//How does Citizen Journalism work?

//How does Citizen Journalism work?



Citizen Journalism can have may characteristics, they are flexible in hierarchy and structure, responsive and adaptive to world events, cultural trends, self moderated and produced content.

Heirachy and structure in Citizen journalism sites differs from traditional news media, there is often no gate keepers, or publishers to hinder or give bias to news stories, and it can be done purely out of self interest as is often the case. As Sambrook (2005) commented on the citizen journalism happening in the wake of the london bombings. "Our audiences had become involved in telling this story as they never had before." The use of camera phone technology and mobile phones has created a partnership between users and the media. The reward users seek to gain from citizen journalism are recognition or status, not monetary or profit driven… unlike other news corporations.

Responsive and Adaptively evolving content is one of the key characteristics of Citizen Journalism and news based community sites. Through the sheer number of users engaging with a topic or event and the subsequent updating, deleting and adding of information allows a site like Wikipedia to cover a topic as it unfolds in real time with far better results than conventional media outlets. For example this video here shows a time-lapse of the wikipedia page created the morning of the Virginia tech massacre, it shows how many times the page was updated and edited over that certain period of time. It is this flexibility and sheer responsiveness in which the users posted information from a myriad of sources that gives citizen journalism such and edge over the mainstream outlets. Dan Gillmores states in his book 'We the Media' "there was a cliche that the journalists write the first draft of history, now i think these people are writing the first draft of history at some level, and thats an important shift."

These communities rely on peer evaluation and moderation in order for user driven content sites to maintain order and accuracy. Sites like Wikipedia are an example of this were those from within the community may specialise in certain topics and fields, can post comment edit and rewrite the entries posted by others, this exchange is meant to maintain the accuracy of entries, wikipedias credibility is always being questioned because of this. Other sites like Youtube rely on users opinions and voting to rate the content posted by others, so that at a quick glance users can see whether a video posted is worth viewing. Shirky as quoted in Bruns (2008) :
"the order of things in broadcast is “filter, then publish.” The order in communities is “publish, then filter.” … Writers submit their stories in advance, to be edited or rejected before the public ever sees them. Participants in a community, by contrast, say what they have to say, and the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact."


References:

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: Perpetual Collaboration in Evaluating the News New York pg. 69 to 100

R Sambrook, 2005. Citizen Journalism and the BBC. Nieman Reports pg 13 to 16.

Wikipedia, the free encylopedia. Wikimedia Foundation 2008 en.wikipedia.org

Gillmor D, 2006. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People. availiable on google books