Citizen journalism

Technology (mobile phones, the web, email) has put so many more feet on the ground when it comes to news gathering. The value – or otherwise – of what results depends on adequate filters. JOSH CATONE

By Josh Catone

Last week, citizen journalism took one on the chin when a false report about Steve Jobs’ health made its way on to the front page of CNN’s iReport site and caused Apple’s stock to temporarily plummet, sparking an SEC investigation.

Many were quick to use the incident to point out the shortcomings in so-called citizen journalism.

On commenter here characterised citizen journalism as something that he identifies with “wild, unchecked, unsourced reporting by anyone with an email address”.

Clearly, that would be a problem if reports were published as reliable news without anyone checking the facts. But we shouldn’t discount the merits of citizen journalism out of hand.

Let’s also not get into the exact definition of citizen journalism and whether that includes professional bloggers – am I a citizen journalist? I have no journalism degree, but I’ve written for print magazines and newspapers. Who knows?

The point I’ll try to make here is that citizen journalism has a place – even the wild, unchecked stuff. It just needs a filter.

Examples of utility

Citizen journalists have proven their worth more than a few times over the past couple of years. Last February, when there was a rare earthquake in Britain, reports broke over Twitter before the major news wires.

The same thing happened a couple of months later during the disastrous and tragic Sichuan earthquake in China. The first reports came from people – essentially citizen journalists – in the affected area.

Last autumn, when bushfires ravaged the California coast, citizen journalists with mobile phone cameras and Twitter access were able to paint a broader picture of events as they happened than any mainstream news outlet ever could – there were simply more feet on the ground.

“Current events in California have made the emerging symbiotic relationship between citizen journalists and the mainstream news media quite apparent,” I wrote at the time. “In order to report on the fires ravaging that part of the United States, many news outlets have solicited, and subsequently used, submissions from people capturing news with phone cameras and on blogs (and Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc).”

The same relationship between citizen reports and mainstream filtering was apparent during the Missouri bridge collapse and Virginia Tech shootings earlier in the year – both of which received major contributions from regular people who were on the scene faster than trained reporters.

“The real contribution of citizen journalists in a story like [the California fires], where whole areas of land are closed off and the fields of greatest danger keep shifting, is in having more eyes on the ground,” Thomas Hollihan, a professor of media at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California told the Baltimore Sun last October.

“Citizen journalists are swapping information back and forth – reporting where the flames are now headed or showing images on their cell phones of the fire. And with so much happening so quickly, that kind of information can be really powerful – if it is accurate.”

The key is the filter

The reason the above examples were successful is that the unsourced reports coming in from citizen journalists were subsequently filtered and (hopefully) verified by professional journalists.

We expect a certain standard of professionalism in journalism and news reporting that includes fact checking, which simply can’t be met if we don’t know who is reporting and what their sources are.

However, clearly, citizen journalism has its uses.

“It may be a mistake for news organisations to keep begging people to send them stuff. That’s the way they think – centralised, controlling, exclusive,” writes Jeff Jarvis, who wonders if the Steve Jobs incident demonstrated citizen journalism’s failings or the mainstream media’s jealousies.

“But the better structure may be for journalists to curate the best of what is out on the web. Rather than playing whack-a-mole on the occasional mistake/rumour/lie sent in, editors would better serve if they found the best content anywhere, not just among that which was sent to them.”

The keyword there is “curate”. Citizen journalism needs curators. Once the noise is sorted from the signal, Joe on the street corner with a mobile phone can make significant contributions to the reporting of news – and Mary in her living room can trust what she’s seeing.

Josh is the lead blogger for sitepoint.com. He covers all things new and exciting on the web and is based in Rhode Island, USA.  

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