From industrial media to citizen journalists...

When I think of news many thoughts and words go through my head...truth, deception, fabrication, importance, relevance, stupidity, agenda, point of view, arrogance and I guess limited choice. When we are presented with news as it was initially intended by the industry, one to many and to a mass audience, we have only two choices. We either take in what they have to say or we switch off and ignore it. As A Bruns (2009) recognised in his article there has been a shift from the notion of gatekeeper to that of gatewatcher. In the past the flow of news and what is actually considered news content has been at the hands of the industry, in which they have acted as gatekeepers. Now the introduction of the internet, mobile technology, blogs and twitter etc has allowed users to generate and distribute content to the world. Thus, they are able to create their own news, which is freely available to anyone who wishes to view or use it. As individuals we now have a lot more choice and freedom in which news we want, the agenda it has and how we wish to absorb it. We are the gatewatchers. Better yet this allows us to cross check and reference with a ridiculously large number of sources allowing for a more succinct analysis, in which to determine truth, significance and relevance.

On the topic of citizen journalism I was browsing through the internet trying to find further information. I came across a post which was created by just that, a citizen journalist. His name is Michael and he is a computer science and maths graduate from England. Michael had this very interesting point to say in his post titled Crowded Journalism:

The Internet isn't just a new medium for delivering the same old news. Citizen journalism brings (alongside a lot of noise) important reports faster and closer than any professional correspondent can get. News isn't delivered, it flows. Stories can't be controlled, structured or segregated. They have to be curated, the important content mined from the ceaseless torrent of the world's fractured perspectives.


This is exactly what we talked about in our tutorial discussion and there are two very interesting points that he makes. The first is that citizen journalism creates a lot of noise. This of course links back to a previous week of study on mass amateurization, whereby there is such an abundance of information and so many sources that there is indeed a lot of useless crap out there. As a result it is up to us as individuals to sift through the noise and find the news/information we need. Now some would say this is a huge disadvantage, as it is time consuming and can be arduous. However, it allows for a number of advantages such as allowing for a larger scope of information and a varied array of viewpoints, opinions and analysis on a topic/issue. 


The second point that Michael makes is that news is continuous, uncontrolled and unstructured. In the past industrial news outlets have been able to manipulate and change news in order to make it more favourable in terms of a story. In fact some countries are doing the same in the form of censorship to try and control what news is viewed by it's public and how it is viewed. New media and technology has given rise to the ability of users to turn information into news much quicker than news outlets themselves. An incident can happen at 11pm and a photo taken at 11:01 through a mobile phone. This picture can be uploaded to facebook, twitter etc in a matter of seconds and in a matter of minutes a huge amount of people know what has occurred, when and where. In the past it may have taken hours or even days for a story to circulate with the amount of speed and ferocity that news can travel today.


On a side note...Don't you find it interesting when typical news outlets use twitter, facebook and youtube for news stories, photos and quotations??


Sources: 
Bruns, A. (2009) 'News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism' 
URL: http://produsage.org/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf