The terms citizen journalism and participatory journalism are often used interchangeably and both share similar aspects. From my perspective, citizen journalism involves people who previously only received the news going out and reporting the news themselves. I believe participatory journalism describes the act of readers/viewers contributing to journalism via interaction with the news media by participating in online polls, leaving comments on stories, and sending in pictures, video, and other information.
Leslie Walker’s article On Local Sites, Everyone’s a Journalist describes citizen journalism websites as those where all news is submitted by people who are not reporters. However, We Media by Shane Bowman and Chris Willis defines participatory journalism as “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.”
The fact that these four definitions seem to all overlap proves that there is no clear definition of either term. Despite the lack clarity, examples of both are abundant. One of the best examples of this revolution is South Korea’s OhmyNews which J.D. Lasica categorizes under “full-fledged participatory news sites” in What is Participatory Journalism? Bowman and Willis explain how OhmyNews allows over 26,000 citizen journalists to collaborate on writing stories for the online newspaper which is “the most influential online news site in [South Korea], attracting an estimated 2 million readers a day.” (Notice once again how one person refers to the site as participatory and the other refers to its citizen journalism.) Another obvious example of this emerging form of journalism is the increasing number of blogs which allow anyone to report information instantly.
One of the biggest changes in this new era of journalism is the decreasing amount of censorship. In the past, editors reviewed the stories submitted and selected which ones to run. Today, no one reviews all the information posted on personal and citizen sites. Traditional journalism has always concerned itself with principles such as objectivity, credibility, and accuracy, but as citizen and participatory journalism technologies have developed, people have begun to question where the lines have been redrawn and whether or not such work is worthy of being considered journalism. The field of journalism is likely to continue shifting away from large news organizations producing news and toward an increasing number of un-tested and un-controllable individuals posting news and information online.
Check out: Walker, Leslie. “On Local Sites, Everyone’s a Journalist.”
Check out: Bowman, Shane & Willis, Chris. “We Media.”
Check out: Lasica, J.D. “What is Participatory Journalism?”
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060217106.php
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