kcb102 blogging and web2.0

cr e a t i v e nd u s t r i esi

creativeindustries.qut.comCRICOS No. 00213J

Blogging, citizen journalism and web 2.0

Barry Saunders

KCB102

[email protected]

http://investigativeblog.net

http://youdecide2007.org

http://qlddecides.com



Me

‒ QUT CI PhD student, ARC Linkage Citizen Journalism project - http://youdecide2007.org http://qlddecides.com

‒ Founding member Brisbane Indymedia (now defunct)

‒ Project Director Convergent Community Newsroom – http://ccnonline.org.au

‒ Background in activism and media production: http://vibewire.net, http://newstandardnews.net, http://studentmedia.org.au



Current affairs

‒ Of little interest to younger audience

‒ Often demonises ‘da youf’

‒ Repetitive format‒ http://youtube.com/

watch?v=jHso1e6NY90



Citizen Journalism

‒ Notion of citizenship more in line with DIY citizenship than the traditional legal notion

‒ (it’s what you do, not where you were born)

‒ Used to refer to media produced by non-professionals, or in a non-professional capacity: media made by non-journalists

‒ Includes things like: blogs, podcasts, Youtube



Other terms

‒ Userled production:‒ Production is driven by users: examples include Youtube,

blogs, video game mods‒ read-write web / web2.0‒ Internet sites that allow readers to contribute, edit: examples

include blogs, wikis‒ produsers/produsage‒ Combination of producers and users - used to describe the

complex ways people interact with media online‒ (Bruns, 2005)‒ Hyperlocal



Criticisms of citizen journalism

‒ Is it journalism? (well, what is journalism?)‒ Is journalism: about writing? About research?

About doing interviews?‒ Are bloggers journalists? ‒ Possibly a better question: does it contribute to

the practice of journalism?‒ Does journalism need help?‒ Who determines what is news? Journalism?



Models of citizen journalism1. Opening articles up to feedback2. Citizen add-on reporter3. Open-source or participatory reporting4. The citizen bloghouse5. Newsroom citizen 'transparency' blogs6. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version7. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version8. Add a print edition9. pro-am hybrid10. integrating citizen and professional journalism 11. wiki journalism, or readers as editors



Opening articles up to feedback

‒ ABC news / Fairfax / News Corp

‒ Need for new workers - ‘user generated content producer’ - comments moderator

‒ Question of how much moderation is appropriate

‒ Limited form of interaction, can still be worthwhile



Open-source or participatory journalism

‒ Wikinews

‒ Indymedia



indymedia

‒ Politically focused ‒ Completely open

access‒ Problems with quality

control and access‒ One of the first fully

open news sites‒ http://ithefilm.com/

home



The citizen bloghouse

‒ http://Huffingtonpost.com



Standalone citizen reporter

‒ http://Talkingpointsmemo.com



Jimmy Justice

‒ http://youtube.com/user/JimmyJustice4753

‒ Confrontational style‒ Doesn’t conform to

traditional news presentation, gonzo style

‒ Still newsworthy



integrating citizen and professional journalism

‒ http://youdecide2007.org‒ http://qlddecides.com‒ Professionals working

alongside citizen journalists

‒ Professional articles drew eyeballs but citizen articles drew comments

‒ http://ohmynews.com



pro-am hybrid

‒ Pro-am, or pro-pro

‒ Increasingly working with professionals from outside of journalism

‒ Wired magazine

‒ Wikileaks

‒ Scienceblogs.com

‒ Pollbludger, Possum’s Pollytics



Redactive journalism, or cut ‘n paste ‘n comment

Redative journalism - journalism that is made of editing - making sense of information that is publicly available

‒ We now live in a world where we have too much info rather than not enough - simply adding more information to public discourse is no longer the most important function of journalism

‒ Problem with the Narrative of Decline - assumes a perfect form of journalism, without recognizing that journalism changes as society changes

‒ … the continuing trend in journalism away from investigative reporting and toward pundit commentary also makes blog-based commentary on the news highly compatible with mainstream news content.

(Bruns, 2006)



‒ All of the information necessary to understand the massive fraud at Enron was publicly available

‒ Changing forms of journalism - Wired magazine database mashup of Myspace and public sex offender registries

‒ Science blogs that check pop-science publications and business against scientific findings - often more accurate than mainstream journalism• Recognition that journalism needs skill sets not ordinarily associated

with journalists

‒ Bloggers may not do interviews - but an entry about medical quackery may have 200 commenters offering their perspective - many of whom are doctors, biologists, scientists, etc



News blogging

‒ Participatory form of journalism‒ Expands the coverage of news‒ Allows non-experts to take depart in discourse‒ Also allows experts to explain issues in detail - economists,

scientists, doctors, etc‒ a scarcity of quality economic analysis and a conservative political

climate in the US has restricted the economic coverage of major media to supply-side ‘voodoo economics’. This has led numerous economists to publish their work online. (Quiggin, 2006)

‒ Blogs like Badscience.net and Scienceblog.com/pharyngula take apart pseudo-science, creationism, quackery

‒ Mainstream news doesn’t deal with youth issues well either - youth need their own voice



Gatewatching

‒ Differs from gatekeeping - ‒ Gatekeepers only publish what they think

is relevant/important‒ Gatewatchers point to all relevant

information, with differing levels of emphasis - allows the reader more agency



Attitude - break down of the punditocracy

‒ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniqk8HQKsM



Major source of news and media

‒ Voices not otherwise heard in mainstream media‒ Pushing the boundaries of debate (both left and right)‒ Allows misquoted/misrepresented people to have their say‒ Eg: biologists misrepresented by creationists‒ Coverage of important stories outside of media’s coverage

‒ Random acts of journalism:‒ Little Green Footballs: fake documents, Dan Rather ‒ Left blogs, Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond‒ Often involves amplification, follow up reporting and analysis.

‒ Dedicated reportage:‒ Indymedia: police violence, corruption‒ TPM Muckraker: firing of US attorneys



Random acts of journalism

‒ Can be blog posts, or increasingly on-the-ground footage from handicams and videophones

‒ Even Twitter is used for journalism

‒ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Rqc4aZceU

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.



Low cost of entry

‒ Pioneered by Kevin Sites and Dateline - consumer handicams for current affairs / documentary

‒ Increasing use of high end videophones

‒ http://blip.tv/file/586161



Business models

‒ Newspapers are worried about lost profits‒ Have traditionally been high profit industry‒ However, Fairfax has made some interesting

moves in monetising articles‒ Also, bloggers are making reasonable money

from advertising - some up to $1500 a week. ‒ Investigative journalism may be funded by

philanthropy, public interest groups, donations and government broadcasters.



Web 2.0

‒ The read-write web‒ The next generation of web-based services‒ Term coined by O’Reilly Media as name for a

series of conferences‒ Somewhat misleading as implies discrete

generations of the web- Web 2.0 video from Youtube



Web 2.0 - technical

‒ A move from web made up of linked pages to a web made up of linked data sources

‒ This means - formatting is not fixed‒ Also means - data sources are not necessarily

text - eg: http://frappr.com / http://pipes.yahoo.com

‒ Uses AJAX (asynchronous java and xml)‒ RSS (real simple syndication)‒ CSS (cascading style sheets)



Forms of citizen journalism

‒ Blogs/journals: Boingboing / LP / Troppo‒ collaborative news sites: Slashdot / digg ‒ Vlogs/citizen video: Youtube / ‒ Podcasts: Rocketboom / NYUB‒ More traditional portal style: Vibewire‒ Corporations also using these formats: ‒ SBS / ABC / QUT‒ Brisbane Times / News Corp



Early citizen journalism

‒ Indymedia

‒ Slashdot

‒ Kuro5hin

‒ Gatewatching, collaborative sites

‒ Many submitters



Social media

‒ Includes citizen media, blogs ‒ Also includes social networks‒ http://myspace.com / http://linkedin.com ‒ ‘folksonomies’‒ Social linking ‒ http://del.icio.us / http://digg.com



Blogs

‒ Blog - shortened form of web - log

‒ Usage: I have a blog, I blog, I’m a blogger.

‒ Not: I wrote a blog today. (blog entry or blog post)

‒ Often: one author

‒ May be based on a single theme.



blogs‒ Numerous forms‒ Personal blogs:‒ http://livejournal.com / http://dooce.com

‒ Political blogs

‒ http://timblair.net / http://johnquiggin.com / http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

‒ Corporate blogs‒ http://scobleizer.com/ / http://www.blogmaverick.com/

‒ Science blogs‒ http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ / http://badscience.net



More blogs

‒ Randomness‒ http://boingboing.net / http://kottke.org

‒ Feminism‒ http://feministing.com / http://pandagon.net

‒ Food‒ http://megnut.com / http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot

.com



Even more blogs

‒ Gossip‒ http://thesuperficial.com / http://perezhilton.com‒ Tech‒ http://gizmodo.com / http://engadget.com‒ Video games‒ http://kotaku.com / http://joystiq.com ‒ Education‒ http://whatswrongwiththejschool.blogspot.com/



Characteristics of blogs

‒ Personal tone

‒ Often short entries (notable exceptions)

‒ Use of quotes and links

‒ RSS

‒ Comments, trackback



Popular blog services

‒ Livejournal

‒ Blogger

‒ Typepad

‒ Wordpress

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