Citizen Journalism:

Friend or Foe?

Technological advances and primarily the internet have created many new challenges and opportunities for journalism and the world of the traditional media. The notion of online journalism changes both how the consumer engages with information provided by media organisations and how journalists themselves go about constructing and delivering this information. The difference between the traditional, physical newspaper and the online version can be as great or small as the producer wishes but the new way is here and consumers, used to all the facets of an online world, are turning more to those who embrace the medium rather than shun it.

Among all the new challenges facing journalists in this online world one of the most troubling, for many journalists, is the idea of citizen or participatory journalism. The idea that an amateur can set up a blog or be given space by a media organisation and automatically create news is something which challenges the basic foundation of journalism. For many journalists, this negates their years of training and hard work which they undertook in order to be called a journalist and is an affront to the standards they strive to meet in their everyday work.

This paper will discuss the notion of citizen journalism, the pros and the cons and will also look at some of the differing kinds of participatory journalisms available to aspiring amateurs on the internet. The paper will then investigate some of the online areas where people are encouraged to write as a citizen journalist and the notion of crowd sourcing. The paper will conclude with a look at the way ‘Big Media’ organisations are incorporating participatory journalism into their online product and possible reasons behind this.

Citizen journalism or participatory journalism is a phenomenon which has taken hold as the Internet has grown. This type of journalism is expressed in everything from ‘blogs’ to websites where content is user-generated to the websites of media organisations who invite users to submit material and engage with them. The depth and breadth of outlets for this type of journalism is increasing all the time and, like traditoinal journalism, efforts to impose a definition upon the form proves considerably difficult. Bowman and Willis, however, define citizen journalism as:

“ The act of a citizen or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (2003: 9).

This is a wide-ranging definition and encompasses much responsible online writing. Theoretically anyone maintaining an online blog can claim to be a citizen journalist. Regardless of the standards employed by this blog, it can reasonably claim to be citizen journalism under the criteria described in Bowman and Willis’s definition. This idea of a journalism unfettered by the constraints of traditional media i.e. hierarchical organisation, commercial viability and particular news agendas to name but a few, is an intensely liberating notion which, according to Donald Matheson, is also a site “where outmoded and unsatisfactory news reporting traditions might be revised and renewed” (443).

This shows one of the positive sides of citizen journalism and also highlights the possibiblities that the internet and online media oppen up. In a recent issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Dustin Roasa tells of an interesting development during the military coup in Thailand in 2006. With the state-run media intent on putting a positive spin on all news coming out of the country, attention focused on the various blogs which were offering unfiltered, ‘un-spun’ versions of the news. He says that “in many countries around the world, where the press is under governement control, corrupt, or simply incompetent, citizen journalists may be the only source of information that is reasonably credible” (Roasa 2008).

In cases such as this, participatory journalism fills a vacumn created by the inacction, ineptness or unethical approach taken by traditional media. There are many examples and they are becoming much more frequent. Jane B. Singer identifies the well-publicised case of CBS news anchor, Dan Rather in her essay, ‘Bloggers and other “participatory journalists”’. She says:

“After a rather stunning series of missteps at CBS News in fall 2004 surrounding the network’s flawed reporting on President George W. Bush’s disputed Air National Guard service as a young man, bloggers took the lead in challenging the leaked memosat the heart of the story. Although much of the “information” flying around the internet was untrue, the buzz it caused was real enough. The mainstream media quickly picked up the story, CBS launched and internal investigation, and, within weeks, the veteran journalist and long-time anchor announced his resignation” (134).

An example such as this shows both the power that citizen journalists have and the potential good it can be used for. Steve Outing echoes this view when he says that “journalists as members of the ‘Fourth Estate’ have long held power. Now bloggers are positioned to share some of that” (qtd. In Singer 133). While this is clearly a good use of their power and emphasises their role as watchdogs of the watchdogs (Singer 2007) it also answers the question of why, in societies where there exists a free and active traditional media, there is a need for citizen journalism. There is a danger here though of multiplication. If, at one stage the media were considered responsible enough to be the watchdogs of government and to raise societal concerns when needed, where does one draw the line? Will there soon be bloggers watching bloggers? Yet another, updated version of the ‘Fourth Estate’? Singer attempts to tackle this issue by implying that there exists an online group or fraternity which acts to filter out inaccuracies and mis-information:

“They [blogs] offer a space for all comers to post what they know or think, to receive a hearing, and to have their ideas publicly debated, modified, expanded, or refuted. Truth for the blogger is created collectively rather than hierarchically. Information is not vetted before its dissemination but instead through the process of disseminating multiple views, with truth, in the blogger’s view, as the end result of the discussion” (121)

While this is a noble outlook it is also presumptuous and considering the nature of the Internet, the fact that it can be anonymous and writing whatever one wishes can often be consequence free, this is not always the end result. In fact there is often an aversion to this kind of public, collective debate. Martin King, the editor of the Independent .co.uk describes message board users as:

“A bunch of bigots who were shouting from one side of the room to the other and back again without even bothering to listen to what the otehr side of the room were saying. If someone did try to put a reasonable, balanced view it was an exception” (qtd. In Thurman 2008).

There is also another issue at stake here. Just because someone starts a blog or attempts some form of participatory journalism, it does not mean that they are automatically admitted into this self-appraising society which combines their efforts to better the world. This idea of a self-regulating mass of citizen journalists that Singer purports is, in fact, dangerously close to the idea of journalism itself. Terry Flew, in an article in Intermedia, says that “…claims to the uniqueness of journalism as a profession have been in part ideological (i.e. the question of who is a journalist is determined by journalist themselves as a self-selecting culture and peer group)…” (Flew 2007). This is strikingly similar to Singers notion of the citizen journalist peer group.

It does, however, finally raise the question of the differences between a journalist and a citizen journalist. Are they not both citizens? In the earlier example of the use of blogs during the coup in Thailand, Roasa says about a particular blogger “what makes her a [citizen] journalist as opposed to simply an activist, is her commitment to facts and balance” (Roasa 2007). Does this not make her simply a journalist? What are the criteria separating the two? According to the faculty of Information and Media studies of the University of Western Ontario, journalism is:

“…the timely reporting of events at the local, provincial, national and international levels. Reporting involves the gathering of information through interviewing and research, the results of which are turned into a fair and balanced story for publication or for television or radio broadcast.”(par.1)

This reads quite similarly to the above definition of citizen journalism. So where does one draw the line between the two? Is it the area of publication? Just because one publishes on the Internet does not mean that that person is a citizen journalist, or any kind of journalist worth mentioning. But what if a journalist also maintains a blog? Is he or she both or just one? Coming back to Singer, she talks at one stage about “bloggers writing for a public” (126) but are bloggers not the public? And how, with the magnitude of the Internet, can one be guaranteed that their blog is reaching any audience at all? There is a freedom with writing online when one is unsure whether anyone is reading at all. On the other hand, writing for an existing publication with an established readership and circulation means one is obliged to consider the audience when writing in an effort to not hinder the viability of the publication.

Considering this further; the area of publication, what about a citizen journalist publishing on the growing number of online spaces allocated by ‘Big media’ groups such as CNN, Fox, and the Guardian in Britain. Are they still citizen journalists? The definitions become woolly and frayed when one considers the actual differences between the two. If the idea of citizen journalism and participatory journalism is to offer a viable alternative to a stale traditional media then is the incorporation of this new, potentially radical medium into corporations such as CNN, Sky and others simply an attempt to nullify the threat? The fact that CNN’s iReport is so popular does more to integrate the revolutionary aspect of citizen journalism into mainstream media than to admit its prevalence and popularity.

This idea of participatory journalism and online technologies being a way to challenge the mainstream media and forge a new relationship between consumers and the news they consume is shared by Dan Gilmor who argues that “Big media… treated the news as a lecture while web 2.0 technologies move journalism towards a conversation or seminar” (Gilmor 2007). This, however, raises the issue of credibility. The traditional media, on one level, has the respect, trust and support of the public and has earned this over years of service. If a journalist starts working and begins writing online he or she has, essentially, no reputation to speak of whereas if he or she is employed by an exisiting organisation then he or she can enjoy the reputation of that publication. Singer maintains that, though reputation and credibility are hard to earn, “blogs are characterised by their extensive use of links to documents, sources, news articles, and other sorts of evidence that bloggers use to buttress their own views and, ultimately, to establish their own authority” (123).

Aside from enterprising individuals who start their own blogs, there are many websites which have been created in order to offer people the chance to become citizen journalists. These can counter the credibility issues discussed above as they offer a moderated and structured version of the ‘weblog’. These websites offer a genuine alternative to the type’s of participatory journalism offered by existing media organisations, such as CNN’s iReport. These websites vary in degrees of popularity, professionalism and, ultimately, success.

Helium.com is a website which uses user-generated content. It originally offered people the opportunity to write on a selected topic (not necessarily journalism) and then these articles were reviewed by other users. The articles which received the most votes were moved towards the top of the list and seeing as you couldn’t vote on your own article, this ensured the kind of collective ‘betterment’ that Singer talks about. Recently, helium have joined with organisations such as the Knight Center for Media and the Pulitzer Center to offer users a chance to become citizen journalists. They suggest topics on which people can submit articles and, through the method of peer review, declare an article to be the ‘winner’ after a certain period of time. They also offer writers on the website who have attained five stars (again, through this process of peer review) the chance to join the national press club. As this is an American website, its citizen journalism competitions have strong American influences. Most of the titles offered surround American policy.

NowPublic.com is a website which encourages users to upload their own stories and, while it doesn’t use a process of peer review as Helium does, it seems that quality rises to the top. The website was voted by Time Magazine as on of the top fifty websites in 2007 and they said that “…Nowhere are the merits of citizen journalism more apparent than at NowPublic” (Time 2007) . On their ‘front page’ they feature the top five “crowd powered” stories of the past eight hours. The content itself, as one might imagine, is concerned with many online issues while also focusing on many human interest issues such as natural disasters and public demonstrations. The website itself declares that it has:

“Become one of the fastest growing news organizations with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries. During Hurricane Katrina, NowPublic had more reporters in the affected area than most news organizations have on their entire staff.”(par.2)

The merits of “crowd sourcing” in times of significant events are something which was discussed earlier in light of the coup in Thailand but it also highlights the issue of speed. An earthquake which hit China on the 20th of March of this year was first felt in the USA and was first reported on a social networking site called Twitter.com. It then began appearing on various blogs and citizen journalism sites around the world, one of which was NowPublic. It was over an hour before the news broke on CNN, AP or any of the other major news wires. This ability for ordinary people, citizen journalists, to report something which the traditional media either doesn’t know about or deems insignificant is one of the strengths of participatory journalism.

Yet another website devoted to giving the citizens a chance to be journalists is a French example. Citizenside.com aims to:

“create the world’s largest amateur and/or independent reporters community with a commercial goal, thanks to an easy to use and transparent system, and a commission rate much more important than traditional agencies”(par.1).

This is an interesting website in that it expresses a “commercial goal”. Does this undermine the notion of citizen journalism? If one receives financial remuneration does it negate the amateur nature of participatory journalism? Unfortunately, for all its aims, this website is not a good example of citizen powered journalism. The frequency of updates is erratic and the content is overwhelmingly French based. It is also fairly transparent with regard to its members as the stories are predominantly based around student demonstrations and other French school issues. Another problem with the website is that it appears to be written by non-native English speakers hence the language is often stilted and awkward or, in some cases, grammatically incorrect.

Citizenside.com does not appear to be overly concerned by the quality of its articles as its goal is to make money and they do this through selling ‘user-uploaded’ photographs and giving those who upload than a percentage of the profit. In this light, the website is more a crowd powered photo agency which does citizen journalism on the side than an actual participatory journalism site.

A final, interesting example is a website called Newassignment.net. This website is not so much a citizen journalism site as an online experiment. Its creator, Jay Rosen, launched the site in the hope that it would:

“Spark innovation in “open platform” journalism, distributed reporting and what’s now called crowd sourcing. These are forms made possible by the Web and by the falling costs for large numbers of people to locate each other, share information, and collaborate across distance”(par.3)

The website maintains collaborative experiments with online publications such as Wired.com, The Huffington Post and beatblogging.org. These experiments test the merits of citizen journalism through established online publishers. Beatblogging is an interesting notion and the latest of these experiments. Rosen managed to get twelve online publishers, from small daily newspapers in the United States to more well-know media outlets such as ESPN.com, to take on a citizen journalist in an effort to test the notion of beatblogging. Beatblogging is, using social networking sites, assimilating a group of contacts with expertise, local knowledge or both on a particular beat. Through these contacts the citizen journalist aggregates public knowledge on a topic in order to inform their reporting. While this is different to other participatory journalisms discussed thus far, it highlights again the potential and possibilities the Internet opens up for journalists, citizen or otherwise.

It is clear that, like everything online, there is both good and bad examples of participatory journalism. There are traditional journalists who are dead set against it while others are encouraged by the opportunities it creates. The idea that a citizen can, with an internet connection and an inquisitive (or malicious) mind, be a journalist is one which is disconcerting. But, as we have seen, there are many examples where it works, where it adds to social discourse. Whether it be investigating malpractice in the traditional media or reporting an event in the sort of time frame which makes traditional media redundant, there is obviously a space, a market for citizen journalism.

Whether or not it threatens the livelihoods of hard-working journalists who are not publishing online is something which, over time, will become irrelevant as we see the move towards ubiquitous computing. In time, all journalism will probably be online journalism. In which case, how then do we differentiate between the citizen journalists and the plain, old journalists? An interesting issue which was briefly mentioned during this paper is the one of the so called ‘Big Media’ providing spaces for citizen journalists on their websites. I mentioned that I thought that this was an effort to incorporate the radical into the mainstream in order to nullify the threat posed.

In 1917, French artist Marcel Duchamp took a white urinal, turned it upside down, signed it ‘R. Mutt’ and called it ‘The Fountain’. This was radical at the time and was an attempt by Duchamp to underline the futility of art appreciation and an attack on the pompous art community of the day. His affront to art, however, was declared by the critics he despised to be a masterpiece of ‘ready-made’ art and an expression of modernism. This has been a similar trend in the art world with the many radical movements which have come and gone. Futurism, dadaism, minimalism and expressionism to name but a few. These were all expressions of their time but also a reaction to the prevailing art world in each case. The art-world, however, embraced each of these movements in an effort to minimalise their radical nature. If something is welcomed into a prevailing system then it can’t be seen as overtly radical.

This is what appears to be happening with participatory journalism. The spaces provided by organisations such as CNN and Sky News are more to let people think they are doing something rather than these organisations using the materials submitted. If they embrace this form of journalism then it can’t grow on the periphery until it has reached a size and attracted an audience which is capable of damaging profit margins and product viability.

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Gilmor, Dan. We the Media: Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people. California: Sebastopol, 2006.

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