Citizen Journalism + UGC + Hyper-reality and the Digital Renaissance

Citizen Journalism + UGC

Examples:

• Rodney King, 1991 - event filmed by onlooker from apartment window. The home-video footage made prime-time news and became an international media sensation.
• Asian Tsunami, 2004 - 'accidental journalists' tourists filming holiday, caught up in the natural disaster 
• London bombings, 2005 - citizen journalism footage was raw and uncompromising: The first hand view is more emotive than professionally shot news footage 
• Seung-Hui Cho - mailed to NBC news his shootings - a student recorded the footage on his mobile revealing the events 
• Mumbai bombings, 2008 - reports were posted on Twitter and Flickr, by broadcasting these tweets people believed that they may have been putting their lives at risk 
• Hudson River Plane Crash, 2009 - dramatic picture available on Twitpic -While national news organisations quickly swung into action, it was the citizen journalist, empowered by social networking sites, that first broke the story

Theory: 

• Gatekeepers are there to avoid misleading the public within the news and therefore prevent publishing of stories that are not validated 
• However the way of surpassing these gatekeepers is simple - the independent media on the internet 
• Blogosphere provides an opportunity for independent, often minority and niche views and news to reach a wide audience.

Benefits to Institutions: 

• Moderators would still be required in order to filter out the bigots on websites 
• Although how to ‘monetarise’ UGC – how to make money for both the generator and the host of the content – is still being debated, bigger institutions have been buying up social networking sites for the last few years. Rather than launch their own challenge, they simply buy the site.

Benefits to Audience: 

• Audiences are no longer passive receivers of news 
• UGC - allows users to voice own opinions, divide between institution and audience being eroded
• The power to make and break news has moved beyond the traditional news institutions
• Citizen journalism benefits audience as it is raw and emotive 

Wider Issues and Debates 

• News Values are effected by citizen journalism as the news agenda is shaped around quality and validated news stories, therefore the value of news needs to be of a quality to inform people as the news offers a public service to be informative 
• Blumler + Katz uses and gratifications theory - the idea of surveillance and the news providing quality information for audiences 
• Stanley Cohen - Moral Panics, the idea that UGC could offer moral panics within a society as audiences are able to post anything 
• Regulation and censorship - the idea of gatekeepers to mediate what is online - the validity of what is posted online needs to be questioned and mediated in order for it to be quality news

SHEP 
Social: -
UGC allows audiences to voice their own opinions without the intrusion of gatekeepers, through the blogosphere
Social issues of the quality of the content being trusted - is it actually valid, can ordinary people provide quality news when they are unaware of professional journalism?
Historical: - 
Rodney King, Michael Brown and other police brutality issues have been showcased through the power of camera phones and footage
Economical: - 
Raises economical issues for journalists and institutions as they would become effected by citizen journalism and UGC as they will not be required to provide news stories
Political: - 
Political issues of racial discrimination and terrorist attacks, bombings - political events can be filmed and shared online quicker than a news broadcast can publish it

What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?

A citizen journalist is an ordinary person who generates news content for example recording a video of a news event on their phones.

What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?

One of the first examples of this was in 1991, where an onlooker recorded Rodney King being abused by officers - this provided evidence against the 4 officers and therefore allowed for justice to be served. 

List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.

• message boards 
• chat rooms 
• Q & A's 
• Polls 
• Have your says 
• Blogs with comments enabled 

What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?

The first hand view allows the footage to be more emotive, raw and hard-hitting. The audience benefit from this as it is unmediated, therefore the professionally shot footage doesn't have the same effect through the process of editing. 

What is a gatekeeper?

A gatekeeper is someone who mediates the news that they receive and choose whether or not they are valid for publishing or not. 

How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?

The idea of social media and the blogosphere has changed the role of the gatekeeper as UGC removes the gatekeeper from publishing. 

What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?

There will be fewer and fewer trained journalists, leaving a smaller team of journalists within an organisation - this process of 'crowd-sourcing' will take place and the concern is mediators and moderators may essentially disappear. 

Offer your own opinion (critical autonomy) on the following:
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 citizen journalists to emerge and therefore empowers audiences to therefore share their views and provide essential evidence to help serve justice. However, I think that the issue with these news stories are the validity of them and the fact that these citizen journalists are not professionally trained so how can we trust what they are reporting and it all may be a hoax too. The news agenda compiles professional and quality news stories, if there are no journalists to professionally compile the news agenda then the quality of this will become standardised, therefore be of less value. It would also be a huge concern for journalism jobs as ordinary people are able to take over the careers of professionals.

Hyper-reality and the Digital Renaissance 

Examples: 

• last thirty years has seen films, televisions and pop music that play with audience expectations 
• history of television and cinema - audiences have traditionally been very accepting of the way in which media texts invite the viewer to confront their own perception of reality. The silent movie era change brought about the acceptance of audience as the concept was natural and unaffected
• most successful brands are those that are seen across multiple platforms such as Kerrang! which is on website, tv and radio station 
• social networking websites embody postmodern culture: the virtual reality allows audiences to be free within their construction of their identity from a bricolage of pop culture reference
• Skype - combines landline calls with the video conference calls 

Theories:

• Theodore Adorno - viewed the gramophone record and cinema as a means of distracting the working class from their disadvantaged social positions
• "Jean Baudrillard’s work is pivotal in understanding terms like hyper- reality and simulacrum, he expresses anxiety about a society alienated from itself."
• Stuart Hall - dominant readings of the cinema change, audiences accepted this change as it became more 'normal' and reflected our own lives
• Blumler and Katz 'uses and gratifications' theory, focusing on the idea that personal identity can be seen online, on social networking sites and therefore personal relationships can also be built through this hyper reality
• audiences except conformed ideas - they will not question the social norms as they consider them as conventional 

Positive aspects of new technology: 

• television has helped to shape and reflect society's ideas about contemporary social issues 
• Convergence enables efficiency 
• social networking websites embody postmodern culture: the virtual reality allows audiences to be free within their construction of their identity from a bricolage of pop culture reference - encourages us to develop idealised personas 
• can embrace our aspirational codes of consumer culture and reinvent ourselves in order to reflect our idealised persona 
• offer the change to enter a hyper-realistic utopia
• Skype
• September 11th - the messages left on answer machines 
• rebirth of the way audiences think about society and culture 

Negative aspects of new technology on audiences and society:

• There has been a substitution of real life face to face interaction, which has been overlooked by the hyper reality online 
• cyberbullying 
• the issues with becoming stuck in an idealised virtual reality - you are not who you are - this lack of physical communication 

Wider issues and debates: 

• News values - citizen journalism may be seen as more accurate and raw, therefore more convincing for audiences 
• The idea of reality TV and the idealistic persona that audiences want to portray online, audiences are able to submerge in a virtual hyper-real utopia where they can be whoever they want to be
• Moral panics - Stanley Cohen - if everything is seen as hyper-realistic how can we distinguish reality from hyper-reality, therefore would make us question everything we see online within the digital renaissance
• The digital revolution - the changing of apps and the way we communicate offers new possibilities and innovative opportunities for audiences and therefore could effect institutions as they are no longer the ones in power  

The article was written in 2009. Offer three examples of more recent social networking sites or uses of technology that support the idea of a 'digital renaissance'.
Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat support this idea of the digital renaissance. Twitter helps us to voice our opinion through not only tweets but videos and pictures, whilst simultaneously being able to follow others and shape our ideals around other people's morals. Instagram and Snapchat are not as allows audiences to share what they want and therefore be affected by the content of others so become shaped by them, through the lifestyles of the higher ruling powers for example.

How do live streaming services such as Periscope or Facebook Live fit into the idea of a 'digital renaissance'? Are these a force for good or simply a further blurring of reality?

Periscope and Facebook Live offer examples of sharing ones lifestyles with a wider audience, it enables audiences to showcase what they feel like and therefore reflect their own views through the apps. I think that these apps essentially help audiences to share content, however it may also be seen as a negative thing due to the fact that you can blur the judgement of the real you and therefore reveal an idealised version through the screen. The idea of piracy is also an issue here as audiences are able to record live events such as paid for hyped boxing matches or music concerts; this could therefore be a problem for institutions too.

How can we link the 'digital renaissance' to our case study on news? Is citizen journalism a further example of hyper-reality or is it actually making news more accurate and closer to real life?

Citizen journalism offers this more accurate viewpoint through the idea of it being more closer to real life due to the first hand perspective and the unedited footage, making it more raw and convincing as being more accurate. However, the idea of manipulation can still be seen through citizen journalism as not all viewpoints of the incident may be seen, therefore may effect audiences through this.