Seven Castles

Citizen Journalism

                                      

May 1, 2007

 

Recently, the appearance of "the most awesome nail house" in Chongqing drew wide public attention and gave birth to "citizen journalism", also known as "collaborative citizen journalism" (CCJ), which is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information" according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. It should be noted that there are many alternate terms for citizen journalism like grassroots journalism, networked journalism, open source journalism, citizen media, participatory journalism, hyperlocal journalism, bottom-up journalism, stand-alone journalism, distributed journalism and personal publishing.

 

The concept behind citizen journalism is that many volunteers help to ensure that the information is more accurate than when it is being reported from only one source. Using wiki sites and blogs, anyone can contribute information about a current event. People without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.

 

Many traditional journalists view citizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that only trained journalists can understand the exactitude and ethics involved in reporting news. Citizen journalists may be activists within the communities they write about. This has drawn some criticism from traditional media institutions that have accused proponents of public journalism of abandoning the traditional goal of "objectivity". Meanwhile, mainstream newspaper publishers have created some of the more viable citizen media sites with citizen contributors to give reporters a more informed view of society.

【作者: zhangliping】【访问统计:】【2007年05月1日 星期二 05:14】【注册】【打印】