An Introduction to Citizen Journalism: Blogger Turned Reporter
In today's modern world where the World Wide Web is at its height of evolution, weblogs are sprouting all over the internet like mushrooms after the rain. Hence, it is not surprising that more blogs are being used for citizen journalism or participatory journalism purposes.
As defined by Lasica (2007), citizen journalism also known as participatory journalism is the act of people or citizens assuming the role of a journalist in gathering, investigating and dissemination information as truthful as possible through small online publications like weblogs.
An example of a citizen journalism website(Picture sourced from www.vectoreyes.co.uk)
Personal tools like cameras, mobile phones and audio recorders can be use in aiding the collection of information by taking photos and recording videos to support the information gathered (Lasica 2007).
Journalistic tools: Mobile phones, which can be used to take photos to support the information gathered.(Picture sourced from Google Images)
A cartoon drawing of a 'citizen journalist'(Picture sourced from: Cartoon Stock)
Blogs as Small Independant News Sites According to Papacharissi (cited in Tremayne 2007, p. 21), blogs "offer a virtual space where information ignored by the mainstream media can be published." This is because, internet sites like weblogs, where information is presented in various modes, combining text with images, videos, sound effects, animation, navigational bars and hyperlinks is very much preferred by the audiences, compared to the normal print media as stated by Walsh (2006, p. 30). Multimodal text, where words are complemented by images and other modes help enhance the readers clarity and understanding towards a topic (Walsh 2006, p. 26-28).
From an audience's perspective, blogs as small independant news sites are important in reminding the mainstream media that we, as audiences are not passive absorbers of information. This is because not all information presented in the mainstream are fully accurate as some, deemed too controversial or confidential to certain bodies of power like the government are left out on purpose (Tremayne 2007, p. 241-242). This provides us as readers, a two-sided view into a story, the mainstream view and the extra or other side of it, satisfying the needs of the audience. (Lannon 2006 p. 29).
As a college student, i do visit journalistic blogs to read up extra information regarding certain news topics which have not been given proper or full coverage by the mainstream media. For instance, the Altantunya Shariibuu murder case in Malaysia. The mainstream had not reported the case as truthfully as they should as there are obvious loopholes and gaps in the story. This is because there is a possibility that the case is linked to a high government official in Malaysia. Hence, blogs become my second source of information regarding this case.
Jeff Ooi's blog
Jeff Ooi, whose blog, Screenshots is one of the most influential and most visited blogs in Malaysia is well-known for his political blogging. According to a newsletter in Wordpress, Ooi who practices citizen journalism is known for his blog entries on the welfare of Burma citizens where basic human rights are being stripped away by the iron-rulling Junta government.
At a time where the people in Burma were facing the worse ever case of human rights violation and information dissemination is blocked by the Junta military ruling in Burma, Jeff Ooi's journalistic blogging brought light upon their plight to the whole world.
Jeff Ooi, a citizen journalist in Malaysia.(Picture sourced from Flickr)
Credibility of journalistic blog entries
The credibility of these blogs has always been an issue as citizen journalism increases over the time. According to an Online Journalism Review, the credibility of information in these blogs are questioned as the author of the blogs are mostly normal citizens and not journalism professionals and their news stories might be infiltrated by personal or biased views.
As a solution, Glaser (2004) stated that, independant news sites like OhMyNews of South Korea, made out of an online community of journalistic editors were built to check and confirm the credibility of the news reports that were written by the citizens, before allowing them to be published online. As Lannon (2006, p. 468) puts it, information credibility and accuracy is an essential element in a useful website. This is to ensure the level of reliability of the website or blog itself.
Reference List:
1. Glaser, M 2004, 'The New Voices: Hyperlocal Citizens Media Sites Want You (to Write!)', USC Online Journalism Review, viewed on 12 June 2008 at http://ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1098833871.php
2. Lannon, JM 2006, 'Technical Communication', 10th Edition, Pearson Education, USA
3. Lasica, JD 2007, 'What is Participatory Journalism?', USC Online Journalism Review, viewed on 12 June 2008 at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060217106.php
4. Screenshots 2008, JeffOoi.com, viewed on 12 June 2008 at http://www.jeffooi.com/
5. Tremayne, M 2007, 'Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media', Routledge, New York
6. Walsh, M 2006, 'Textual Shifts: Examining The Reading Process with Print, Visual and Multimodal Texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p. 24-37
7. Webs@Work 2008, Wordpress, viewed on 10 June 2008 at http://blogswork.wordpress.com/category/journalism/
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