Journalist Michael Rogers hosted an all-star panel at NetSquared on citizen journalism and social change.
Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media is proud of his time spent in mainstream media. He believes that today, the best reporting being done on Guantanamo is being done by the ACLU. Citizen journalism tools are empowering all of us to contribute to the transparency of information; the barriers to entry are essentially down to zero. (Even the Pentagon is doing podcasts!) Communities of geography and communities of interest are coming together. There is a great opportunity for news organizations to help people become activists within their community of choice.
When Hong Eun-taek from OhmyNews stepped up to the podium, he was entirely surprised that so many in the audience had heard of the site. The company's premise is that every citizen is a reporter, and that anyone who shares a new development with others is a journalist. Eun-taek strongly believes that this is a platform for social change.
Since launching in early 2000, OhmyNews has grown to over 42,000 "citizen reporters." The editorial process takes their submissions and sorts them into categories such as news, features, essays, etc. News gets screened by a "guerrilla news desk" to make sure that it's valid. Running in parallel to this is a team of 65 paid reporters working on the more newsworthy items.
There are several layers of participation for individuals. You can write a story (the company pays $40 for a front-page story, and $10 for each second-page story), post a comment, or get involved in a chat. OhmyNews will also host links from its contributors and from other news sources - interestingly, other news sources will also host OhmyNews links, which speaks to the reliability of the citizen reporters.
OhmyNews may be one of the most successful citizen journalism sites, but the company doesn't yet know if that is something that will only work in Korea. With some cash from Softbank, they will be launching in Japan to see if the model is transferable. The company is also working on OhmyNews International, which is an English-language version and encompasses 86 countries and 1,000 citizen reporters.
Global Voices is an edited aggregator of news from around the world. Ethan Zuckerman frames his role as an advocate, and talked a great deal about people being detained for speaking out, and how blogging has played a part in both drawing attention to detainees like Hao Wu, and allowing others to connect to the person and the experience. Global Voices tries to point directly to the people involved (such as Wu's sister), and then gets out of the way so that people can create direct connections.
Zuckerman pointed to how the demographics of the Internet are drastically evolving. There are already more users in Asia (36% of Net users) than in North America (23%). The next waves of users will come from places like Africa, and the community will undoubtedly change as the next billion users - authors - come online. As Zuckerman puts it, if we assume that people will speak for themselves, then infrastructure builders should focus on:
- Access to publishing tools
- Knowledge to use the tools
- Translation
- Context
- Amplification
Global Voices focuses on these aspects in several ways: for example, they work with groups like Reporters Without Borders to provide handbooks to people so that they can learn to blog anonymously, especially in environments where the blogger could be arrested. Translation and context services are essential not only so that people outside the blogger's native country can read the message, but also so that readers have the context to actually understand the story. Grassroots media authenticity is more assured when you create a direct connection with the blogger, as versus relying upon newsbots.
Zuckerman cited Witness as a great example of an organization that gets this. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is a funder of Witness.) In another example, Human Rights Watch has decided to not include content from bloggers in its reports, to enhance perceived reliability and validity. Instead, HRW separately supports bloggers on the issues.
The self-assembling newsroom, the community information resource, the mashup - as all of this great information becomes available, the problem of Too Much Information becomes even more prevalent. Gillmor believes that sorting this out will require both human and machine management.
Editors make a sprawling mass of information more digestible. Though the preferred heaviness of the hand varied, all of the speakers thought that there was some role for editors in citizen journalism. It's notable that across all of the examples presented, the editors are not editing words - they are editing the presentation of the words. Without human support for presentation, it seems hard to know what is important.
Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys netsquared net2 nonprofit nptech technology ohmynews global voices citizen journalism dan gillmor media
