Gretel Killeen | Clarissa's Blog

I was happily browsing the Internet the other day when I happened to come upon an interesting article from ninemsn news about how Logies host, Gretel Killeen, was being tear down via twitter (article here). As it happens, celebrities at the ceremony were twittering away in real-time, their opinions and views, about the host when the ceremony hasn’t even been officially broadcasted. This is a perfect example that could be used to explain this rising trend of citizen journalism or otherwise known as grassroots journalism or participatory journalism.

Citizen journalism is defined by Bowman and Willis (2003) as ‘the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analy[s]ing and disseminating news and information’. Citizen journalism like produsage is able to give voices to those who originally were only given the options to take it or leave it. Dan Gillmor gives a very good insight to Citizen Journalism in his lecture given at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007), ‘traditional forms of journalism is like a lecture – journalists say ‘here’s the news’, then we buy it, read it, might send in a letter with our opinions and they might decide to publish it.’ It was really only a one way process as the consumers were only able to accept or reject what was given to them. Citizen Journalism, however, is different in that it provides news in a more interactive manner – more like that of a seminar of a conversation.

With the rise of the Internet and the ease at which news and information can now be obtained and distributed, audiences are now seeking an alternative to the perfectly digested, regurgitated and often decorated version of events by professional journalists (Bruns 2008). Audiences are now produsers who wants to have an active role in the production of news and information. It is this new culture where people are not afraid to speak their minds and would actively seek to correct or disagree with the ‘Big Media’ if they deem it necessary.

Another thing that could have also contributed to the popularity of citizen journalism is this idea of having news in real-time and often in first hand. Like how we saw in the case of Gretel Killeen, the news of what was happening at the ceremony was out before most people even got to see the ceremony! Another great example of citizen journalism at work was after September 11. In the days that followed there were better reports on the event online than through the news channel on television. People within New York were blogging about the event first-hand. What they saw, heard, felt, smelt and not only so, it was the events in either real-time or near real-time. Other people from other parts of the world were able to go online and see exactly what’s happening through these blogs right then.

Some interesting examples of citizen Journalism:

OhMyNews – http://english.ohmynews.com/

Malaysiakini.com – http://www.malaysiakini.com/

Action Network initiative – http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork

Crikey – http://www.crikey.com.au/

New Matilda – http://newmatilda.com/

On Line Opinion – http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/

Indymedia network – http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

The Uptake – http://theuptake.org/

iReport – http://www.ireport.com/

References: