When assigned the topic of citizen journalism, I thought it would be fairly simple to post a story on a public forum. I mean, I write all the time so what’s the challenge? Well, after extensive research into various sites, I found that due to the wide variety of citizen journalism web sites, it’s more complicated than you would probably think to post a legitimate journalistic article on one of these sites.
First of all, after sorting through about 50 potential citizen journalism sites, there were no options that featured local Madison news. There were, however, sites that highlighted news within other states such as Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Virginia and Indiana… but not Wisconsin. This left my option of contributing a local news piece quite irrelevant to many of the other sites.
I also noticed that most of the articles on these sites, such as Helium, Ohmynews International, Backfence, and Online News Squared, were quite similar to blog posts. These sites featured highly editorialized and unprofessional articles that were masked as “news” stories. While they might have seemed legitimate to the average reader, my trained journalistic instinct immediately noticed that they lacked objectivity, factual evidence, valuable research and firsthand quotes. In fact, the only major difference I saw between these “news” articles and blog posts was the decreased number of comments listed under the stories. On blog sites, there seem to be much more discussion generated from posts, while the comments on the citizen journalism sites were minimal. I found that “Post-and-runs,” as Sara coined it, were the norm on citizen journalism, where people routinely post stories but rarely comment or create a discussion within the articles.
After researching several sites, I also noticed that the qualifications and ease of submitting articles varied among the web sites. For example, signing up for Helium was a breeze. It was simple to create an account and you could publish an article fairly quickly. However, this wasn’t the case with other sites. To post stories and participate on Kuro5hin, a technology and culture site, you are required to pay a one-time $5.00 fee. While this upfront fee is out of the norm for most citizen journalism sites, I think it’s a smart idea because it weeds out a lot of people who might not be committed to posting valuable stories. This minimal subscription fee might be enough to ensure a higher quality stories and eliminate people who are not truly passionate or knowledgeable on technology.
While most citizen journalism web sites allow you to automatically upload articles (more or less similar to a blog), other sites, such as MeriNews, first requires the posting to be reviewed and edited before it’s published to the site. Specifically, MeriNews is a forum for citizens to share news and engage in debate focusing on India. I posted a poem on this site that best embodies my experience of traveling throughout India last spring, but I was surprised that it first had to be approved before being posted to the site.
Another interesting site is NewsCloud. This is actually an application through Facebook that allows users to share news stories, videos and blog posts with their Facebook friends. I had never heard of this before and think it is pretty fascinating how even social networking sites are becoming intertwined with citizen journalism. This goes to show how technology is forevermore becoming interconnected.
As I’ve shown, these user-generated sites can be vastly different. Another example of this is on a site called “43 Things.” It also walks to borderline of actually being considered citizen journalism. The primary goal of this site is to simply allow users to share lists of their goals and hopes. For instance, I answered the automated question “What do you want to do with your life?” by entering “travel.” I was then navigated to a page which listed that 7,742 people wanted to travel and featured hundreds of short entries from people who have traveled. These “stories” ranged from topics such as “how to travel” to “what people learned from traveling.” However, the majority of these entries had 0-2 comments, showing the lack of discussion created on these so-called citizen journalism sites.
The overarching theme here is that there is an extremely disparity between what constituted a citizen journalism web site. Some sites accept any form of user-generated content, while others charge a fee or must first approve the stories posted to the site. There is also a wide variety in the journalistic quality of these articles. While some stories I found actually made valid arguments with solid reasoning, these were few in far between the posts that more resembled blog. Finally, I recognized that citizen journalism sites generate a surprisingly small amount of discussion among users compared to blogs. Despite these unpopular characteristics, I still believe citizen journalism is extremely important within our increasingly democratic society. While it still has some kinks, I believe citizen journalism will become more popular and continue to grow in the future.
I was extremely surprised by the fact that some citizen journalism sites required a fee to contribute. I feel that this fee entirely defeats the purpose--no longer is the site a platform for free and democratic thought, but a place where only those who wish to pay can be heard. While I realize $5.00 isn't much, the concept upset me. Along the same lines, I found it incredibly strange that some sites required a post to go through an editor before being displayed on the site. While this makes sense--an editor can look things over to make sure the material isn't extremely offensive, etc.--it isn't quite a platform for people to post whatever they like. There is a human being serving as a filter. This will naturally create biases in the coverage that is displayed on the various sites. Who is the "editor" to say what is appropriate/good writing/etc.? I think citizen journalism sites provide that everyday person with an fabulous opportunity to vocalize their opinions, however the sites are rather pointless if no one is reading/commenting. Perhaps it would make more sense to limit the number of such sites in a given area so a larger community focuses around a single site? There is clearly improvements to be made... The overall concept seems great!
ReplyDeleteMegan, I looked for a local Madison news outlet on the list provided and was upset to see we didn't make it! However, I am sure there are citizen journalism sites in Madison if you googled for them (I'm not sure if Madison Commons quite qualifies).
ReplyDeleteAfter reviewing the "blog-like" citizen journalism sites, I think that having an editor is a good idea. If citizens had to submit their article to an 'editor' for review, I believe the quality of journalism would go up. Laura, I see how you think having an editor defeats the purpose of citizen journalism, but I think the two type of sites (editor and non-editor) can serve different purposes.
I agree with Laura about payment, I do not think that journalists should have to pay to post their ideas. However, I think it is a valid way for whoever is maintaining the site to get paid. And, if you have to make a payment, you might interact with the site more to get your money's worth!