Thursday, July 8, 2010
My personal understanding of citizen journalism
In my early memory, the only way to get information and news about national or international affair, was through mainstream media. Such as reading broadsheet newspaper and watching television news program which owned and controlled by government. The interesting thing was most of the followers believed authenticity of these news which transmitted by mainstream media. For example, the most necessary activity that all of my family member would do every night, was to site together and watched evening news of national television channel. In that time, I did not doubt the information I got from it and I did not even know there are some terms occur in the world such as: censorship and propaganda.
However, as the rapid development of internet and electronic technology, anyone in anywhere could write anything about what they see, what they feel and what happen, they take pictures and record video clips and then publish on internet social networking sites to share and also receive feedback from their own audiences. Such as update facebook state with personal or newest story, and write less than 140 words on twitter to talk about current affair in the world. Even uploading video clips of whatever you want to share to public on youtube. The most fascinating thing here is you can share and publish anything without the professional certification of journalism.
Therefore, the summary of my own understanding of citizen journalism is “collecting and reporting news and information by anyone from the members of the public”. Be honest, even though this phenomenon of citizen journalism brings a lot of benefits to society especially it could challenge the mainstream media and government which effectively makes general publics to stop blindly following unilateral information and having critical thinking to distinguish lies and truth. However, the prevalence of citizen journalism also somehow makes confusion of people about the veracity of news because anyone can report without normal reporting process acknowledgement.
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Aw, seem that I've come across the same video as you =] In your writing, you seems pretty optimistic about this new media. It is for certain that citizen journalism brings a ray of hope in some more conservative and government-controlling countries regarding truth and justice. However, on the other end of the spectrum is the potential rise of rebellion, overthrowing authorities. I would never want to imagine the consequences of having too much freedom. So, how much is too much? Seriously I don't know. That's why I always said, citizen journalism is both a blessing and curse, it depends on how people use it.
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