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Like PressThink? More from the same pen:

Read about Jay Rosen's book, What Are Journalists For?

Excerpt from Chapter One of What Are Journalists For? "As Democracy Goes, So Goes the Press."

Essay in Columbia Journalism Review on the changing terms of authority in the press, brought on in part by the blog's individual--and interactive--style of journalism. It argues that, after Jayson Blair, authority is not the same at the New York Times, either.

"Web Users Open the Gates." My take on ten years of Internet journalism, at Washingtonpost.com

Read: Q & As

Jay Rosen, interviewed about his work and ideas by journalist Richard Poynder

Achtung! Interview in German with a leading German newspaper about the future of newspapers and the Net.

Audio: Have a Listen

Listen to an audio interview with Jay Rosen conducted by journalist Christopher Lydon, October 2003. It's about the transformation of the journalism world by the Web.

Five years later, Chris Lydon interviews Jay Rosen again on "the transformation." (March 2008, 71 minutes.)

Interview with host Brooke Gladstone on NPR's "On the Media." (Dec. 2003) Listen here.

Presentation to the Berkman Center at Harvard University on open source journalism and NewAssignment.Net. Downloadable mp3, 70 minutes, with Q and A. Nov. 2006.

Video: Have A Look

Half hour video interview with Robert Mills of the American Microphone series. On blogging, journalism, NewAssignment.Net and distributed reporting.

Jay Rosen explains the Web's "ethic of the link" in this four-minute YouTube clip.

"The Web is people." Jay Rosen speaking on the origins of the World Wide Web. (2:38)

One hour video Q & A on why the press is "between business models" (June 2008)

Recommended by PressThink:

Town square for press critics, industry observers, and participants in the news machine: Romenesko, published by the Poynter Institute.

Town square for weblogs: InstaPundit from Glenn Reynolds, who is an original. Very busy. Very good. To the Right, but not in all things. A good place to find voices in diaolgue with each other and the news.

Town square for the online Left. The Daily Kos. Huge traffic. The comments section can be highly informative. One of the most successful communities on the Net.

Rants, links, blog news, and breaking wisdom from Jeff Jarvis, former editor, magazine launcher, TV critic, now a J-professor at CUNY. Always on top of new media things. Prolific, fast, frequently dead on, and a pal of mine.

Eschaton by Atrios (pen name of Duncan B;ack) is one of the most well established political weblogs, with big traffic and very active comment threads. Left-liberal.

Terry Teachout is a cultural critic coming from the Right at his weblog, About Last Night. Elegantly written and designed. Plus he has lots to say about art and culture today.

Dave Winer is the software wiz who wrote the program that created the modern weblog. He's also one of the best practicioners of the form. Scripting News is said to be the oldest living weblog. Read it over time and find out why it's one of the best.

If someone were to ask me, "what's the right way to do a weblog?" I would point them to Doc Searls, a tech writer and sage who has been doing it right for a long time.

Ed Cone writes one of the most useful weblogs by a journalist. He keeps track of the Internet's influence on politics, as well developments in his native North Carolina. Always on top of things.

Rebecca's Pocket by Rebecca Blood is a weblog by an exemplary practitioner of the form, who has also written some critically important essays on its history and development, and a handbook on how to blog.

Dan Gillmor used to be the tech columnist and blogger for the San Jose Mercury News. He now heads a center for citizen media. This is his blog about it.

A former senior editor at Pantheon, Tom Englehardt solicits and edits commentary pieces that he publishes in blog form at TomDispatches. High-quality political writing and cultural analysis.

Chris Nolan's Spot On is political writing at a high level from Nolan and her band of left-to-right contributors. Her notion of blogger as a "stand alone journalist" is a key concept; and Nolan is an exemplar of it.

Barista of Bloomfield Avenue is journalist Debbie Galant's nifty experiment in hyper-local blogging in several New Jersey towns. Hers is one to watch if there's to be a future for the weblog as news medium.

The Editor's Log, by John Robinson, is the only real life honest-to-goodness weblog by a newspaper's top editor. Robinson is the blogging boss of the Greensboro News-Record and he knows what he's doing.

Fishbowl DC is about the world of Washington journalism. Gossip, controversies, rituals, personalities-- and criticism. Good way to keep track of the press tribe in DC

PJ Net Today is written by Leonard Witt and colleagues. It's the weblog of the Public Journalisn Network (I am a founding member of that group) and it follows developments in citizen-centered journalism.

Here's Simon Waldman's blog. He's the Director of Digital Publishing for The Guardian in the UK, the world's most Web-savvy newspaper. What he says counts.

Novelist, columnist, NPR commentator, Iraq War vet, Colonel in the Army Reserve, with a PhD in literature. How many bloggers are there like that? One: Austin Bay.

Betsy Newmark's weblog she describes as "comments and Links from a history and civics teacher in Raleigh, NC." An intelligent and newsy guide to blogs on the Right side of the sphere. I go there to get links and comment, like the teacher said.

Rhetoric is language working to persuade. Professor Andrew Cline's Rhetorica shows what a good lens this is on politics and the press.

Davos Newbies is a "year-round Davos of the mind," written from London by Lance Knobel. He has a cosmopolitan sensibility and a sharp eye for things on the Web that are just... interesting. This is the hardest kind of weblog to do well. Knobel does it well.

Susan Crawford, a law professor, writes about democracy, technology, intellectual property and the law. She has an elegant weblog about those themes.

Kevin Roderick's LA Observed is everything a weblog about the local scene should be. And there's a lot to observe in Los Angeles.

Joe Gandelman's The Moderate Voice is by a political independent with an irrevant style and great journalistic instincts. A link-filled and consistently interesting group blog.

Ryan Sholin's Invisible Inkling is about the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education. He's the founder of WiredJournalists.com and a self-taught Web developer and designer.

H20town by Lisa Williams is about the life and times of Watertown, Massachusetts, and it covers that town better than any local newspaper. Williams is funny, she has style, and she loves her town.

Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing at washingtonpost.com is a daily review of the best reporting and commentary on the presidency. Read it daily and you'll be extremely well informed.

Rebecca MacKinnon, former correspondent for CNN, has immersed herself in the world of new media and she's seen the light (great linker too.)

Micro Persuasion is Steve Rubel's weblog. It's about how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the business of persuasion. Rubel always has the latest study or article.

Susan Mernit's blog is "writing and news about digital media, ecommerce, social networks, blogs, search, online classifieds, publishing and pop culture from a consultant, writer, and sometime entrepeneur." Connected.

Group Blogs

CJR Daily is Columbia Journalism Review's weblog about the press and its problems, edited by Steve Lovelady, formerly of the Philadelpia Inquirer.

Lost Remote is a very newsy weblog about television and its future, founded by Cory Bergman, executive producer at KING-TV in Seattle. Truly on top of things, with many short posts a day that take an inside look at the industry.

Editors Weblog is from the World Editors Fourm, an international group of newspaper editors. It's about trends and challenges facing editors worldwide.

Journalism.co.uk keeps track of developments from the British side of the Atlantic. Very strong on online journalism.

Digests & Round-ups:

Memeorandum: Single best way I know of to keep track of both the news and the political blogosphere. Top news stories and posts that people are blogging about, automatically updated.

Daily Briefing: A categorized digest of press news from the Project on Excellence in Journalism.

Press Notes is a round-up of today's top press stories from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Richard Prince does a link-rich thrice-weekly digest called "Journalisms" (plural), sponsored by the Maynard Institute, which believes in pluralism in the press.

Newsblog is a daily digest from Online Journalism Review.

E-Media Tidbits from the Poynter Institute is group blog by some of the sharper writers about online journalism and publishing. A good way to keep up

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July 14, 2008

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism

It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the "so-called" from in front?

When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.

There are other definitions, but they will have to be discussed in the comments.

… And here’s the video version, “Got it?” by Chuck Olsen for The Uptake (“Will journalism be done by you or to you?”). YouTube has a thread for it.

* * *

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

See also on this subject a newer post. If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn’t. So Let’s Get a Clue.

Portuguese blogger, journalist and new media person Alexandre Gamela reacts at his blog: “What really stands out is the absence of the middle man.”

American blogger, journalist and new media person Ryan Sholin in the comments: “I think to inform each other is the crucial piece of business.”

Yeah. If a definition can have a strategy, mine is to eliminate any reference to the news media as pipe through which current information vital to the public has to flow.

Lisa Williams in the comments: “I named the site I run Placeblogger in part as a reaction to the term ‘citizen journalism’…”

This post began on Twitter, where the tight restrictions of the form—140 characters, no more—make you make nice with concise. Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you follow people’s 140-character updates and they follow you. To see my Twitter feed go here.

Wikipedia says citizen journalism is:

The act of citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information,” according to the seminal report “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information,” by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis… Citizen journalism should not be confused with civic journalism, which is practiced by professional journalists. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.

“What became known as citizen journalism is the result of the digital era’s democratization of media.” Dan Gillmor in a post he put up today, after a journalist asked him if he knew “who coined this term and when it entered the mainstream media.”

Not all citizen media is citizen journalism. Most is not.

As to who coined it first in its current, digital-age meaning, or at least came closest, I’m not sure there either. But I’d start with Oh Yeon Ho, founder of Korea’s OhmyNews, who said back in antiquity (2000) that “Every citizen is a reporter.” Mr. Oh is one of the real pioneers in this arena, as we would all agree.

I certainly would. He’s one of the founders of the form.

Andy Dickinson has got it. “Jay’s definition is about defining the activity and not its relationship to the media.” That it can happen without the media may be the reason the media cannot get a grip on it. And he asks: is user generated content dead, as some are saying?

Picking up on my definition of citizen journalism, the Rising Voices project of Global Voices Online lists some fine examples of how enterprising people in the developing world “employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.”

Heights Observer, a place blog in Shaker Heights, Ohio, says: “This publication, and particularly the way it is produced, fits the definition of citizen journalism coined by media analyst Jay Rosen…”

Invaluable if you’re trying to get your mind around it: Steve Outing, The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism. His post is “designed to help publishers and editors understand citizen journalism and how it might be incorporated into their Web sites and legacy media.”

The parallels between citizen journalism and similar shifts in education are explored here. A bit more here.

And how have pro journalists reacted to citizen journalism?

  • The most common reaction—an ignorant, breezy, hapless condescension—is illustrated by this post. “When I hear the term ‘citizen journalist,’ I reach for my pistol…”
  • A better showing is this forum at The Guardian site.

“When the people formerly known as Christians employ the spiritual gifts they have been given to reach the lost, that’s missional evangelism.” Link.

Observe how the “so-called” tick works. This is from the PBS Newshour, with producer Jeffrey Brown:

For old and new institutions alike, the action is increasingly moving online. USA Today, with the nation’s largest circulation, combined its print and online newsrooms. And it, like other organizations, is incorporating more elements of reader-generated so-called citizen journalism. (Jan. 2007)

There, “citizen journalism” is something the media is doing more and more of.

PC mag in its encyclopedia of IT terms says citizen journalism means:

News and commentary from the public at large. Using wiki sites and blogs, anyone can contribute information about a current event. Also known as “collaborative citizen journalism” (CCJ), “grassroots media” and “personal publishing,” the concept behind citizen journalism is that many volunteers help to ensure that the information is more accurate than when it is being reported from only one source.

Daniel Bennett says my definition needs some adjustment:

I think it might be worth adding emphasis on publication by including the word “many” and also sticking in the phrase “an event deemed to be newsworthy” or for brevity just ‘a newsworthy event’. Here’s my stab at it:

“When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform many others of a newsworthy event, that’s citizen journalism.”

Some similar advice from PeriodismoCiudadano (CitizenJournalism) in Spanish.

Leonard Witt: “Jay, is this definition the first step in clealy articulating citizen journalism as a journalistic philosophy in its own right? It would be nice.”

The BBC Radio 4 program, “Anaylsis” did a half-hour on the connection between the “public journalism” movement of the 1990s and the situation today with the press and citizens media. Kevin Marsh, the former editor of the Today program and now an executive with the BBC’s College of Journalism, hosted and thought it through. I was interviewed. So was Charlie Beckett, the UK’s leading explicator of networked journalism. Here is how the program ends:

…Reinvention, migrating the tribe, re-skilling to share the news business with former readers. Whatever you call it and whichever way you slice it, the press has a job on its hands and the finances of news mean time isn’t on its side. But it might just be that the public journalism movement in pre-web America got it more right than they earned credit for. Maybe, in the end, it will be the public that saves the press for the public.

You can listen here. Here’s the transcript.

Posted by Jay Rosen at July 14, 2008 1:37 AM   Print

Comments

Interesting. I liked the tweets on this topic Side note: I named the site I run Placeblogger in part as a reaction to the term "citizen journalism." I did this in part because I thought it was way too easy to take even the best of these sites, visit them for 30 seconds, and say, "This is a crappy newspaper, that cat picture would NEVER pass any editorial scrutiny!"

I felt this was unfair and reductive for a couple of reasons:

  1. The best placeblogs gained a lot of vitality from giving people a way to tap into and contribute to the lived experience of a place, and much of the content that conveyed that feeling wasn't the kind of stuff that showed up in a newspaper.
  2. Many placeblogs are devoted to places where news doesn't break every day; but some placeblogs, and I'm thinking here of Barry Parr's Coastsider, do great work when there is breaking news. (Barry's site did day-by-day updates on the response to mudslides that closed out one of only two major routes into and out of his home town of Half Moon Bay, CA). Some placeblogs do have citizen journalism as a part of their content, but on any given day that might not be apparent to a casual visitor to the site who doesn't live in the place that the site is about.

Posted by: Lisa Williams at July 14, 2008 2:05 AM | Permalink

somehow like your definition. get's the attention away from 'corporate media' trying to use people as cheap labour. people don't need the press to get their message out anymore.

Posted by: Ugugu at July 14, 2008 2:08 AM | Permalink

(Initial version of the definition said, "employ the press tools they have been given." I changed it. -- JR.)

I'd even think about tweaking the phrase "they have been given" regarding the set of tools for Citizen Journalism.

Perhaps they've created the tools themselves, yes?

Also, I think "to inform each other" is the crucial piece of business. The shift is from mass media one-to-many top-down communication to a level playing field, in which any one individual can become both/either a one-to-many broadcaster and/or a node in a one-to-one or many-to-many network.

Posted by: Ryan Sholin at July 14, 2008 6:34 AM | Permalink

"the press tools they have been given"

Misses the point entirely. The "media" didn't enfranchise the audience to now act as journalists -- the audience took it upon themselves to do it when they began to think they could do it better.
These are not "press tools" being used, they're Constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

Posted by: Amy Z Quinn at July 14, 2008 7:12 AM | Permalink

Amy: The definition doesn't say the people were given press tools by the media. Does it? And they haven't "always" had them.

As for rights, they always had the right to exercise their press freedom, in theory. Not until our own time did they have the tools to do so-- blogging, podcasting, the Web, cheap digitial cameras, desktop editing and the like. It is these to which I refer. There's one link in the definition, to The People Formerly Known as the Audience, which makes this explicit. But perhaps I will need to tweak it, as Ryan also suggests.

UPDATE: Tweaked!

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 14, 2008 7:22 AM | Permalink

Much better!

Posted by: Amy Z Quinn at July 14, 2008 9:44 AM | Permalink

I think it needs to indicate some open source media. I could inform my neighbor by picking up the phone and calling her, but that's not citizen journalism.

Posted by: Ferdy at July 14, 2008 10:01 AM | Permalink

OK, so I see "press tools." Perhaps that takes care of it.

Posted by: Ferdy at July 14, 2008 10:02 AM | Permalink

Citizen journalism is a subset of citizen media. Digital media make it easier for regular folks to communicate for themselves, many to many rather than few to the masses. Sometimes this use of media is journalistic; sometimes not.

The term citizen journalism seems to have morphed out of the terms public journalism and civic journalism, but lots of citizen journalism still looks like conventional journalism. I think the placeblogs mentioned above have lots of civic/public journalism potential.

Posted by: Noelle McAfee at July 14, 2008 10:20 AM | Permalink

Does the use of the word "citizen" here need some unpacking?

I realize that it is part of the term being defined, not part of the definition itself. However, starting out with the word "citizen" colors the definition to a certain extent, especially the "inform" portion of it.

I'm definitely not objecting here; this definition is a extremely concise and explanatory.

Posted by: Pete at July 14, 2008 10:59 AM | Permalink

I like this definition, and I also like Noelle McAfee's note placing it in a broader context. Citizen journalism happens. It's definitely not the whole picture that professional journalists should be focusing on.

We professionals tend to get overly excited by the parts that look the most familiar.

Posted by: yelvington at July 14, 2008 11:07 AM | Permalink

...and then there are people like me. In my day job I am a serious tech journalist and editor. At night and on weekends I pick up my video camera and shoot anything from a poetry slam to a sparring match at a local boxing gym.

I am a U.S. citizen by birth, and have been a paid journalist for about 20 years, so I guess I am a... citizen journalist! :)

Posted by: Robin 'Roblimo' Miller at July 14, 2008 11:27 AM | Permalink

thanks for the reference but it needs some correction: I'm not brazilian, I'm from Portugal. No harm done hehe. thanks once again.

Posted by: Alexandre Gamela at July 14, 2008 11:54 AM | Permalink

Dang, I will correct it. Wrong assumption! Thanks for your post.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 14, 2008 12:02 PM | Permalink

The political idea of "citizen" in "citizen media," etc. is not about being a documented citizen of a particular country but about having agency in a political community, using the power one has as a member of the community to shape the direction of the community. The term citizen is better at "person" because it has a political connotation. Prior to digital media, people's power was pretty limited (remember mimeographed underground papers?). So the delightful double effect of citizen media today is that the media technologies actually help turn people into citizens.

Posted by: Noelle McAfee at July 14, 2008 1:45 PM | Permalink

I see navel gazing exists in the "so called" citizen arena too. ;-)

Posted by: Cassie St at July 15, 2008 1:05 AM | Permalink

Oh you are so wicked. You forgot "thumb sucking!" Navel gazing (emphasizing narcissistic self-reflection) and "thumb sucking" (putting the accent on the "infantile" portion of the proceedings) are practically husband and wife. You don't split them up like that. No way. You see that navel gazing and thumb sucking exist in the so-called citizen arena, as well, or you don't see a thing!

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 15, 2008 7:30 AM | Permalink

Roblimo: so I guess I am a... citizen journalist! :)

Absolutely! The worst aspect of mass media was the separation of pro-jos from citizens -- pro-jos ARE citizens, including the political connotation described by Noelle McAfee.

I would love for someone to do a readability study of pro-jos' writing in the newspaper compared to their own blogs.

Posted by: Tim at July 15, 2008 2:12 PM | Permalink

"...employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another..."

What is the force of they have in their possession?

If the definition were to say simply "...employ press tools to inform..." what sense would be missing?

Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 15, 2008 3:29 PM | Permalink

Good question. I originally had "...When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have been given to inform each other, that’s citizen journalism."

The objection was heard: sounds like Big Media gave them the means, which is too paternalistic. So in order to make it clear that I was not saying that, I underlined the point: they have these tools already. I like the rock solid (as in possession is nine tenths of the law) overtones in "their possesson."

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 15, 2008 4:09 PM | Permalink

I am not persuaded.

Your logic of "in possession" implies that work produced by citizens on "press tools" is not journalism unless those citizens happened also to be in possession of those tools. Why so? A journalist's dispatch is no less of a dispatch if it is produced on a borrowed or purloined typewriter. Another's ownership of the tool does not constrain the journalistic status of the work performed on that tool by the non-owner.

PS: I know that "possess" and "own" do not amount to the same thing -- but they are close enough to cause confusion.

Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 15, 2008 4:29 PM | Permalink

I like "possess." I like it better than "given" or "own." I also like "tools." I think we need to distinguish between tools, agents and servers.

However, it is true that digitization of information and ubiquitous network access has "democratized" these tools. By that I mean the "press tools" available level the information design and distribution playing field; and everyone can access and employ them.

A J Liebling: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

Posted by: Tim at July 15, 2008 5:22 PM | Permalink

Nope: their possession is what I want to say because it's important to underline that they have the means, regardless of which tools or who owns what. I think it does that.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 15, 2008 7:02 PM | Permalink

Nope, in this distributed world I agree with Tim on this in his emphasis on "access" rather than "possession."

If you do not like the unqualified "...employ press tools to inform one another..." then, following Tim, "...employ those press tools to which they have access to inform one another..." does the job of reminding us that not all citizens, or journalists for that matter, stand on equal footing.

Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at July 15, 2008 7:25 PM | Permalink

Doubt this will catch on, but how about turning "news" into a verb. If the English language can tolerate "blogging" perhaps self-publishing journalists can start "newsing" when they're gathering, investigating, reporting, filtering, dissecting, or publishing news.

Posted by: kawika [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 15, 2008 8:33 PM | Permalink

Leonard Witt: "Freedom to use the words Citizen Journalism is guaranteed the most to those who own the URL." Check out who owns: CitizenJournalism.org

Does it make me an expert? You decide, but here is an earlier response to Jeff Jarvis who was promoting "networked journalism" and wanting to kill off citizen journalism:

I like the networked journalism concept, but to me the phrase networked journalism is a cop out, a phrase used to offend no one...

When we founded the Public Journalism Network, I did not want us to give up the name public journalism, even though, it was a hot button issue and had lots of baggage. I also pushed for the former AEJMC Civic Journalism Interest Group to become the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group.

If we remove the words citizen, public, civic from the equation, it will be too easy to forget that this is about public, civic, citizen participation. This is not just about helping news operations to get a free staff or even developing better coverage, it’s a way of getting an engaged public to help build a bigger, better and stronger democracy.

So I am very pleased to see that Citizen Journalism is very much back in play, even with a definition of its own.

Posted by: Leonard Witt at July 15, 2008 11:27 PM | Permalink

Excellent definition of citizen journalism.

My thinking has always been to start by defining each word.

Sounds easy, but it's surprisingly hard to define "journalism."

Most dictionary or encyclopedic definitions are somewhat circular. "Journalism is something done by journalists or printed in news publications." - That kind of thing.

I've always found that it helps to think of journalism as a process (hence the tagline on my blog).

That process is: 1. collecting information, 2. filtering information and 3. distributing information.

This plays in very nicely with the social media tools we now have that let us participate in the process. As Clay Shirky notes: Media is now a triathlon of production, consumption and sharing.

So "citizen journalism" to me - is just when people engage in the process of journalism (those three steps) even though it's not part of their job to do so (ie: there is no direct financial motivation).

Posted by: Digidave at July 17, 2008 12:48 AM | Permalink

I liked ur blogg it really informative & resourseful.
"Sasneham"

Posted by: sudarsan at July 17, 2008 2:27 AM | Permalink

I reckon this is an improvement, but obviously open to the improvement being taken apart in the search for the truth!

"When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform many others of a newsworthy event, that’s citizen journalism."

Reasoning available on my blog

Posted by: Daniel Bennett at July 17, 2008 9:48 AM | Permalink

Having a one sentence definition is a start, but just a start. I am more interested in defining ethical, high quality citizen journalism. That's why having a public philosophy for citizen journalism is so important.

Read my interview with Grayson Daughters entitled "CNN iReport Superstar Tells All — Maybe Too Much" to see how one CNN citizen journalist superstar views journalism ethics. It's troubling because she sees the flaws of mainstream journalism as a justification for her standards that are -- well,troubling. But not wrong in her mind.

Posted by: Leonard Witt at July 18, 2008 10:40 PM | Permalink

Interesting that hardly anyone seems to be focusing on "to inform one another." Inform one another of what? Do citizen journalists, thus defined, somehow increase our store of knowledge about an issue or event, or are they just sharing how they feel? Reporting, or reacting? There's a difference between a journalist and a mass-media diarist.

Posted by: Gigi Lehman at July 22, 2008 7:46 PM | Permalink

After I reviewed the various attempts here to find a suitable definition for the activity in question, is it appropriate to assume that the definition must be in the English language? If that is true, I think there is an irony in this discussion.

¿Después de que revisara las varias tentativas para encontrar una definición conveniente para la actividad en cuestión, es apropiado asumir que la definición debe estar en inglés? Si es verdad, hay una ironía en esta discusión.

Posted by: Alan John Gerstle at July 22, 2008 9:03 PM | Permalink

You see that navel gazing and thumb sucking exist in the so-called citizen arena, as well, or you don't see a thing!

Well in that case Jay, I think I'll just be a good Aussie and spit the dummy instead.

Posted by: Cassie ST at July 23, 2008 2:55 AM | Permalink

I really like the part "formerly known as the audience" because I notice that since I started using the Internet and became a blogger I no longer watch TV, listen to radio, or read newspapers. I worked out that I rarely want to be manipulated intellectually or emotionally by any of these media on their terms. I want to be in control of what I take in and and put out and the net works really well for that. I recognize I have come to hate stuff being pushed at me. I've had a gutfull as we say in Australia. TV news literally makes me nauseous because I can feel them messing with my head, my heart, and my guts. I like Clay Shirky's dictum: any screen that ships without a mouse, ships broken. Thanks for a really helpful definition.

Posted by: Lorenz Gude at July 28, 2008 11:14 AM | Permalink

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