The latest weekly wireless communications "Thinkernet" column on CMP's "Internet Evolution" discusses software and services for cellular phones and on the Web for facilitating citizen journalism.
(Source: http://www.mobiletelevisionreport.com/2008/03/citizen-journal.html)
The ubiquity of mobile phone cameras and video phones has turned everyone into citizen journalists. The tools of modern technology have enabled people to contribute to journalism. As stated by Bowman and Willis (2003), ‘we are at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism – but it is not journalism as we have known it’; if we carry on like this, by 2021 citizens will have contributed ’50 per cent of the news peer-to-peer’. A fine example of this new media issue is the moment of London bombings in which everyday people got caught using camera phones to take pictures that illustrated the news coverage of the London terrorist bombings. As shown in an article ‘Why I have serious doubts about the “citizen reporters”’ on Guardian.co.uk on 17 July 2005, today’s technology enables the process of news-gathering. In the article, Naughton (2005) referred to this issue as ‘a democratisation of the news process’ and referred to the use of mobile phone cameras during the attack as ‘the true birth of the “citizen reporter”’.
In discussing the issues in relation to citizen journalism, Tremayne (2007, p. 239) stated that ‘in 1999, frustration with the “one-way journalism of the 20th century and the haughty attitude common in the Korean media” led to inspiration for one young Korean journalist’. Then, Oh Yeon-Ho started ‘a media revolution’ with the motto “Every citizen is a journalist”. As a result, OhMyNews, an online newspaper in which the majority of news articles and commentary are written by 727 “citizen reporters”, was released on 22 February 2000. However the notion of citizen journalism has already existed beforehand. As Glaser (2005) describes that ‘citizen paparazzi is not really a new concept, and the proliferation of cameras has continued unabated since the first point-and-shoot 35mm cameras took off right through cheap digital cameras’.
As we know that technology has grown dramatically. Commenting on this issue, I think it is advisable for us to concern about the use of gadgets such as mobile phone cameras and video phones as there are so many implications caused by the tools of modern technology for media and journalism.
References
Bowman, S & Willis, C 2003, ‘We media: how audiences are shaping the future of news and information’, The Media Center at The American Press Institute, viewed 12 June 2008, <http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php>.
Glaser, M 2005, ‘Did London bombings turn citizen journalists into citizen paparazzi?’, Online Journalism Review 7 December, viewed 13 June 2008, <http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050712glaser/>.
Naughton, J 2005, ‘Why I have serious doubts about the “citizen reporters”’, Guardian.co.uk 17 July, viewed 13 June 2008, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jul/17/comment.mobilephones>.
Tremayne, M 2007, Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, New York.
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