Citizen journalism.
It’s a word we are hearing time and time again within our new digital culture. There are many scholars, research papers and medias that deem citizen journalism to be either super democratising or simply exaggerated and useless. Whether you believe it to be liberating or over-rated there can be no denying that it is an interesting phenomenon to observe.
Vital to the rise of citizen journalism is the development of the mobile phone. No longer are we simply calling or texting people via these little hand held screens, but everyone (with a smartphone) is a photographer, producer, researcher, blogger, gamer, etc. The mobile phone can provide valuable evidence of what actually occurred at particular events from an eye witness perspective. Traditionally, accounts were only disseminated via mainstream or mediated sources e.g. newspapers, radio and TV.
The reading ‘The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere’ provides different insights as to whether citizen journalism in critical situations benefits the public sphere and influences the primary definition of news.
Gordon writes that citizen journalists “make vivid contributions to the public sphere” and I would like to note the use of the word “vivid” rather than “valuable” within this passage because in the end I don’t actually believe citizen journalism (especially through the use of mobile technology) to be as democratising as some people would have us believe.
On the one hand Gordon says that people “armed” with mobile phones can give each other more details when it comes to social and political events, especially in the case of the SARS outbreak in China. The word “armed” implies protection and revolution that correlates with the idea of citizen journalism as being pro-democratic. But on the other, he says that citizen journalism is more often that not inaccurate and in some cases actually detrimental to the particular situation, for example, communications during the London bombings for ambulance services was actually failing due to high levels of mobile phone usage.
It is also important to note that the mainstream media somewhat oppress the idea of citizen journalism by calling for photos from breaking news situations as the content is then subjected to editorial processes, ultimately undermining the liberating concept of citizen journalism itself.
Are you sick of the word citizen journalism yet?
Gordon, J, 2007, The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere: Mobile Phone Usage in Three Critical Situations, Convergence 13/3 Pages: 307-319
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