2. 2
Citizen Journalism Pros
Cons
• Expanded coverage
• Unreliable
• More diverse
• Potentially fraudulent
coverage
• Real time
• Up close, personal
• Engaging
readers/viewers
• Unfiltered
or a hoax
• Not verified
• Editors/producers
Loss of control
• Too subjective
• Unprofessional
3. 3
Defining Citizen Journalism
1. Everybody is a journalist
2. Serve as a resource for professional
journalists
3. A tool for professional journalism
4. Catalyst to develop stronger ties between
journalists and citizens/community
5. Journalist standards still relevant
Source: Shifting boundaries: Objectivity, citizen journalism and tomorrow's journalists, Bolette B. Blaagaard
4. 4
Everybody is a journalist
• Greater pressure on professionals to get it
right
Male, 23:
Now we are under heavy scrutiny from everyone.
If I do a mistake on my story, my readers will be
able to comment on the mistake, identify it,
correct the mistake, and if I don‘t pay attention to it,
I will be a bad journalist and my story goes from a
static product, it transforms itself into a plurality(?)
that is constantly changing, evolving, due to the
contribution of every citizen.
Source: Shifting boundaries: Objectivity, citizen journalism and tomorrow's journalists, Bolette B. Blaagaard
5. 5
Resource to professionals
• Providing real-time information on news
happening where reporters are not
• Twitter, Facebook, texts replace The AP,
Reuters
• Creates tension for
reporters/editors/produces grounded in
objectivity, unbiased
• What if … the pictures showing police
beating up a person, but don’t show
what provoked it?
6. 6
CNN‘s iReport – The Vetting Process
• Lila King, participation director for CNN
Digital,
• Focused on inviting CNN's global
audiences to participate in the news
• Launched 2007
• ―Rigorous, time-consuming‖
• Add context and analysis
• Tools to better prepare ‗citizen journalists‘
7. 7
CNN‘s iReport – The Vetting Process
• Lila King on the 5th Anniversary:
• http://www.poynter.org/latest-
news/mediawire/141269/ireport-turns-5citizen-journalism-%E2%80%98at-thecore%E2%80%99-of-cnn%E2%80%99scoverage-of-big-news/
9. 9
Verify, Verify, Verify
• Contact contributor directly
• Use other reporters/producers who have sources
on the ground
EXAMPLE:
• Videos starting pouring in of protests in Ibadan,
Nigeria
• Contacted y Boma Tai, a 24-year-old pharmacist
• Protests prompted, in part, due to skyrocketing fuel
prices
• He was participating in the protest
• With help of CNN International reporters/producers,
they created a comprehensive report on protests
10. 10
• ―CNN wasn‘t really covering that story at all
until we started seeing an outpouring of
contributions of video and photos and
people writing into iReport over and over
for days,‖ said Lila King, participation
director for CNN Digital. ―It made us say,
‗Gosh, you know we really need to be
paying attention to this.‘ ‖
SOURCE: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/160045/how-cnns-ireport-verifies-its-citizen-content/
11. 11
Verify, Verify, Verify
• Use CNN subject-matter experts, affiliates
and local news reports
• Confirm photos – checking metadata of
images to make sure pictures were taken
win the actual location
• TinEye.com: Reverse Photo Search
12. 12
Engagement = More content
• Lilia King:
• News gatherers & curators
• Dan Gilmour:
• Collaborators, conversationalists and
listeners
• Steve Safran, director of digital media
for New England Cable News:
• „Participatory Journalism‟ is a conversation
with citizens about news – carefully edited,
filtered – not “1,000 conversations at once”
13. 13
Citizen Journalism Requires Skills
• Barry Parr, founding editor of
Coastsider, San Mateo, Calif. (former
San Jose Mercury News editor
• Created a local news website
• It‘s hard to get people to contribute
• It‘s easy to get people to return a call
when they like your coverage
14. 14
Citizen Journalism Requires Skills cont.
• Barry Parr continued:
• To do ‗citizen journalism‘ well, you
must remain committed to:
• Accuracy
• Being factual
• The truth
• Being thorough
• Being transparent
15. 15
The ‗Gatekeeper‘ Role & Citizen
Journalism - Authors Ali & Fahmy
• Editors / producers sift through the
content before it‘s published
• Only a small percentage is published
• User Generated Content (UGC)
subjected to same rules as traditional
news
• Majority of UGC perceived to be
entertainment and ‗soft news‘
Source: Gatekeeping & Citizen Journalism – The use of social media during the recent uprisings in Iran, Egypt & Libya
16. 16
The ‗Gatekeeper‘ Role & Citizen
Journalism - Authors Ali & Fahmy
The Gatekeeper Theory – traditional
definition:
• The selection process of choosing stories
and/or visuals that follow the organizations‘
news routines and narratives (White, 1950).
• NOW: The biggest social media stories get
big headlines in traditional media
Source: Gatekeeping & Citizen Journalism – The use of social media during the recent
uprisings in Iran, Egypt & Libya
17. 17
The ‗Gatekeeper‘ Role & Citizen
Journalism
• Iran June 2009: ‗The Twitter Revolution‘ –
Ahmad Ahmednejihad v. the ‗Green
Revolution‘
• Flashpoint: The murder of Neda Agha-
Soltan on YouTube
• Egypt, January 2011: ‗The Facebook
Revolution‘
• Flashpoint: The death of business man
Khaled Saeed
• Coverage by Al-Jazeera and other media
validated movement as legitimate
Source: Gatekeeping & Citizen Journalism – The use of social media during the recent
uprisings in Iran, Egypt & Libya
18. 18
The ‗Gatekeeper‘ Role & Citizen
Journalism cont.
• Libya, Feb. 2011 – the fall of President
Muammar Gaddafi
• FLASHPOINT: After he reigned for nearly more
than 50 years, protestors challenged his
leadership, taking to the streets and social
media.
• Pictures, videos, tweets, posts: shared by
millions via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
Source: Gatekeeping & Citizen Journalism – The use of social media during the recent
uprisings in Iran, Egypt & Libya
19. 19
―The World Is Watching‖
• Michael Fancher, retired longtime executive
editor, Seattle Times:
• ―When everyone can be a publisher, what
distinguishes the journalist?‖
• Walter Williams, founder of the University
of Missouri journalism school:
• Journalism is grounded in the public trust
Source: Michael Fancher, ‗The 21st Century Journalist‘s Creed‖
20. 20
Walter Williams: ‗The Journalists‘ Creed‘
1914:
―I believe in the profession of journalism.
I believe that the public journal is a public
trust; that all connected with it are, to the
full measure of their responsibility,
trustees for the public; that acceptance
of a lesser service than the public service
is betrayal of this trust.‖
Source: Michael Fancher, ‗The 21st Century Journalist‘s Creed‖
21. 21
What‘s the ‗new ethic‘ of public trust?
• If mobile devices, social media and
citizen journalism are here to stay,
media have to adapt
• Public engagement is the answer
• Instead of fearing ―public
engagement‖, media need to
embrace it to survive
Source: Michael Fancher, ‗The 21st Century Journalist‘s Creed‖
22. 22
The New World of Public Trust
• See public trust not as an abstraction,
but with an abiding desire to connect on
a human level
• See the public not as an audience but
as a community, of which journalism is
a vital part
• See the Internet not just as a new
medium for communication, but as a
new way of networking among people,
with journalism at the hub.
Source: Michael Fancher, ‗The 21st Century Journalist‘s Creed‖
23. 23
The new public trust cont.
• Be independent without being indifferent or
hostile.
• Feel a responsibility to help the public be
smart consumers of news.
• Recognize that journalism isn‘t just on behalf
of the people, but in concert with them.
• Public engagement can be the sustaining
embodiment of Williams‘s belief that the
supreme test of good journalism is the
measure of its public service.
24. 24
The New World of Public Trust
Michael R. Fancher was until 2008 the longtime
executive editor of The Seattle Times. For the past
year, he has been a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism
Institute at the University of Missouri School
of Journalism. Here he discusses how public
engagement offers answers to the future of journalism.
Source: Michael Fancher, ‗The 21st Century Journalist‘s Creed‖
25. 25
Social media in context
• Citizen journalism overrated, over
emphasized
• Does not cause events: It‘s another tool to
report them
• Without ―live‖ events – civil unrest,
assassinations, protests, there is no
content
26. 26
Mona Eltahawy on the "Twitter Revolutions"
During the Egyptian revolution, at least 65,000 people
heard every hashtagged statement Egyptian-American
journalist Mona Eltahawy shared on her popular
Twitter account. In this video, she disputes the notion
that ‗twitter‘ caused revolutions.
27. 27
Geneva Overholser: The Missing Ingredient
―I‘m not suggesting that journalism—
as a word, a concept, and a craft—
has gone away or is no longer
important.
―I‘m saying that those of us who
ground ourselves in what we know
to be an ethically sound and
civically essential mode of
information gathering and
information dissemination have to
find a way to be in these
conversations—whatever we call the
conversations or ourselves.
28. 28
Geneva Overholser: The Missing Ingredient
Our job is to keep an eye on the public interest.
Bringing our journalistic values to these environments
that have captured the imagination of millions is one of
the most promising ways we have of serving that
interest.”
• -- Geneva Overholser, a veteran New York Times
journalist, a 1986 Nieman Fellow, is the former director of
the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School
of Journalism.
29. 29
Today‘s Discussion Question
A local group of investors has given $1
million to launch a new website for North
Texas. The investors are news junkies, but
are tired of the coverage they are seeing in
current media.
Based on our discussions of traditional
journalism and citizen journalism, what
would you create? Why?
