Citizen Journalism: Making the World Aware

 ‘The concept of citizen journalism … is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information."’
(Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism) 

Photo by Roger H. Goun (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sskennel/)

In the age of information, nearly everybody wants to say something - and people are more enabled than ever to record, write and publish their own journalistic pieces for the world to see. When an amateur, or non-professional produces information of journalistic nature, it is sometimes referred to as citizen journalism.

A debate exists among various socialists and academics about whether or not citizen journalism is a good thing for our society and there are some strong arguments to support each viewpoint. 

For one thing, there is the question of trust in the information provided. News from citizen journalists sometimes present opinion as fact. Yet, any individual who boots up a computer can publish an article with the same potential visibility as any large news organization.

We have come to trust the more traditional media sources because they are held accountable for the legitimacy of their information by the public and by law. They check and double-check their facts, confirming their truthfulness before ever publishing an article.

Citizen journalists rarely have their facts checked before publishing, so the validity of their information is often uncertain, and we can’t hold them accountable to the same standard that we have for larger organizations. 

This would be dangerous except that, if something is “important” enough, people instantly start talking about it to each other on social media sites, blogs, forums, chat apps and more and you can be sure there will be somebody among the hundreds or thousands of people who see this information who will go to the effort of checking the facts.  If proof - for or against the facts - is found, links to any related information can then be attached to the original post or article via commenting or “sharing” and disseminated back through the same network from which the information originated.

This same phenomenon is pushing the bigger news organizations to be more responsible than ever with their information. Just as obscure indie journalists are automatically fact-checked, news organizations are also being scrutinized. They must produce rock solid facts to ensure that they are looking out for the interests of their readers. Otherwise, readers will simply go elsewhere for their news.

But, trust isn’t the only factor in the debate. There are other considerations. Citizen journalists are not required to attain any kind of certification. All they need is a computer, a subject and an internet connection to begin reporting. As a result, poor grammar, spelling and structure veritably litter many of the articles we now read. Since we often learn writing styles through reading, this can perpetuate into more unclear and/or inaccurate writing. 

That said, while the above said issue is close to the heart for this author, it must be conceded that the above concern for the quality of grammar is mostly vanity. When faced with the next element of the debate to be discussed, citizen journalism as a political device, grammar is not exactly a priority.

Events are happening in the world that certain governments wouldn’t allow traditional media access to, given the choice. China, North Korea and many other countries around the world have strict rules about what their citizens can publish or read.

The Syrian government is attacking its own people, starving them and shooting unarmed citizens down in the streets and, while the more gruesome clips are not easily available, they do exist. Renegade ‘citizen journalists’ gather footage for the world in an effort to help the Syrian people (“Al Jazeera exclusive: Homs under siege”, Al Jazeera English, YouTube.com, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMAgeCpr8t4) 

We are aware of this information because of people like these who desperately risk everything in order to gather footage, crying out for help. Their offerings attract food contributions and other assistance from outside sympathizers that might otherwise have been in the dark about what is happening to real people in war-torn countries.

‘iReport’ by CNN is an online repository for citizen journalists to submit articles that CNN can republish about subjects that are often truly important from a human perspective. Encouragement from a survivor of extreme bullying (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1047896) and inspiration from a once-bullied teacher (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1048465) are some of the things you might find when CNN requests that their user base submits stories about bullying. 

Early printing press machine, one of the first
technologies used for citizen journalism purposesImage provided by Wikimedia
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/
Handtiegelpresse_von_1811.jpg)

While citizen written articles are often not as high quality as we would expect from those of us with higher education, they give us far more access to information than we once would have had. As more people begin to use social media tools to publish and read their news, larger organizations are pushed to be more responsible and society can begin to hold even entire countries accountable for their actions.  

So, on the whole, this author believes that with citizen journalism the positive outcomes outweigh the relatively minor losses. Of course, this is opinion, so feel free to fact check if you feel so inclined.