Citizen Journalism: Liberation or Information Chaos?

 Smart phones changed regular people into media creators. Videos of protests, live streams of people's interactions with the police, and election footage, in real time, are often seen by millions before the big news outlets even start to look at them.


The big news outlets were forced to cover a story that they would have otherwise ignored because of citizen journalism.

The George Floyd case is an example of what I am talking about. If there hadn't been video shot by a bystander, the whole country would probably never have had a chance to see how the case developed like it did.

But while creating your own news gives you more freedom, it has drawbacks too. While you are creating news, you don't have editors filtering out bad information; nor do you have people explaining context for what you just showed on TV; and finally, you don't have anyone verifying the accuracy of the information that you are showing.

So, when you shoot a moment of history with your smart phone, you show us a moment of history -- but you don't give us all the facts that surround that moment.

And so, we get "narrative distortion" which is when the audience fills in all the gaps of information with their own assumptions or political interpretation.

While traditional media acts as gate keepers (they filter information), they also act as our watchdogs to help us make sure the information we receive is accurate (fact checking); they also help us verify who said what (sourcing) and if there are errors, they will correct those errors.

So, while citizen journalism allows us to be free and able to report on things we think need to be reported on, it also allows us to be wrong and to report incorrect information.

References

  • Allan, S. Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives. Peter Lang, 2017.

  • Carlson, M. Journalistic Authority. Columbia University Press, 2017.

  • Zuckerman, E. Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them. W. W. Norton & Co., 2020.

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