6ews now has an estimated


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olumbia 8raduate :chool of 0ournalism for its "#ccident %atch"section, where readers tracked injury accidents at theme parksand shared accident prevention tips

+n ebruary 2!, i$rattleborocom was launched in$rattleboro, Oermont, becoming one of the *rst citizen'writtennews sites in the >nited :tates

+n 29, a citizen journalism website called#ssociatedontentcom was launched The "7eopleBs Hediaompany", as they claim to be, was the *rst company to oAermonetary compensation for their users that publish ualitycontent in the form of articles, videos and audio clips Horerecently, #llvoices launched in 0uly 2@ +ts M., #mra Tareen,

is a Huslim #merican and former venture capitalist who createdthe site after having done charity work in her native 7akistan%hile there she noted there was no central hub on the +nternetwhere anyone, anywhere could witness and then instantly reportfrom their perspective news as it happened #llvoices uses acombination of technology and community to vet stories forauthenticity and popularity The site takes contributions fromaround the world via any +nternet'connected device and itscontributors freuently break stories before the mainstreammedia #llvoices was also the *rst citizen journalism site tomeasure the credibility of contributed reports and their authors,providing readers with a gauge launched in Harch 2? forassessing the accuracy of news accounts

1uring the 29 >: presidential election, both the1emocratic and 4epublican parties issued press credentials tocitizen bloggers covering the convention, marking a new level ofin5uence and credibility for nontraditional journalists :omebloggers also began watchdogging the work of conventional

journalists, monitoring their work for biases and inaccuracy

# recent trend in citizen journalism has been the emergenceof what blogger 0eA 0arvis terms hyperlocal journalism, as onlinenews sites invite contributions from local residents of theirsubscription areas, who often report on topics that conventionalnewspapers tend to ignore "%e are the traditional journalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Graduate_School_of_Journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jarvishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlocal_journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Graduate_School_of_Journalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jarvishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlocal_journalism


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model turned upside down," e-plains Hary ou ulton, thepublisher of the 6orthwest Ooice in $akers*eld, alifornia"+nstead of being the gatekeeper, telling people that whatBsimportant to them BisnBt news,B weBre just opening up the gates

and letting people come on in %e are a better communitynewspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as theeyes and ears for the Ooice, rather than having everything*ltered through the views of a small group of reporters andeditors"

#ccording to 0ay 4osen, citizen journalists "the peopleformerly known as the audience," who "were on the receivingend of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcastingpattern, with high entry fees and a few *rms competing to speak

very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolationfrom one anotherP and who today are not in a situation like thatat all The people formerly known as the audience are simplythe public made realer, less *ctional, more able, lesspredictable"

"1oing citizen journalism right means crafting a crew ofcorrespondents who are typically e-cluded from ormisrepresented by local television news& low'income women,minorities and youth '' the very demographic and lifestylegroups who have little access to the media and that advertisersdonBt want," says 4obert Quesca, an associate professor ofcommunication at Trinity >niversity in :an #ntonio, Te-as 7ublic

0ournalism is now being e-plored via new media such as the useof mobile phones Hobile phones have the potential to transformreporting and places the power of reporting in the hands of thepublic Hobile telephony provides low'cost options for people toset up news operations .ne small organization providing mobilenews and e-ploring public journalism is 0asmine 6ews in :ri

anka

#ccording to Hark 8laser, during ?R33 many eyewitnessaccounts of the terrorist attacks on the %orld Trade enter camefrom citizen journalists +mages and stories from citizen

journalists with close pro-imity to the %orld Trade enter oAeredcontent that played a major role in the story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_newshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_newshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_newshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_newshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka


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+n 29, when the ?3'magnitude underwater earthuakecaused a huge tsunami in $anda #ceh +ndonesia, news footagefrom many people who e-perienced the tsunami was widelybroadcast

1uring the 2? +ranian election protests the microblog service Twitter played an important role, after foreign journalistshad eAectivley been "barred from reporting" .ne of the mostoutstanding contributors from inside +ran has been persiankiwi

itizen journalists may be activists within the communitiesthey write about This has drawn some criticism from traditionalmedia institutions such as The 6ew /ork Times, which haveaccused proponents of public journalism of abandoning the

traditional goal of BobjectivityB Hany traditional journalists viewcitizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that onlytrained journalists can understand the e-actitude and ethicsinvolved in reporting news :ee, eg, 6icholas emann, OincentHaher, and Tom 8rubisich

#n academic paper by Oincent Haher, the head of the 6ewHedia ab at 4hodes >niversity, outlined several weaknesses inthe claims made by citizen journalists, in terms of the "threedeadly MBs", referring to ethics, economics and epistemology

This paper has itself been criticized in the press andblogosphere

#n article in 2


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through $ackfenceBs pages feels like frontier land 'F remote,often lonely, zoned for people but not home to any The siterecently launched for #rlington, Oirginia Qowever, without moresettlers, $ackfence may wind up creating more ghost towns"

1avid :imon, a former $altimore :un reporter andwriterRproducer of the popular TO series, " The %ire," criticizedthe concept of citizen journalismPclaiming that unpaid bloggerswho write as a hobby cannot replace trained, professional,seasoned journalists

"+ am oAended to think that anyone, anywhere believes#merican institutions as insulated, self'preserving and self'

justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures

and chief e-ecutives can be held to gathered facts by amateurspursuing the task without compensation, training or for thatmatter, suCcient standing to make public oCcials even care towhom it is they are lying to," :imon testi*ed before a :enatecommittee in Hay of 2? "+ndeed, the very phrase citizen

journalism strikes my ear as nearly .rwellian # neighbor who isa good listener and cares about people is a good neighborL he isnot in any sense a citizen social worker 0ust as a neighbor with agarden hose and good intentions is not a citizen *re*ghter Tosay so is a heedless insult to trained social workers and*re*ghters"

.thers criticize the formulation of the term "citizen journalism" to describe the concept, as the word "citizen" has aconterminous relation to the nation'state The fact that manymillions of people are considered stateless and often withoutcitizenship (such as refugees or immigrants without papers)limits the concept to those recognised only by governments#dditionally the global nature of many participatory media

initiatives, such as the +ndependent Hedia enter, makes talkingof journalism in relation to a particular nation'state largelyredundant as its production and dissemination do not recognisenational boundaries :ome additional names given to theconcept based on this analysis are grassroots media,people's media, or participatory media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Virginiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Simonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Sunhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wirehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Media_Centerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Virginiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Simonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Sunhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wirehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Media_Center


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• 1an 8illmor, former technology columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, is one of the foremost proponents of citizen journalism, and founded a nonpro*t, the enter for itizenHediato help promote it The anadian $roadcasting

orporationBs rench'language television network has alsoorganized a weekly public aAairs program called, "< sur

Through Education People Can Be Transformed in Politicaly Active Citizens

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