For my semester project, I want to focus on a couple of topics that have been discussed in class and in the texts. Those being, citizen journalism and it’s relationship to social media. My interest stems from whether or not citizen journalism, as a whole, is inherently good or bad. The other aspect is the social media side of things. I want to explore how, why, and what social media does to encourage both good and bad types of citizen journalists. The core of my research will be just how important citizen journalism can be vs. how unimportant it can be, and the effect social media has on that. What kinds of stories are people putting out there? How dedicate is the public? What are people more interested in seeing, a serious news story, or a mindless bit of entertainment? How do ethics play a role in citizen journalism? these are some of the questions I want to explore. One of the other negative issues is the amateur journalist providing news purposefully biased or with an agenda in mind. There appears to be a trend in groups creating biased news in order to get their story out there. There is a lot of talk referencing these groups as a threat. In terms of a format, I would like to write a research paper, preferably with images exploring the concepts of good and bad citizen journalism. Being that I’m of a video background, I would also like to produce a short film to accompany the paper. My initial thoughts are that the short film will take a more entertaining approach to outlining an issue like bad citizen journalism. The film will most likely be a few minutes long, and act as a visual accompaniment to the paper. Since this class is very journalism focused, I decided to take on the task of a research paper in order to challenge myself. There are a few resources I have been looking at for some ideas and inspiration. Those include:
Citizen Journalism ruins the world (again), Jeff Jarvis:
buzzmachine.com/2008/10/06/citizen-journalism-ruins-the-world-again
Value of citizen journalism, Peter Horrocks:
36 stories that prove citizen journalism matters, Katie Hawkins-Gaar:
www.cnn.com/2013/04/03/opinion/ireport-awards-hawkins-gaar/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Most+Recent%29
http://www.research-live.com/citizen-journalism-isnt-always-a-good-thing/4001064.blog
http://www.research-live.com/citizen-journalism-isnt-always-a-good-thing/4001064.blog
I would recommend reading Clay Shirky's work as he delves in depth into what's the exact meaning of citizen journalism is in regards to mass amateurization. Perhaps his book 'Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations' would be a good source. Using him as a source for your project is imperative to success since he coined the term mass amateurization himself.
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