Bloggers and news organisations are (finally!) starting to ask important questions about citizen journalism. In a sort of open letter to media pundit turned citizen journalism pundit turned citizen media journalism lecturer Dan Gilmour, who is giving a talk tomorrow at Harvard (17 January), Seth Finkelstein asks: "What’s so superultrafantastic about being an unpaid freelancer?"
The BBC too is starting to ask it’s audiences what they think of citizen journalism with the results being used to stimulate a debate at the annual (internal) BBC News and Sport Festival running later this week.
What do you think of citizen journalism? What motivates people to submit their content to news organisations? Do you, as a media consumer, enjoy seeing text messages, comments, photos and videos submitted by other members of the audience? Please add your comments below…
[ I spotted Finkelstein’s questions for Gilmour on ‘Inflection Point‘ ]
As a viewer, yes I do enjoy watching/reading material coming from the general public. Conventional media, even big groups, can cover only few aspects of an event, the material has to go through an editing/discarding process that is practically non-existent in citizen journalism. Photographers and journos have several copies of their products (photos and articles) but the final ones are decided according to the client (usually the media group) needs, the newsworthiness, and the high-quality factor.
But we need both. Professional and citizen journalism. What would be great to see, and it doesn’t happen often, is the unedited/discared material journos/photographers have. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that would bring together the best of both worlds, but I suppose they are bound by contracts and al. And most of them have no time to keep a weblog going or updating their Flickr account…
I think people started sending their content to media groups because they noticed it is actually used, not just kept in the archives. For some it might be “the moment of fame” (“Hey, that’s my video!”), others might exploit the situation thinking they’ll get some revenues by sending the material through. And, after all, they are already motivated by the fact that they can post their content on the Net, so submitting it to news organisations is just a step further.
But it’s positive to see that groups like BBC begin to do some proactive work in encouraging people to produce more content (and submit it to them….)
“What’s so superultrafantastic about being an unpaid freelancer?”
Just for the hell of it, kudos, reputation, website hits, marginal click-through revenue, perhaps. For a few a springboard to a real journalism job?
Podcast you may be interested in:
Jamais Cascio – Personal Memory Assistants
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More and more people are using mobile phones with integral video cameras to
capture events. Some of the most harrowing pictures from the London bomb attacks
in July came from amateur video taken underground by passengers with camera
phones. We seem to be heading towards a future where everything we experience
will be captured and stored for retrieval. Perhaps only the sheer scale of the
numbers of people involved will be the biggest safeguard we have against the
nightmare of ‘Big Brother’ surveillance.
http://ipost.com/rd/9z1zn42tgfi2iotk02snmbkcqb98oe7bmu6kf6oomm8