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July 14, 2008
A Most Useful Definition of Citizen JournalismIt'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. 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?
“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: 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
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:
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. (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. 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! 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. OK, so I see "press tools." Perhaps that takes care of it. 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. 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. 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. ;-) 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! 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. "...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." 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." 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. 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. 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... 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). I liked ur blogg it really informative & resourseful. 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. 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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