NDM News: Citizen journalism and hyper-reality

Read the article from Media Magazine: The Rise and Rise of UGC (Dec 2009). Use our Media Magazine archive, click on MM30 and go to page 55.


Examples

• Rodney King was an African-American. After a high speed chase, the officers surrounded him, tasered him and beat him with clubs. The event was filmed by an onlooker from his apartment window. The home-video footage made prime-time news and became an international media sensation, and a focus for complaints about police racism towards African- Americans. Four officers were charged with assault and use of excessive force.
• The Asian Tsunami on December 26th 2004 was predominantly reported using UGC. Social media also helped to create eye witness accounts and also 'helped survivors and family members get in touch'.
• The London Bombings on July 5th 2005 is yet another example. Most of the footage they provided was from mobile phones.
• Twitter and flickr came to the forefront during the Mumbai bombings in India in late November 2008. As bombs exploded across the city, the world’s media got up-to date with events through reports on Twitter and Flickr. There were questions raised, however, that by broadcasting their tweets, people may have been putting their own and others’ lives at risk.
• A final example is the Hudson River plane crash. Where the story began with a dramatic picture of a plane half sinking in the river.

Theory

• Blumler and Katz proposed the uses and gratifications theory. This theory suggests that all media texts serve at least one of their uses or gratifications. Most relevant to news, is surveillance, this is because news keeps consumers informed about current affairs.
• The hypodermic syringe model was based on early observations of the effect of mass media. It suggests that the media injects its messages straight into the passive audience. This theory is challenged by the idea of citizen journalism as audiences are 'active' in this role rather than 'passive'
• Galtung and Ruge showed that several factors are consistently applied across a range of news organisations. They came up with a list including negativity, recency, continuity etc.

Benefits to institutions 

• Institutions are benefited in that they are provided with free content that may of otherwise been hard to retrieve or record themselves. With all the potential citizen journalists, this makes events much easier to report on as it is far more likely that someone has footage. 
• Moreover, citizen journalism creates content for institutions for free. Content produced by 'ordinary people' means that institutions are also saving money because they don't always need to send out a filming team to capture footage.

Benefits to audience 

• Audiences are given a sense of power with this opportunity. They are no longer a 'passive' audience, they are 'active.' 
• A huge benefit audiences have is that they are given the opportunity for expression on several platforms. They can easily voice their opinions at any point.
• Audiences are given the immediate gratification; they are able to find out about what they what when they want.

Wider issues and debates

• There is no regulation of what is posted so a lot of content can be falsified and/or inappropriate.

SHEP:

Social

• There has been a huge change in the way audiences interact with the media; audiences play an active rather than passive role. It seems ordinary people automatically film an event through instinct rather than running to save themselves and forget.

Historical

• In 1991, cameras become more popular and affordable.

Economic

• News institutions can spend less on footage. The rise in citizen journalism means that institutions are also saving money because they don't always need to send out a filming team to capture footage.

Political

• Typically the gatekeepers are the more powerful - considering the unmanageable amount of content produced, the powerful have less control over what information is filtered/not filtered.

1) What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?
A citizen journalist refers to an 'ordinary person' i.e someone part of the general public, creating news content, typically by means of the Internet.

2) What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?
We first felt the effects of citizen journalists in 1991 in the case of Rodney King. He was an African-American. After a high speed chase, the officers surrounded him, tasered him and beat him with clubs. The event was filmed by an onlooker from his apartment window. The home-video footage made prime-time news and became an international media sensation, and a focus for complaints about police racism towards African- Americans. Four officers were charged with assault and use of excessive force.

3) List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.
Some formats for participation include message boards, chat rooms, Q&A, polls, have your says, and blogs with comments enabled.

4) What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?
The footage taken by citizen journalists, first-hand is usually far more emotive and hard-hitting. This is because of the raw and uncompromising nature of the footage. 

5) What is a gatekeeper?
Gatekeepers go through the process of gatekeeping. Through this, information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication. In other words, gatekeepers, decide what information to include and what not to include.

6) How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?
Considering that UGC is on the rise, it means everyone is given the opportunity to create content, resulting in a huge increase in content. This means gatekeepers have far more information to be sorting through - their control/power is limited. 

7) What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?
A primary concern is that audiences being less passive and more active in the content they see, is that their interests are prioritised. The issue with this is that often audiences interests aren't always 'newsworthy'.  In fact, a BBC spokesperson reported that a large proportion of photos sent in to the news unit were of kittens. While this may represent the interest of the audience, or users, it still doesn’t turn the fact that your kitten is really cute into ‘news.’

8) What impact is new/digital media having on:

• news stories

• the news agenda (the choice of stories that make up the news)

• the role of professionals in news

New and digital media allows for more surveillance of the world. Events or incidents that aren't usually covered by news institutions are now far more likely to have some content about them shown online, particularly on social media. This means the choice of news is more criticised as people are more aware of what news institutions are leaving in and leaving out. Therefore, their news agenda has started to consist of stories that reflect the interests of the audiences more. The role of professionals in the news has changed also. They are less valued, considering that now anybody can fulfil their role such as amateur you tubers or influencers.