The impact of citizen journalism (A Debate NOT about religion, govt or girl-parts!)

[dislekcia]

Read this article recently, realised it might be grounds for some really interesting discussion here:

Quote:

Yes – what of it? For all of our talk about “the world watching”, what good did social media actually do for the people of Iran? Did the footage out of the country actually change the outcome of the elections? No. Despite a slew of YouTube videos and a couple of thousand foreign Twitter users turning their avatar green and pretending to be in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power. It’s astonishing, really. Despite how successful ten million actual voters marching through Washington, London and other major cities in 2003 were in stopping the invasion of Iraq, a bit of entirely virtual cyber-posturing by foreigners didn’t lead to real change in Iran. And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.

I think an interesting point is raised here: Does the "camera" effect dehumanise us or does it empower us?

I can't help wondering what happens when we turn the camera on ourselves. Instead of being the stylised impartial news-source, we're the news itself. How does that impact said embattled humanity? And how do you draw the line between desired impartiality of information and human involvement to solve problems? Is reporting on something helpful or not?

Did that guy recording the final moments of Neda Agha Soltan help her or hinder her? I don't know. On one side I think that if he couldn't help her physically, nor did he hinder her getting help that could have saved her life (like he wasn't around the block from the best trauma surgery in the world, for instance) then his recording IS the best help he can offer.

Sure, we like telling people what we're looking at. But we like being noticed more.

[BattleMoose]

I read through the article, and what I found particularly interesting was the embedded video clip, of those toy cameras in the playground. (If you haven't go watch it) Being behind a camera seems to remove oneself from the situation and becoming a viewer of real life instead of being in a position of interacting with it.

So in answering the prime question as posed, I would go for a third option that it removes one from the situation so that the person changes roles from being an actor/protagonist to one of being a viewer.

Clearly its a problem if people are recording if they could be giving assistance. Although I am not sure if anything can really be done about it.

EDIT:
And thanks for that indirect link to that "American Life" video, I really find such occurrence incredibly interesting, when usual circumstances result in almost demonic human behavior, much like milgram experimentand Stanford prison experiment.

[dammit]

I wonder why we act so differently? Are we just imitating what we presume a Real Journalist(TM) is supposed to do? Or do we disconnect from the situation, feeling we're not involved but simply observing? Why do we feel that's it's okay to watch someone die simply because we're recording it (context is obviously relevant here)?

Also:

Quote:

How we’re increasingly seeing people at the scene of major accidents grabbing their cellphones to capture the dramatic events and share them with their friends, rather than calling 911. Last week I went even further with my doom-mongering, suggesting that the trend of adding people’s homes to Foursquare without permission was indicative of a generation that prioritised their own fun over the privacy of their friends.

I'm literally horrified by the number of emails I get of images of accident scenes. Every single time I get one I reply to that person with the message to the effect of: "What if I knew the person in that image? How do you think that would make me feel, seeing their brains spewed across the tarmac? Perhaps a little more tact is necessary in future." [This has resulted in a drastic reduction of those types of emails coming my way, thank goodness] But I still wonder why people do this. I understand morbid curiosity but actually forwarding the images on? Saving them on your cellphone and encouraging colleagues to watch videos of the stuff (that's how I landed up watching a video of an autopsy :< )? Madness.

[dammit]

I wonder if it comes down to the bystander effect or at least something very similar?

[milk]

Interesting topic, I am not sure how i stand on this one but this reminds me of an extract from a book we once studied by Ian McEwan

"It's a condition of the times, this compulsion to hear how it stands with the world, and be joined to the generality, to a community of anxiety. The habit's grown stronger these past two years; a different scale of news value has been set by monstrous and spectacular scenes. The possibility of their recurrence is one thread that binds the days. The government's counsel -- that an attack in a European or American city is an inevitability -- isn't only a disclaimer of responsibility, it's a heady promise. Everyone fears it, but there's also a darker longing in the collective mind, a sickening for self-punishment and a blasphemous curiosity. Just as the hospitals have their crisis plans, so the television networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait. Bigger, grosser next time. Please don't let it happen. But let me see it all the same, as it's happening and from every angle, and let me be among the first to know"

[dislekcia]

From Ian Bogost's twitter feed:

Originally Posted by @ibogost

Citizen journalism that deserves the name is immensely rare. We have digital eyewitnessing, which is entirely different.

[Nandrew]

A common failing point of citizen journalism is that they try to emulate what a Real Journalist(keke) does without understanding WHY journos take the course of action that they do. Prime example of this in the article:

Quote:

What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.

In short: noble behaviour which was nonetheless misguided.

A lot of people naively assume that a journalist's job is simply about finding and sharing information, but the approach is more often qualitative than quantitative. Deciding whether a particular piece of news should be shared (and how it is done) is often just as important as finding that news in the first place. Unfortunately, this sentiment often has people squealing "censorship!": apparently, there's no such thing as being "armed with the wrong information".

This "write/show/speak everything" attitude is why millions of people blog about what they ate for breakfast and why their cats are so cute. The term "information overload" is already becoming pretty common jargon in today's society, and citizen journalism is just worsening it. What news is the most important? Which sources do we trust? Ranting Blogger A in Iraq may be talking complete bull**** half of the time, or focusing on all the wrong details. Hell, Ranting Blogger A may just be a self-righteous foreign teenager posing as someone knee-deep in the conflict. The field of journalism has always been fraught with inaccuracies and outright fraud, and cit journ isn't helping.

I'm not saying that all cit journos are bad. Some of them are pretty damn responsible and living proof of the fact that people don't need formal journalism training to get the job done right. It's just that in this given arena, they have to contend with complete neophytes who produce work that receives just as much -- if not more -- attention than theirs. For news consumers, sorting the wheat from the chaff becomes impossible unless you're already trained to be a critical audience, and even in our "enlightened" state today it's quite sad to say that people will believe most of what they pick up without questioning it properly. Source integrity simply isn't a concept in a lot of minds.

If citizen journalism in the long term could encourage the world's population to be more careful about the information they trust and eventually become a more critical audience, then I'd consider that to be a very positive impact. It can reach into a lot of places where conventional journalism can't, and in fact I know several journalists who regularly follow leads and discover new things from the work of amateurs. It's pretty damn useful if you can avoid the pitfalls.

But it's also a vast source of obfuscation and ineffective drama-mongering. I don't see it dying any time soon (in fact, I think the best thing to do is try encourage growth in a way that won't be harmful), but I believe this to be a clear indication that journalism, like any other job, has its professionals for a reason. There's sooooo many mistakes to be made in a field like that, and I find it rather frightening that people will trust somebody who hasn't experienced any of those mistakes yet -- or worse yet, is busy making them without even realising it.

[Nandrew]

I wouldn't be surprised. Most people would have been occupied by the shocking news of the shooting itself, rather than looking into the technicalities of how the news was distributed. That's what makes this article interesting.

Fort Hood was an anecdotal tool to present a general idea.

[wrathex]

Originally Posted by dislekcia

Read this article recently, realised it might be grounds for some really interesting discussion here: I think an interesting point is raised here: Does the "camera" effect dehumanise us or does it empower us? I can't help wondering what happens when we turn the camera on ourselves. Instead of being the stylised impartial news-source, we're the news itself. How does that impact said embattled humanity? And how do you draw the line between desired impartiality of information and human involvement to solve problems? Is reporting on something helpful or not? Did that guy recording the final moments of Neda Agha Soltan help her or hinder her? I don't know. On one side I think that if he couldn't help her physically, nor did he hinder her getting help that could have saved her life (like he wasn't around the block from the best trauma surgery in the world, for instance) then his recording IS the best help he can offer. Sure, we like telling people what we're looking at. But we like being noticed more.

We should not think in terms of dehuminisation anymore, it is an entrenched and ongoing phenomena which had it's origins in television.

Instead I think we should be more positive about this change in global society. Let's see it as a step towards a true transparent society. The first steps.

Though at this stage, chaos reigns and many individuals are sprouting their particular version of events out there, adding to the general background noise that makes up the internet.

Citizen reporting brings a new dimension to the way news is reported, a more personal, passionate, dramatic and often purposely sensational approach is mostly used.

Of course, not all individuals understand the rules, and many don't have any writing or reporting skills at all, yet the information they offer cannot just be dismissed, it gets added to the pool and we have to sift through the crap to get to the good stuff.

The more input we have from individuals, the clearer the picture becomes, regarding the
quality and morality of citizen reporting, we will eventually see a higher standard emerge as
users/readers become fickle in their choices and eventually ignore those bloggers/writers/citizens who are a waste of time.

A new level of transparency has also emerged, first on a social level, less pretense, an attitude of 'except me just as I am or f-off.'

Citizens are making contact with each other without having a diplomat or diplomatic translater sitting in between, the thought police simply cannot completely control this technology, because the users are technolgically able.

One of the great benefits of citizen reporting is that it serves naturally as a watchdog, watching individuals, corporations and governments, and in a measure ensuring a level of responsibility and accountability.

Any news is news and is valid. Whether I'm interested in it is a different story.

Citizens who don't understand that information they publish can be held against them, are fools.

Citizens who have low ethical standards and do sensational reporting at a cost to others, will and can be held legally accountable.

That is how transparency works.

Quickly back to dehuminisation. We are dehuminised, especially those of us in South Africa, this however does not imply that we don't care or don't feel, it only implies that it has become a familiar part of our landscape and no longer has shock value.