Citizen journalism has never been so important

Response to Ella's blog "Zeitgeist":

Wow! What a movie. I was truly blown away. Thanks for bringing it to my attention Ella, in a perfect example of citizen journalism. After viewing the film it appears that it has never been more important for the 'average' citizen to be critically engaged in the world around them. Citizen journalism is the perfect way to do this. There are no editors, producers or a biased government dictating what content is allowed on citizen journalism sites such as Indymedia and Plastic. The DIY, open and participatory environment of these sites allows anybody to post anything that they want on the internet. The average citizen has the power to gatewatch (Bruns, 2008 p74) over the traditional news process providing multiple perspectives on a news story as opposed to the one sided view forced upon us by mainstream media. Once posted, content is immediately available for communal evaluation by anybody saying anything that they want. The ability to facilitate public discussion free from the bias of mainstream media stories is one of the most powerful features of citizen journalism. The stories remain always unfinished and constantly under development by a fresh set of eyes (Bruns, 2008, p81). This represents a fundamental shift from the traditional media where only a small selection of writers and editors have the power to change and manipulate information. In the traditional model citizen engagement is sidelined to the "letter to the editor" format which is then only shown to the public at the whim of the editor. Citizen journalism is a way for us to fight back against the tyrany of the top. We need more "random acts of journalism". The power is in the people. They just need to use and take advantage of it for the greater good. Peter Joseph did it so why can't we?


Reference

Bruns, A. 2008. News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: Perpetual Collaboration in Evaluating the News in Bruns, A. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang. 69-100.