The Multimedia Journalist

Week 6 Entry

Blogs take many forms including personal diaries, debating areas and educational, like this one. Currently an estimated 27 million blogs exist around the world.

Citizens continue to create blogs and contribute to newspapers in order to compare their opinions on news with readers rather than solely relying on journalists’ views.

The increasing amount of content contributed to newspapers by citizens has raised the issue of whether the content is journalism. The National Union of Journalists has been criticized for labeling citizen journalists as “witness contributors” whose content cannot be classed as journalism.

But what is the difference between user-generated content and citizen journalism? Since the influx of user-generated content from the London bombings the BBC has introduced the User Generated Content (UGC) hub, which sifts through the large amount of content that the BBC’s global audience contributes. The most important step is verifying the authenticity and legality of the content before publishing.

Citizen journalism has introduced a new phenomenon where the public is breaking news stories to the press, rather than the press breaking the news to the public. This will increase as technology makes the world smaller. It imposes great threat to the livelihood of journalism if journalists don’t become innovative in their use of user-generated content.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58iZpMRclwI

http://publishing2.com/2007/05/22/every-newspaper-journalist-should-start-a-blog/

Citizen journalism in the US: http://www.kcnn.org/research/hartsville_today/

Why journalists should blog: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2006/06/03/blog-or-perish/

Week 5 Entry

OhmyNews is the first citizen journalism site to make a significant dent in the Korean mainstream media’s ability to set the national agenda. Since 2003 it has been ranked as high as sixth most influential media agency. This is a significant feat as it is competing with 240 daily newspapers and television channels in Korea.

In 2006 Korea had 33.9 million Internet users in a population of 50.6 million, with 95 per cent of users aged 6 to 29, closely followed by users in their thirties.

Eighty-five per cent of households in South Korea had broadband Internet, meaning the country had the highest number of connections per capita in the world at June 2007.

In a country that has such a large portion of their population connected to broadband Internet it is no surprise that OhmyNews has become so successful. A phenomenon like this would not occur in Australia our population consists of many low and middle-income earners who can’t afford subscription to broadband Internet.

OhmyNews currently has 60, 000 citizen journalists, a large increase from 727 when Oh Yeon-ho started the site in 2002. This number will continue to grow as more people become aware of the site and its capacity to involve citizen journalists from around the world.

Related links:

Take a tour of the OhmyNews offices: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=426624&no=375760&rel_no=1

http://corp.helium.com/marketpublisher/freelance

Week 4 Entry

Citizen journalism online, also known as netizen journalism, is becoming increasingly popular. Ohmynews was introduced by Oh Yeon-ho in February 2000 “to encourage ‘every citizen to be a reporter’ and to make available in Korea a spectrum of news and views not contained in the conservative mainstream media” (The Amateur Computerist).

In the space of two years the number of registered citizen reporters for Ohmynews has increased from representing 50 to 91 countries, which shows just how quickly citizen journalism is taking off globally.

In South Korea citizen journalists were able to counter the dominance of the conservative press in the country, and assisted in electing an unknown politician to presidency. It is hard to imagine this type of thing happening in countries such as the United States and Australia that have very strict laws on journalism.

Samuel Freedman (New York Times columnist) has fears for the journalism profession, as he believes citizen journalism is “part of a larger attempt to degrade, even to disenfranchise journalism as practiced by trained professionals” (The Amateur Computerist). But in fact, many journalism students are acting as citizen journalists and gaining valuable experience.

Citizen journalism will continue to be the voice of the outspoken and provide the stories that go unprinted in newspapers of countries where government owns the media and influences what the media reports.

Related links: 

www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/09/digging_deepercan_citizen_jour.html

Week 3 Entry

The world saw the first user-generated content in December 2005 in the wake of the tsunami in Asia. The BBC’s online arm, News Interactive received 25 000 emails in the first week after the disaster.

Since then we have also viewed user-generated content from the London bombings and the mass shooting at Virginia Technical College. Citizens rather than journalists produced much of the July 7 London bombings pictures and footage used by major London newspapers.

This is becoming more common with the constant evolution of technology and the accessibility of broadband Internet. Thirty percent of households in Australia subscribe to broadband Internet.

Australians are working longer hours and as a result have less time to sit and read a newspaper or watch a television news bulletin. More audiences are relying on short grabs of information provided by the Internet through newspaper websites, blogs, wikis and podcasts.

User-generated content is a threat to journalists. Audiences rather than journalists are contributing to major stories. If this trend continues the journalism profession will be in jeopardy as news organisations will not be willing to employ staff if they can rely on users to submit content for free.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcAwrLw92rw

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6742087.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6908187.stm