The essay provides an annotation of bibliography of the text analysed about the academic books and academic websites to widen the understanding of citizen journalism and the tools and challenges involved. In what way it has laid its impact on the conventional methods of journalism. Many argue with the advent of this concept the produces have become the consumers and vice-versa. The bibliography will also look at new media viz-a-viz citizen journalism and online news.
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Table of Contents
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Academic Books
New media, old news: Journalism & Democracy in the Digital Age, By Natalie Fenton.
Natalie argues whether the advancement of new communication technologies revised the public sphere or has it become a commercial tool for undemocratic new media. The book gives in-depth understanding about the changing practices, and tools in journalism, the way it engages the masses, and does it in any way damage or has any effect on the quality of the journalism. As there have been changes in all walks of life in this contemporary world and media is not naive to such changes. The journalistic environment has also changed the nature of the news journalism that is in the interest of the public today. There are implications for the future of the news and in turn for the practices of the democracy.
The book explores the journalistic practices which I found useful in context of my understanding about new and old media and how technological, economic and social changes restructure the news journalism in the present digital age. As the understanding of news journalism has gained more importance than ever before.
Reference:
Fenton, N. (ed.). (2010). New media, old news: Journalism & Democracy in the Digital Age.UK: Sage Publications Ltd.
Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology, By Joseph Straubhaar, Robert Larose, Lucinda Davenport.
The book gives detailed account about the new media viz-aviz the internet. As advance in technology has changed the conventional trends of journalism. At the same time news-gathering trends and styles have also changed. Earlier, the speed of news was the speed of transportation systems from the manual. Later, the telephone was improved the speed of news gathering. With the advancment of internet the whole scenario got changed.
Josep et al, argues that in past, journalists used to do their reporting away from the office, Today, all the modern means of electronic communications are found in the newsroom. High-tech reporters scan radio, Tv, and cable and satellite channels for the news stories and ideas. Also Internet news sites, blogs, chat rooms, help them to to turn up leads and track down rumours. It can be said that today's reporting is computer assisted.
Furthermore, there has also been the convergence of traditional media and and the technology. The convergence trend has led to a news form of multimedia journalism called backpack journalism, where reporters are known as mojos (mobile journalists). These multimedia journalists carry a digital video camera, recorder, and notebook, often in a backpack.
The chapter of my research interest was about writing styles and new tools-instead of writing the story in the old fashion linear text way, now reporters combine interactive text, graphics, video, and sound to make with the multiple versions-from straight text to pod-casts-that will go on different media. The well deliberation on the concept of participatory journalism where readers and viewers of the news can interact with the reporter or others in blogs, chats, or e-mail.
Reference:
Straubhaar,J. Larose,R. & Davenport, L. (2010). Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology. 2010 edition. Boston: Wadsworth Publications.
Online News Journalism and the Internet, By: Stuart Allan.
The author analyses the online journalism and its impact on the news coverage. It also discusses the rise of new concept in journalism called online news like BBC News Online, the Drudge Report, and the birth of blogging. Furthermore, the book covers the coverage in the crisis situation with respect to September 11, sensational scandals: the news values of the blogs. It also discusses the emergence of ‘participatory journalism: IndyMedia, OhmyNews and Wikinews. New concept of citizen journalism with examples; London Bombings and Hurricane Katrina.
As online journalism revolutionized the whole concept of conventional journalism, earlier the reader used to wait for the next morning to get the news update, but these days the news is so fast and instant that the moment any incident happens, at the same moment the news is being reported and the reader updates himself with the situation, be that in any part of the world. This fast and instant news system happened with the advancement of the technology and information technology in particular.
The relevance of this book to my is project is that it discusses the Information technology and its impact on the traditional style of news reporting and conventions adopted by the various news organizations. Rupert Murdoch delivered a speech at the American Society of Newspapers Editors (ASNE) in Washington DC on 13 April 2005, in which he set out the ‘fast developing realities’ in journalism and the challenges to the conventional approach and tools to the extent that some say that it is death of the newspapers. ‘ I was not web savvy, nor used to computer. Instead, I used to be among the controlled editors who were to tell us what do we should know.’ (Murdoch, 2005).
There has been an increase in the extraordinary contribution by the common citizens offering the first hand information, digital photographs, video footages, mobile phone snap shots and footages which when going through the book is missing. ‘Producers and professional news cameramen often found themselves being sent not to the scenes of disaster to capture footage of its aftermath, but to the airports where holidaymakers were returning home with footage of the catastrophe as it happened.’(The Independent, 3 January 2005).
Reference:
Allan, S. (2006). Online News Journalism and the Internet. Berkshire: Open University Press.
Murdoch, R. (2005). Speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors, press release, Newscorp.com, 13 April.
YouTube: Digital Media And Society Series, By: Jean Burgess & Joshua Green
The book is about the digital tool called ‘YouTube’. The book discusses YouTube and the Mainstream Media. The popularity of YouTube and YouTube culture, YouTube social culture network, YouTube cultural politics and about the YouTube’s uncertain future.
With this basic innovation (YouTube launched in 2005) being technical only aims to remove the barrier of video sharing over internet. As like any other social networking website, user can share, upload and view streaming videos on it without high levels of technical knowhow. There is no limit to the number of videos a user can publish, besides can offer the basic networking functions of video sharing to other users and friends, and provide URL’s and HTML codes that can be embedded in the website a feature using popularly by the bloggers now-a-days.
The area of my interest in this book is that it elaborates about the nature of YouTube that it promotes the participatory culture, the term that is often used to talk about the noticeable link between the accessible digital technologies, user generated content and the shift in the relation between media content producers, and their consumers.
Burgess also argues about the mainstream media-distraction it faced with the advancement of technological means and tools like YouTube, and its media power. The book debates whether social media like YouTube contribute in shaping our societies, as does the conventional mainstream media. ‘Images of youth have been closely associated with ideas about shifts in capitalism and the organization of social structures such as class in capitalism and the organization of social structures such as class, wealth distribution, and consumption practices.’ (Murdock and McCron, 1976)
The prominence that is being given to the talent discovery initiatives in the conventional media, YouTube press releases, and on the official blog of YouTube, it is not self-evident that these initiatives have any or greater impact on the YouTube economy of attention.’ (Lanham, 2006)
In comparison to the other social networking sites it does not involve the community building, collaboration or purpose group.
References:
Burgess, J. & Green, J. (2009). Youtube: Digital Media And Society Series.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Murdock, G. & McCron, R. (1976). Youth and Class: The Career of a Confusion, Eds Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson, Working Class Youth Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 10-26.
Lanham, R. A. (2006). The Economics of Attension: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. Chicago and London:Chicago University Press.
Multimedia: Making it work, By: Tay Vaughan
According to Vaughan, the best user interface demands the least learning effort. The book is about the pivotal role of multimedia in the interactivity and in the mass communication. The book precisely focuses about the different tools of the multimedia and the skills it involves. It provides a plat form for the citizen journalists to build the skills that are required in this information era where information flow is very fast. It talks about in detail the interface design-the text style, navigations, interactions, symbols, structures. Furthermore, it also describes in detail other media tools like sound, images, animation, and video and besides that it talks about the hardware and software tools necessary for a journalist. World wide web-revolutionised the concept of journalism all together and the book details about it in dept. Multimedia finds it use in almost all spheres of life like in Business, in schools, at home, at public places.
Vaughan argues that multimedia is important tool in mass communication in present contemporary world, and it is basically the combination all text, art, sound, animation, video delivered to you by any digitally manipulated means and when you allow end user to control on the elements delivered it is Interactive multimedia. Also, according to Vaughan Multimedia is appropriate whenever a human interface as it connects a human user to electronic information of different kinds.
Useful section to my understanding is the chapter 14 about designing for World Wide Web as changed the style of journalism and helped in the concept of ‘citizen journalism.’ It enhanced the skills of citizen journalist, and the output and the quality of the content is user friendly. With the advancement of technology and with the rise of internet use of hypertext has emerged as a major tool in citizen journalism.
Reference:
Vaughan, T. (1994). Multimedia: Making It Work. Osborne: McGraw-Hill Technology Education.
Online journalism ethics: traditions and transitions, By Cecilia Friend, & Jane B. Singer.
The book discusses the history of journalism its conventions and principles and online news, bloggers and other ‘participatory Journalists.’
There is a chapter about the future of journalism which discusses the challenges to conventional journalism in depth. In a world of digital media in which anyone can be publisher of the any event which he/she witness, in which there are few if any technological or financial barriers to producing and disseminating information, in which concrete and finite media products such as newspapers or a television news broadcast have been replaced by an amorphous and constantly changing agglomeration of billions of seamlessly interconnected bits. The book also raises the questions like where do the journalist fit in? Why do we need such a person, and what purpose does journalist serve? Is there any future at all for what we know as journalism?
One of the central questions that the book raises -who is a journalist in first place? A journalist in our society is someone whose primary purpose is to provide the information that citizens of a democracy need to be free and self-governing. Friend suggests that it is the ethics that provides the crux of the answer to all above questions.
Chapter about the online journalism ethics gives the detailed view about the ethics and rules that should govern the citizen journalism as it lacks the content check and accountability.
References:
Friend, C. & Singer, B. J. (2007). Online journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions.New York: M.E Sharpe Inc.
Academic Websites
BBC World Service: Citizen Journalism is a fast-growing worldwide phenomenon.
Article is about the citizen journalists, enabling the rest of world to read and to see pictures that tyrannical regimes around the world would rather keep secret.
This articles confer the potential and the dangers, and focusing on issues of truth and trust. Also about the problems of citizen journalists-problems of fakery, manipulation, partisanship, bias, and lack of accountability.
It also takes note on the role bloggers who challenge the countries run by authoritarian regimes that traditional journalists could not achieve. It questions the struggle between old power and new technology for the control of cyberspace itself.
Reference:
BBC (2009). Citizen Journalism is a fast-growing worldwide phenomenon. [Online] http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/09/090901_doc_citizen_journalists_1.shtml [Accessed on: 25-04- 2011]
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www. sagepub.com-Social news, citizen journalism and democracy, By Luke Goode
This article aims to contribute to a critical research agenda for investigating the democratic implications of citizen journalism and social news. The article calls for a broad conception of
‘citizen journalism’ which is not an exclusively online phenomenon, not confined to explicitly ‘alternative’ news sources, and includes ‘metajournalism’ as well as the practices of journalism itself. A case is made for seeing democratic implications not simply in the horizontal or ‘peer-to-peer’
public sphere of citizen journalism networks, but also in the possibility of a more ‘reflexive’ culture of news consumption through citizen participation. It investigates new forms of ‘gate keeping’ and ‘agenda setting’ power within social news and citizen journalism networks and, drawing on the example of three sites, highlights the importance of both formal and informal status differentials and of the software ‘code’ structuring these new modes of news production.
Reference:
Goode, L. (2009). Social news, citizen journalism and democracy. [Online] http://nms.sagepub.com/content/11/8/1287.full.pdf+html [Accessed on: 25-04-2011]
www.sciencedirect.com-Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, By Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenleina.
The article is about the concept of Social Media being top of the agenda for many business executives today. Decision makers, as well as consultants, try to identify ways in which firms can make profitable use of applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter. Further, the article intends to provide more visualization on social media. By describing the concept of Social Media, and discusses how it differs from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. Provides a classification of Social Media which groups applications currently subsumed under the generalized term into more specific categories by characteristic: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds. Finally, it presents 10 pieces of advice for companies which decide to utilize Social Media.
Reference:
Kaplan, M. A & Haenleina, M. (2009). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. [online]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W45-4XFF2S0-1&_user=610894&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1744556679&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000031898&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=610894&md5=a6faebc86675dff9e8269be1318affad&searchtype=a [Accessed 26-04-2011]
Just a small thought for you that I will later expand on properly. Have you thought about the changing ways in which traditional news sources now report on social media news? I see in your BBC world service section that you have an example of this happening, another one might be this one about todays super injunctions http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13330409. I just find it amusing that it is basically news about news.
“Citizen Journalism”
Citizen journalism is a very interesting topic to examine. Therefore, whilst this literature review is rather extensive, nonetheless some useful pieces of information have been mentioned that are specifically relevant to the subject of citizen journalism.
Fenton appears to give us a good overview of the online revolution that is currently taking place within journalism, whilst Straubhaar et al support this with actual examples of citizen journalism e.g. where people used mobile phone footage and first hand accounts regarding 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina etc. Elsewhere, Burgess/Green and Vaughan provide practical guidance with respect to the expert use of Youtube and multimedia for any potential amateur journalists.
In view of the current Arabic uprisings, the BBC article is extremely relevant re: citizen journalism in authoritarian countries. It also identifies problems with citizen journalism (fakery, bias etc). Overall, however, only Friend/ Singer appear to examine the crucial issues surrounding the future of professional journalism.
Perhaps the following could also be explored:
(1) The future compatibility of professional and citizen journalism.
(2) The news ‘creation’, experience and expertise of professional journalists versus the news ‘recycling’ and gossip of citizen journalism.
(3) The ‘digital divide’ of multimedia users and non-users.
In this article it is described the understandings and challenges of citizen journalism.
It is described in the first book relevant to this topic "the understanding of new and old media", the effect of technological, economical and social changes of the present news journalism and the changes.
In this topic it contributes a lot to internet. Here it is considered comparatively the time spent to communicate news from the telephone message and from the internet. It draws attention to the distribution of news from radio, TV, Cables and satellite in the present.
In this research, it states that clear multimedia has used for these changes.
Furthermore this bibliography discusses about the information technology and its impact on the traditional style of reporting of news and connection adopted by various news Organizations. It shows a great attention to ‘YouTube’ and the ‘mainstreams media’.
It discusses about different tools of the multimedia and involvement of its skills. Apart from that, it states with regard to the online journalism ethics. The Bibliography is written after referring a large number of books to get a vast knowledge on the topic.
In overall, the student is competent to interpret very fluently the citizen journalism from the inception, middle part and at the conclusion of the Article. But it is sad to say that when writing the Bibliography the student has not used a recognized method. Apart from that, we can determine that this Bibliography is successful.
What is citizen journalism?
Citizen Journalism produced American in the 1990s, with the arrival of the era of Web2.0 become flourishing. When the birth of citizen journalism, it breaking the "disseminator" and "audience" between the traditional boundaries. Citizen journalism fundamentally changed with audience group in the status of the spread. Disseminator and audience group not only in completely equal status. And in sense can be interchanged, realized the spread of displacement subject. The idea behind the citizen journalism, if no news professional training people can use of modern technology and the Internet, expand the global distribution established cooperation with others or yourself or the fact check media.
This article surveys material is very useful
I personally think there are 4 belong to the important topic
1) Online News Journalism and the Internet
2) YouTube: Digital Media And Society Series,
3) Multimedia: Making it work
4) BBC World Service
When I saw this article, I did a research about the citizen journalism. And I found it is also a hot topic. So I think you did a good research about this topic.