Friday, March 30, 2007

QotW9: Citizen Journalists = HEROES!


Knowledge is the only way to explore the world without having to go to every places in it. That is the reason why news exists, to give people information of what is actually happening within their own societies and even across the countries.

But after awhile, people get bored with the top-down model of information sharing through the news, where they are always being told, and not getting the chance of sharing information to others. They started to realize that they need conversation more than pronouncement given by the news (Gillmor, 2004). Moreover, people think that the media has not distributes full-transparent-news to people. Therefore, people want to contribute and participate in giving news which is not covered yet by the traditional media – the top-down information distribution.

The Birth of Citizen Journalism

In the late 90s, the Internet fulfilled people's needs by giving the easiness of contributing news to others. As the audience, citizens start to be actively participate in the creation and dissemination of news, with or without the help of mainstream news media. Therefore, the citizen journalism has born into the world of news sharing. Citizen journalism is described as the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information ("Citizen Journalism", 2007). By engaging in citizen journalism, ordinary people, just like us, can be heroes by reporting news which has not been captured by the “real” journalists. The good thing about citizen journalism is that we are not limited by the newsroom horizon. Therefore, news reporters are everywhere in the society.

The advance of technology has supported citizen journalism, especially in the last two years. Citizens are now equipped with easy-to-use Web publishing tools, always on connections (wireless connections), and increasingly powerful digital and mobile devices. These things allow citizens as grassroots reporter to capture moments not only in-text, but with photos, audio-video, commentary and analysis, fact checking and watchdogging, and filtering and editing the ever-growing mass of information online (Bowman, 2005).

Pecquerie (2005) mentioned four categories of citizen journalism, such as:
- The citizen journalist who owns a digital camera or a camera phone and sends shootings to a news organisation during a major event (tsunami, London bombing…) or a local car accident
- The citizen journalist who wants to cover its local or virtual community and produce targeted content
- The citizen journalist who is a militant and campaigns for political reasons. How Eason Jordan was fired from CNN by infuriated bloggers in January 2005, was a good example of biased citizen journalism
- The citizen journalist who is eager to participate to a « conversation » with professional journalists and bloggers. « News is just the beginning » says Jeff Jarvis and, in some cases, it is true.

However, by the existence of these four categories, traditional news media have to deal with these new citizen journalists. Therefore, they use citizen journalists to gain information that they could not capture, and edit the information before it appears in the news column.
Pecquerie (2005) argued that by letting traditional news media edited the news, it means that citizen journalism is only part of the news reporting, but the true essence of citizen journalism is dead.

What about STOMP?

I explored www.stomp.sg yesterday, and I really think that this is the forum where people can talk about anything, from news to fun stuff. I don't see much politics talk in the forum, because I think that is quite a vulnerable topic to be talked about. But other than that, I like the truth that stomp.sg is a free-editing forum, so people can share their true thoughts. I found an interesting forum called “Camwhores”. This is the forum where people can post their photo snap (panveillance, i might say) and share funny and interesting story of the pictures. Other interesting forum that makes stomp.sg different from other forums are the forum where people can make confessions. In the past, who on earth will make a confession through a media where millions of people can actually read it? But on stomp.sg, people really “confess” their feelings through the forum. Two thumbs up for making people speak more!

Another thing is that stomp.sg is designed perfectly in “Singapore manner”. We can barely see that singlish is everywhere on the website. It's great that they make it so local, that every Singaporean would feel “at home” when they visit this website. Despite the fact that stomp.sg use singlish, you might want to explore the website more to find that “Speak Good English Movement” is on the list of “Friends of STOMP”. What do you think?

References
Bowman, S., Willis, C. (2005). Nieman Reports: The Future Is Here, But Do News Media Companies See It?. Retrieved March 29, 2007, from Hypergene Media Blog Web site: http://www.hypergene.net/blog/comments.php?id=327_0_1_0_C

“Citizen Journalism” (March 28, 2006) From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Retrieved March 28, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Gillmor, D. “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People” (July, 2004). Retrieved March 28, 2007 from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tip

Pecquerie, B. (2005). From citizen journalism myth to citizen journalism realities. Retrieved March 29, 2007, from The Editors Weblog Web site: http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2005/12/from_citizen_journalism_myth_to_citizen.php

STOMP (2006) From Singapore Press Holdings, Retrieved March 28, 2007 from
http://www.stomp.com.sg/

No comments: