Full text of today’s column, “Citizen journalism and the new media”
The term “citizen journalism” reminds me of a line from a song: “A walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” Back in 2003, a paper was published to attempt to clarify its parameters. In “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information”, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis defined citizen journalism as “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information” and the intention is to “provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.” Bowman and Willis are “media consultants.”
Citizen journalism is an offshoot of the development and rise of the Internet. Ordinary people with no financial resources, professional training nor manpower to publish information in traditional media found a new and inexpensive way to make their voices heard.
While the broader definition of citizen journalism should include anything and everything reported by citizens from first-hand experiences, including food bloggers especially when they talk about the rise in prices of meat or fish or the unavailability of good-quality prawns and mangos because we only get what is left after the best ones have been exported, we find that the term is too often associated only with a particular niche–news and politics. This is clearly not the intention of Willis and Bowman when they came up with their 2003 paper but that is how things have turned out. You won’t find celebrity, food and fashion bloggers giving a hoot about having their sites labeled as forms of citizen journalism; only political bloggers care and they care a lot. Why?
Simple, really, and the phenomenon can be explained in two words: advocacy and activism. They have agenda and the term “citizen journalism” lends more credibility to their sites. And because people are impressed with terms, titles and labels that they do not fully understand (but like to coin anyway because it makes them appear more intelligent), a term like citizen journalism sort of elevates the status of an online publisher. It’s glamorizing something that would otherwise be plain and unexciting. To illustrate it even better, which sounds more impressive, “account executive” or “salesman”?
But don’t let the preceding paragraph give you the idea that the use of the term “citizen journalism” constitutes misuse in every case. There are a lot of bona fide Web sites that deserve to be labeled as valid and true exercise of citizen journalism. Back in 2003, for instance, in a blog called “Where is Raed?”, an Iraq-based translator who called himself Salam Pax wrote about day-to-day happenings during and after the invasion of Iraq. He wrote about the bombing of Baghdad, the disappearances and the war in general.
In the case of Salam Pax, it is not difficult to understand the context of citizen journalism. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bowman and Willis had him in mind when they wrote “We Media.” There are others like Salam Pax and many of them write from strife-torn countries.
But what is citizen journalism in the context of Philippine cyberspace? In a country where the citizens who directly encounter war-related atrocities do not have access to the Internet to report a la Salam Pax, citizen journalism is often associated with three kinds of Web sites: (1) sites that quote directly from news reports published by the mainstream media with a sentence or two that they pass of as opinion or commentary; (2) those that summarize and link to news reports and entries in other Web sites (manual aggregators, as my friend Yuga of yugatech.com call them); and (3) those that publish commentaries based on articles previously published.
Except for the third category, none of these sites deal with anything that can be considered as original. The first and second categories, in fact, are merely engaged in rehashing, recycling and regurgitating previously published information, the validity of which they cannot verify nor vouch for.
In many cases, the intent and the strategy is to achieve a “viral effect” as though the constant repetition of a statement will eventually make it true. Think of forwarded e-mails and text messages. By the time they have made their hundredth round and the original source can no longer be determined, the recipient cannot tell if it is fact or fiction. The same principle applies with rehashing information on Web sites.
Still in the Philippine context, there is a high-profile (meaning they are always visible in social events) group of bloggers intent on pushing the status of their Web publications as the embodiment of citizen journalism. They call themselves the New Media. The irony is that they consider Web publishers as handmaidens of mainstream media as though we are here simply to provide support. Secondly, these people are proponents of paid writing; meaning, they are amenable to receiving fees and/or freebies from business entities to write reviews about their products and services. With the viral effect that blogs have these days, the strategy is meant to create the buzz and hype so necessary in turning products and services into household words.
To my mind, these Web publishers contradict the very essence of citizen journalism. First, citizen journalism became an important concept precisely because of its nature as an alternative to mainstream media. It is supposed to be free from corporate control and considerations; it is supposed to be written from the heart. Second, where does objectivity come in when the articles are meant to favor businesses? This has been the subject of much debate where the “social bloggers” defend what they do by insisting that attending a corporate-organized social event does not oblige one to write about it. But faced with the reality that not writing about it means not getting invited to similar events in the future, they do write and help create the buzz whether deserved or not.
To make matters even worse, some bloggers are now in the payroll of politicians.
Truth be told, citizen journalism is fast becoming a lot like mainstream journalism –often biased and mostly about profits. I find writings about commuting blues, work-related stories, family picnics and non-sponsored trips and vacations more credible and deserving of the label citizen journalism.
