Citizen Journalism

The collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially by means of the Internet. (Oxford)

Citizen journalism is becoming more and more of a constant in the news world today. With social media in particular the news is abundant and everywhere you look. As mentioned in the blog last week there were countless news stories from the past year that were broken over social media. Everything from the death of Osama Bin Laden (Twitter), to the Egyptian uprisings (Facebook), were originally reported on by ordinary citizens. One of the struggles with social media news is that people are constantly discounting things that they originally heard on social media is doing all it can to prove those haters wrong turning the tables by discrediting major news sources. In one instance as cited in Flew, a blogger revealed that a story run on CBS involving George W. Bush avoiding the draft was all based off of forged documents.

Not everybody is discounting and discrediting the social media and average human beings as being citizen journalists though. A SouthKorean news sites (english version) slogan is “every citizen is a reporter” and in addition to that, they only obtain 20 percent of their news from the people on their pay roll. As mentioned in a previous blog “The Guardian” started a campaign called open journalism in which stories that appear on their news site allow for regular everyday citizens to comment and react to the articles they read. With all the news sites and also other sites other sites out there, they have obtained and are adding a (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) feed. This allows for someone to connect to the site and gain quick access to things that they are most interested in. The user may also use this feed to connect directly to one’s own website (Flew).

That is just one example of the many ways citizen journalism is quicker than its counterpart.  In fact in every minute an average amount of content shared on Facebook is 684,478 and on Twitter it has over 100,000 tweets in that same minute. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3^rd biggest one (Bennet). Last time I checked there was not a specific form of print media has that many followers where they could all get together and share ideas instantaneously.

In another aspect of social media there are blogs. Blogs are where most people really show their true form and it’s through writing. The best thing is, people love to blog. Wordpress bloggers themselves create a blog post 347 per minute (Bennet). Imagine that one in a spectrum of how many different blogging sites there are. There are blogs about any possible weird, crazy, dumb and embarrassing thing somebody could be into. That makes for some much content with the biggest most dynamic archive on social media. Combine that with all the Wiki’s on the web and that’s a pretty informative and lethal one, two punch. Of course not all of it would be considered as citizen journalism in the sense of instantaneous updates. However, both definitely have their share of instantaneous citizen journalists and have specific breaking news blogs. The use of a blog to transcribe breaking news is so efficient that some newspapers now have their own breaking news blog.

Youtube doesn’t necessarily have instantaneous breaking news videos, but instead videos that are uploaded often that create breaking news. For example, I am sure that most people have seen the “don’t tase me bro!”  video which stirred controversy about excessive force and was in the news for quite some time.  In a version of citizen journalism when it didn’t really make news and more so informative was the Battle at Kruger. Battle at Kruger has appeared on television networks such as National Geographic and NBC. One of the biggest aspects of Youtube though is that it provides users with a direct link to what’s going on in the rest of the world through the eyes of other citizen journalists. Just look at Kony 2012. It was a video that enlightened people on something that had been happening in Uganda for years.

The ways you can physically access all of these outlets is what sets it apart from the competition. A person can get to them through a smartphone, tablet, laptop, iPod touch or about any other internet gadget one could think of. A good portion the sites just simply have an app that could be downloaded to make it EVEN easier. Believe it or not the amount of iPhones being sold per day is more than the number of babies being born which is 490,000.This is what allows for the instantaneous update and makes people the fast citizen journalist.

Sources:

Bennet, S. (n.d.). Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube – What Happens On The Internet Every 60 Seconds? [INFOGRAPHIC] - AllTwitter. mediabistro.com: jobs, classes, community and news for media professionals. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/data-never-sleeps_b24551

Citizen journalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Definition of citizen journalism in Oxford Dictionaries (British & World English). (n.d.). Oxford Dictionaries Online. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/citizen%2Bjournalism

Flew, T. (2008). New media: an introduction (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press.

Grotacelli, M. (2009). YouTube launches video channel for citizen journalists. Broadcast Engineering, 1(Nov. 2009), 32-33. Retrieved March 5, 2013, from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.bond.edu.au/docview/204184677

King, D. (2006). Citizen Journalism is Here. PR Week, A5, 1.

Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence is the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as variation-feedback-selection, differentiation-integration-transformation, and competition-cooperation-coopetition (Por).

In the simplest way, shape and form, collective intelligence is the knowledge of everybody and anybody. It doesn’t boil down to being as simple as that, but for the sake of ease of understanding, that’s how I am going to define it for now. Collective intelligence can be found in many different outlets, particularly from the web. Look at a site like Facebook. Facebook is a place where you archive your own thoughts, photos, videos etc. for everybody that you are friends with to look at. What can all of your friends do to these posts? They can put their two cents in on whatever you posted and all of a sudden it’s collective intelligence.

At first, I thought that collective intelligence wasn’t really something that was affecting journalism. However, upon further review, I figured out that it was indeed affecting journalism in more ways than I could explain in this word limit.

The first way I want to talk about is through open journalism. Now I know I mentioned this last week as well, but everything is connected in one way or another and this is just a perfect example. Last post I associated open journalism with user generated content and in this post I am going to connect collective intelligence to open journalism. Thus, basically connecting user-generated content and collective intelligence, because in most cases, collective intelligence is a form of user generated content. So, what is open journalism? Well its societies contribution to journalism. We read an article or watch a video from a news source and comment on it with our personal reactions to said article. People even read the comments and draw their own conclusions based off of those comments creating more collective intelligence than I can wrap my head around.

Wikipedia is one of the biggest sources of collective intelligence out there right now and it has become an outlet for sorts for all different kinds of news. Journalists, although many will refuse to admit it, constantly turn to Wikipedia for information and news all the time. Granted there is really no merit to what is being said, but because of how instantaneous updates can be it is one of the most readily accessible sources for any story. Take for instance stories that have appeared over time in the Los Angeles Times and how they have included the text “according to Wikipedia.” If you think it’s just on filler articles as well you would be dead wrong. The words have appeared on articles about Barack Obama (Shaw 2008). There was even a study conducted at one point that compared information found on Wikipedia and information in Britannica to see how valid the site actually was. In the end it was closer than you may think. The average errors per Britannica page was three while the average error for a Wikipedia page was four. One more error per page and people still discredit it as a reliable source. Granted there are some pages on Wikipedia that will have fabricated information, but the bottom line is that you are responsible for what you put on paper and if you have to take one extra step to make sure it is true then why not use Wikipedia?

So now that we know Wikipedia can be a reliable source for collective intelligence what about social media? Now I know what you are saying, “No way can he make a case for social media as a news outlet. It’s just a bunch of schmucks saying what’s on their mind.” Well I’m going to tell you that in some cases it is, but in fact it can be a good source for news information. In fact some of the biggest news stories have been broken through social media over the last year. The deaths of Amy Whinehouse, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and even Osama Bin Laden were all broadcast over twitter before major media outlets picked up on them. Remember when the U.S. pilot landed that plane on the Hudson? Well guess what news source broke that news first, twitter.

Due to the speed of a Twitter post, it is becoming a major source for breaking news everywhere. Even in sports it is leaving its. Athletes such as Brian Dawkins, Shaquille O’Neal and Donald Driver have all announced their retirement through Twitter. Shaq Daddy took it a step further and after announcing it, broadcast a formal announcement over the site Tout, which eventually bombed. All in all, it won’t be long until we see more and more breaking news stories broken over sites like Twitter and Facebook as the trend has already started.

Works Cited

"Collective intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence>.

Flew, Terry. New media: an introduction. 3rd ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

"Has the Internet Killed Print Journalism? - YouTube." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MaGHrPI_0>.

Laird, Sam. "How Social Media Is Taking Over the News Industry [INFOGRAPHIC]." Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://mashable.com/2012/04/18/social-media-and-the-news/>.

Por, George. "Wordpress." Blog of Collective Intelligence. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://blogofcollectiveintelligence.com/about/>.

"Shaq top 10 quotes - YouTube." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWqPnEGzfK8>.

Shaw, Donna. "Wikipedia in the Newsroom." American Journalism Review 30.Feb/Mar (2008): 40-45. Print.

"Top 10 News Stories That Broke on Twitter | Breaking News for Black America." Breaking News for Black America | News One. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013. <http://newsone.com/2000159/top-10-news-stories-that-broke-on-twitter/>.

Transmedia Storytelling and UGC in Journalism

Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies, and is not to be confused with traditional cross-platform media franchises, sequels or adaptations.

Transmedia storytelling doesn’t really equate all too much with journalism.  Journalism is a pretty straight forward field in which an article or story is written and published with little to no further expansion. With something as direct as this, it makes the aspect of transmedia storytelling pretty pointless. That being said there is one situation where transmedia storytelling is in journalism and that is with the news. Almost every news story that you see on the six o’clock news will appear in writing the next day in the newspaper. Or they may be an article that comes out during the day that will be developed into a new story for television later that night.

 

When it comes to sports though, the specific field of journalism that peaks my interest, there are a lot more forms of transmedia storytelling. There are a handful of classic sports stories that are first taken and written in a book, typically in the form of a biography of sorts. Then as time goes on a fair few of those biographies will be turned into a movie.

 

 

User generated content is literally everywhere you go and as far as journalism is concerned it’s a very good way to get your work out there. There a handful of people who merely started out as bloggers and have now either become successful journalist or they have kept with the blogging and now have a website. Barstool Sports, The Chive and Perez Hilton are all examples of websites that started out as a simple blog by one person and have now grown to become exponentially more successful that I’m sure any of them believed their sites would. If a person is really interested in going into the field of journalism then I would almost go as far to say that doing a blog is necessary. It is a place where you can write whenever you want and however you want which, if you are interested in journalism, is fun. What’s more fun than writing about anything you want? The best part about it is that you will also have a very good example and representation of how you write.

 

We see more user generated content in the news now more than ever. Last year The Guardian, a British newspaper, started a program that they called open journalism. The idea is that they opened up their online website for the public to comment and critique everything and anything they wanted to. People could go online and blast the website for poor writing or they could read an article on the site and react to that specific article.

 

 

 

It has created a whole new way for people to create user generated content. This isn’t the only way that user generated content has made its way into the news though. Take for instance the floods that hit here on the Gold Coast a few weeks back. It seemed as though every time I was turning on the television they were showing pictures where the flooding was at a very high level. Where were these pictures coming from? People were sending them in from home. After showing these photos the next thing that would pop up on screen would be tweets from more viewers reacting to the photos that viewers sent in. Besides what the reported was saying the whole entire segment consisted of UGC.

 

In the field of sports UGC is huge because the fans are the reason that these athletes go out there every day to participate. Throughout the season of almost all sports there always seems to be something that is voted on by the fans. This past weekend was the All-Star weekend for the NBA. Who do you think chose the starters for the all-star team? You guessed it, the fan. One of the most anticipated parts of the weekend is the slam dunk competition of which the winner was voted on by none other than the fan.

 

We are in a world that has obsequious amounts of UGC and it isn’t going anywhere. Not all UGC is good though as there are plenty of bad UGC. Not bad in the sense that it was poorly made, just bad in the sense that it is not enjoyable. Loser generated content is a term you can find on urban dictionary meaning; Digital content such as online videos produced by people on the Interweb lacking time, creativity or personal taste. The best part about this is that urban dictionary is ALL UGC and there are plenty of loser generated definitions on the website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Open journalism | Media | The Guardian . (n.d.). The Guardian . Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/open-journalism

Cha, M. (n.d.). I Tube, You Tube, Everybody Tubes: Analyzing the Worlds Largest User Generated Content Video System. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from www.land.ufrj.br/~classes/coppe-redes-2012/trabalho/youtube_imc07.pdf

Flew, T. (2008). New media: an introduction (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press.

Ingram, M. (n.d.). Guardian says open journalism is the only way forward . GigaOM. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://gigaom.com/2012/03/01/guardian-says-open-journalism-is-the-only-way-forward/

The Power of UGC (User Generate Content) for Social Marketing  | SocialSteve's Blog. (n.d.). SocialSteve's Blog | Social Media Marketing Discussions. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://socialsteve.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/the-power-of-ugc-user-generate-content-for-social-marketing/

Thurman, N. (n.d.). Forum for Citizen Journalists? Adoption of User Generated Content Initiatives by Online News Media . Retrieved February 20, 2013, from www.land.ufrj.br/~classes/coppe-redes-2012/trabalho/youtube_imc07.pdf

Urban Dictionary, February 20: Coupon Karma. (n.d.). Urban Dictionary, February 20: Coupon Karma. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://www.urbandictionary.com/

YouTube. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

 

 

 

Convergence in Broadcast and Journalism

"Convergence refers in the first instance to the interlinking of computing and IT, communication networks, and media content that occurred with the development and popularization of the Internet and the convergent products, services and activities that have emerged in the digital media space."-Flew

 

 

When it comes to convergence in broadcast and journalism we can't really ask the question should they take advantage of convergence. We more so have to ask the question, how much has convergence affected it?

 

 

 

From the journalism standpoint, convergence is its present and its future. Plain and simple. At one point and time the only way for a journalist to get a news story out was by writing an article and having it be published in a newspaper or a magazine. When it came to broadcasted news the only way to receive that was turning on a radio and listening to some fire side chats. Nowadays though, with journalism you can just the New York Times website and not only find written articles, but also videos to go along with them. In fact many people believe that journalism is a dying industry, but in fact they would be wrong. Yes, the newspaper industry is dying and will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs, the actually journalism industry is growing.

While with broadcast there is now the television in addition to the radio and it features hundreds of channels that are meant solely for news. Sure they will have some other things broadcast on them as well but the majority of their programming is news. Add into that the different types of news broadcasts on Youtube and the major news corporation websites and you have yourself a regular smorgasbord of convergent broadcasting.

Today though, the real key in the convergent news reporting is the integration of multiple different aspects of reporting. In particular, I am interested in the sports aspect of journalism and broadcast. Now sure there are some instances where a sports journalist will write a weekly column featuring mainly just an article with interviews and not much else. But in order to be really successful, multiple integrations must be included. In order to really catch the readers eye there may need to be a little more than just that solo article and most of the time there is. Nowadays you would be hard pressed to find just a simple article that also doesn't include a flashy highlight video to go along with it. Or the way that is even more prevalent in my findings are when the voice over is done in conjunction with said highlight video or over a slideshow of pictures.

All images courtesy of ESPN, CBSSports and the AP

 

Broadcasting has even been taken to a whole new level thanks to all the different ways you can stream a live event. ESPN in particular has really become big on this by creating the ability to stream sports right to your computer, phone or tablet thanks to ESPN3 and the WatchESPN app.

 



 

 

The reason for all of this convergence really boils down to one thing and one thing only, the advertisements. 2009 was the last year in which newspaper ad spending was higher than online ad spending. Since that time the online ad spending has been on the up and up, while the newspaper ad spending has slowly been decreasing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Viewing projections of future print advertisement spending it is clear that this is a trend that will continue until newspapers are no longer in existence. As much as some people may not want to accept that realization, they are going to have to. Especially seeing as the current generation is so technology oriented as is and most probably do not even open a newspaper. I'm not saying they don't read the news I am just saying it is coming from other sources other than a physical paper. With all the different news outlets available on the web everybody is searching for the newest story and freshest story which isn't going to come from the one single newspaper that is either offered on the college campus or that they get at home.

 

 

 

Sources:

 

 

Convergence review final report. (2012). Canberra: Dept. of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Faglio, S. (2013, February 2). 2012 Marketing Spending Will Be Higher For Online Ads Than Print | Business 2 Community. Business 2 Community - Building Deeper Business Relationships Through Engaging Communities. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/2012-marketing-spending-will-be-higher-for-online-ads-than-print-0124857

Flew, T. (2008). New media: an introduction (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press.

Journalism genres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_genres#Convergence_journalism

KEY FINDINGS. (n.d.). Convergence Journalism. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://www.convergencejournalism.com/

Klinenburg, E. (2005) Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 597, Cultural Production in a Digital Age pp. 48-64.

Media Convergence - YouTube. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdJlyh76dEc

Newspapers Timeline. (n.d.). Dipity - Find, Create, and Embed Interactive Timelines. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://www.dipity.com/rauen74/Newspapers/

Too many journalists ?  | Monday Note. (n.d.). Monday Note. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/07/11/too-many-journalists/

WatchESPN Sunday Night Baseball "Pilots" - YouTube. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved February 6, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMhuKrkNRg