"Clay Shirky comes to mind as a
prominent figure on the topic of citizen journalism. In June of 2009,
Shirky was the speaker at a TED talk focusing on the importance of
social media. In the talk, he cites an interesting example of citizen
journalism. He mentions the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
as an example of citizens breaking the story of the earthquake before
any news organization. Essentially, people were reporting the quake
as it was happening through online source like Twitter. The aftermath
of the earthquake revealed an investiagtion on corruption regarding
schools not being built to standards , which caused the deaths of
many children. Eventually, the Chinese government shut the public
off, and attempted to stop it's citizens from reporting altogether.
So why is this story important? For much the same reason Shirky cites
this story, I am citing this example as citizen journalism creating a
situation which may have otherwise never occured. This situation,
overall, acting as a positive social movement, empowering the people
involved. Before social media existed, this story could have never
taken place. Shirky himself mentions that the last time China had
such a large earthquake they were reluctant to even admit it
happened. The very existence of social media allowed for people to
take a stand against that kind of thinking, and exposed a whole lot
more than the Chinese government may have wanted. A similar situation
took place during the “Arab Spring”. An article by David Batty,
writer for The Guardian, discusses the extensive use of camera phones
during the Arab Srping. People were on the streets capturing the
events as they were occuring, and uploading them online. This also
helped to spread awareness and allow people from the outside to look
in and see what was really going on. As a result, there has been a
shift in the news media industry. According to the Batty article,
“The proliferation and growing quality of citizen media has led
some mainstream broadcasters to cut professional photojournalists.
CNN is laying off nearly a dozen photojournalists because of the
growing use of social media, including iReport, its own citizen
photojournalism service.”(Batty P1) Citizen journalism has
distinguished itself enough to be noticed by a news giant like CNN.
Thus, citizens are being trusted more and more with the information
they are presenting as news. But what about when citizens don't
present proper news?
The China earthquake
and the Arab Srping example represent a positive motion, what about
the negative aspect of citizen journalism? Tim Philips, writer for
research-live.com, states in an article on citizen journalism, “We
no longer have any idea who is shaping the news
at any level, and as citizens we can never know enough to separate
good research from carefully-disguised bias when we watch or read the
news. “(Philips p1) The underlying problem is that, essentially,
news is coming from everywhere. Thus, it becomes harder and harder to
distinguish between what is factually plausible and what is downright
biased. This means anyone can come up with a story, send it out into
the world, and have that story be viewed objectively by a wide
audience who will then further spread that story on. You can look at
this concept as being dangerous, as it gives individuals the power to
send any message they want, and have it be heard. What's dangerous
about this is the notion of spreading bias or untruths.
Take for example the
false reports of the late Steve Jobs' death. One particular instance
in the fall of 2008 had reports of Jobs' being rushed to the hospital
from a sudden heart attack. As a result, stock prices for the company
fell. While the reports were completely fabricated, and the company's
stock restablized, the power the false story had was enough to drop
the stock price in the fisrt place. Jeff Jarvis, writer for
BuzzMachine, wrote this about the Jobs incident,
“It may be a mistake
for news organizations to keep begging people to send them
stuff...But the better structure may be for journalists to curate
the best of what is out on the web. Rather than playing wack-a-mole
on the occasional mistake/rumor/lie sent it, editors would better
serve if they found the best content anywhere, not just among that
which was sent to them.”(Jarvis P1)
Jarvis here presents a
potential solution for the flow of news on the web. When citizens
break news, it comes from all directions, and takes all shapes and
forms. The problem is that it's never curated, thus stories like the
Jobs' incident gain traction to the point where Apple has to
officially state that Jobs is ok. The web is an open forum, and if
someone wants a story to exist, it will. The very nature of social
media as well as online news organizations allows for citizen
journalism to flourish. But how does this affect the individual?"
The full PDF for the essay: Here
The video: Here
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