The Professional Journalism - Literature review Example

How the Professional Journalism can raise the standard of Citizen Journalism Student’s Name; Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: How the Professional Journalism can raise the standard of Citizen Journalism 1.0 Introduction The advancement in information and communication technology has revolutionised how people communicate and distribute news (Marsico, 2010, p.967). One area that has seen phenomenal growth as a result of this paradigmatic shift is the growth of what is known as online community. Online community is a group of people who utilise the internet platform to distribute information, entertain and socialise (Elgin, 2006). An aspect that as emerged out of the online community concept is the growth of Social Media and Micro-blogging sites as means of distributing information or news. In this approach, news for the public domain is distributed through an individualised platform rather than the traditional institutionalised media (Markham, 2011, p.152). According to Silver (2009, p.143), the future of social media as a means of distributing information by citizens outside the institutionalised platform is bright based on the `fact that it is a quicker way of disbursing information. Indeed there is concern about the use of Citizen Journalism as means of distributing news which might not be from unverified sources. In the recent past mainstream media outlets have used information from Social Media like Twitter which are unverified to inform the public. For instance, Journalists in BBC broke the news about Mumbai bombings based on unverified Tweets (Hermida, 2010, p.300). Schulte (2010) affirms that news organisations have intensified use of Social Networking sites like Twitter to circulate news. The same is observable outside mainstream media. On the other hand, Sonderman (2012) states that news presented on Twitter is not credible as compared to information delivered on websites and institutionalised media. This equally becomes critically if it goes viral. The question then is why the phenomenal growth of Citizen Journalism in the platforms like Twitter which can be used to distribute unverified information that might be true or false yet institutionalised media houses with control mechanisms exists. The aim of this essay is to examine how the professional journalist can raise the standard of Citizen Journalism with specific reference to Twitter. 2.0 Citizen Journalism Allan (2006) & Gillmor (2004) cited in Markham (2011, p.2) defines Citizen Journalism as active engagement of the public as non-professional actors in media production. Pickard (2008), Allan (2006) and Gillmor (2004) cited in Markham (2011, p.2) notes that these indulgences have political, civic and social connotations in them. Hermida (2010, p.298) describes it as a collective intelligence. Collective intelligence in this context is seen by Hermida (2010, p.298) as concerted input from different quarters as opposed to individual input or input from a selected few. Sunstein (2006, p.219 cited in Hermida, 2010, p.298) defines it as new media that allows public to “obtain immediate access to information held by all or at least most, and in which each person who is not a professional journalist can instantly add to that knowledge”. In essence, Citizen Journalism refers to the participation of people who are not professional journalists in dissemination of news outside the established media institutions (Hermida, 2010, p.299). While Twitter, Facebook and You Tube are still infants in the field of social media they have offered participatory opportunities for people in how news is delivered (Weiss, 2012). Changing how news is delivered outside the mainstream traditional media has expanded the concept of citizen journalism in recent times. A recent case that demonstrates this is the election night in America. For instance, the tweet posted by Obama after being re-elected on November 6, 2012 as the 44th president of America received 22.7 million tweets. During the US election night it is estimated that there were 31 million election-related-tweets (Weiss, 2012). This kind of record is not possible with the sale of a daily newspaper. Moreover, during the US election night, it is estimated that there were 31 million election-related-tweets (Weiss, 2012). This shows the ground that citizen journalism is gaining. In a nutshell, citizen journalism can be used to disseminate information in a faster way whether true or false. Thus, the concern is on false news which have potential of causing extensive damage. According to Croft, James and Crause (2010, p. 10), the development of the social sites is based on the need for people to express their thoughts. To assert the importance of Social Networking sites to Citizen Journalism, research indicates that the number of people visiting social networking sites is growing at a rapid rate. In 2006 for instance, the number of people visiting 10 social network sites including Facebook, You Tube, BlackPlanet, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo as well as Cyworld amongst others grew from 46.8 million people to 68.8 million in a one year period (Bausch & Han, nd,). A 2009 survey indicated 770 million people visited these sites (OECD, 2010, p.36). Vascellero (2009 cited in Hermida, 2010, p.298) notes that between April 2008 and April 2009, Twitter subscribers had risen from 1.6 million to 32.1 million users. The major concern of most professional journalists about Citizen Journalism is the issue of inaccurate reporting and the spreading of rumours (Hermida, 2010, p.299). This becomes a concern with the possibility of the massage posted going viral. One would imagine the damage that can occur if the massage posted goes viral yet it was unverified and inaccurate. It is observed that the concept of Citizen Journalism will continue to experience massive expansion in the coming years (Silver, 2009, p.143). Hayek (1979, p.15 cited in Hermida, 2010, p.298) argues that ignorance can be overcome not by more knowledge, but by knowledge that is widely dispersed amongst people. This argument can be used to support the growth of Citizen Journalism since the public have realised that by having wide spread information they can shape their destiny together. Owing to this paradigmatic shift on how news are distributed and how public are eager to participate in news dissemination, it would be prudent for professional journalism to actively engage in the same process so as to address the issue of credibility and verification of information. Keller (2012) sees Twitter as a limited truth machine. This concern is based on the possibility of using the medium to propagate false news. Pew Data (2012) cited in Keller (2012) shows that the percentage of people who relied on Social-networking sites has grown from 9% to 19% in the last two years. 13% of respondents also stated that they rely on Twitter to obtain news with 95 stating that they retweeted the same massage. There are various literatures pointing towards this concern where unverified or inaccurate information has been disbursed to the public through Citizen Journalism. As a calling to professional Journalist to serve humanity, this serves as entry point of how to improve the standards of Citizen Journalism. The case of Hurricane Sandy reporting by Shashank Tripathi with the Twitter handle @ ComfartablySmug highlights the concern of unverified information which might turn false. Shashank Tripathi tweeted that New York Stock Exchange had been flooded. This later emerged to be false and it was a means of gaining mileage for Republican Congressional aspirant Mr. Christopher Wright whom at that he was his campaign manager. While they gave apology, the damage had already occurred (Endler, 2012). In this basis, we need to realise that those responsible for citizen journalism (the public) respond in an emotive and often subjective manner to events. Thus, their reliability and integrity can be questioned. 3.0 Citizen Journalism in the Context of the Public Sphere and Participatory Democracy 3.1 Public Sphere While Citizen Journalism has its own strengths and weaknesses, it is important to understand why the concept has experienced phenomenal growth as compared to traditional institutionalised media. Public sphere and participatory democracy framework can be applied to explain emergence of Citizen Journalism as a competitor to traditional media. In the first instance, it is observable that public participation in matter which affects the whole society has diminished. This is why it is common to find people following certain cadre of people like music and sports celebrities in Twitter. Moreover, people are more concerned of the private life of these celebrities rather than the public interest (McKee, 2005, p.1). On the other hand, Public Sphere as resulted out of the need by public to take charge of their destiny by exposing what they think should be at the public domain. This is gratification of participatory democracy as a hallmark of human advancement. McKee (2005, p.1) observes that public interest has increased as a result of participatory democracy. This is why it is common nowadays for people to post videos & photos on YouTube and break news about certain happenings outside the established institutionalised channels. Take case example of re-election victory of Obama and protest during the Arab Spring. Participatory democracy is a type of governance where the input of all interested stakeholders can be heard and contribute to decision making. The public sphere concept refers to the belief that the public should participate in reshaping their societies as an epitome of democracy (Mckee, 2005, p.1). Consequently, the traditional domain can be viewed as bureaucratic and a reserve of few. Thus, the peripheral group opt for a different platform from where their voices can be heard. Farhi (2009 cited in Hermida, 2010, p.300) calls the concept the ‘gate- keeping’ role of journalism whereby what is relayed to the public is determined by the journalists themselves. This is contrary to what Hayek (1979, p.15 cited in Hermida, 2010, p.298) observes. He notes that reducing public ignorance is not based on knowledge held among individuals, but through knowledge that is widely spread among people. The public sphere does not exist as a physical entity, but rather an academia creation so as to answer how people engage in public and social issues. Mckee (2010, p.4 citing Habermas, 1997, p.105) states that the public sphere is “A domain of our social life where such a thing as public opinion can be formed [where] citizens ... deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion ... [to] express and publicize their views”. Therefore it is a place where the public can engage in an exchange of ideas and interrogate public information so as to shape their society. This concept becomes more interesting in modern society where new means of dispersing information and news has become significant. Similarly, this is coupled with the belief that the social fabric is becoming fragmented with the advent of modernism as people have become more isolated and in need of self actualisation instead of requiring public interest. Furthermore, Mckee (2010, p.2) offers four point trivial questions that are applicable to the public journalism debate. These trivial questions if viewed from a different perspective they can improve journalism on Twitter. The first observation he makes is that the content presented by mainstream media is currently fragmented, commercialised and trivialised which is leading to lethargy amongst the public. Instead of responding to demand driven publication, traditional media has fallen into the unfortunate trap where it publishes unimportant news about the personal lives of celebrities and other rather inconsequential news items. Hence, the public is no longer interested in mainstream media as social media sites focus on engaging their readers in a public sphere. Secondly, Mckee (2010, p.2) observes that the quality of materials presented to the public domain has significantly deteriorated as their main objective is one of financial growth. Subsequently, the rational consumer is likely to switch their allegiance from mainstream media, which sometimes does not appreciate the need to deliver public interest content; to new media where they are able to input what they feel should be presented outside the controlled system. However, he also notes that “public culture is too spectacular. Audiences have short attention spans. They only want flashy visuals and superficial distractions - not serious, in-depth discussions about important issues. People do not read enough - they are passive couch potatoes in front of the media”. This then allows an individual to postulate that, as a result of their inactiveness, they have resorted to a new and more ‘enticing’ media platform where contents are not filtered and important news is seen as secondary. The next interesting point that Mckee (2010, p.3) makes is the fear that the public culture is facing segmentation at an alarming rate. This fragmentation is due to the diverse needs of the public and what their content requirements are. This argument states that the unified national culture that countries used to enjoy is diminishing and one can no longer be sure if the same news items are enjoyed by others. This can be understood from the paradigm of dominance and segregation (Mckee, 2010, p.3) which caters for personalised needs in which people resorted to platforms that united them with a common denominator. This is why it is common to have people following different personalities and other societal concerns as a result of cultural diversification. Hermida (2010, p.298) cited in McKee (2010, p.3) notes that the media is to blame for public apathy. Moreover he notes that no one wants to take responsibility for this and perhaps, as a result of this apathy people have to be motivated enough to find a new platform for articulating their issues. 3.2 Participatory Democracy Participatory democracy can be understood from the context of collective action. In collective action, people feel that it is in their interest to shape their community aspirations and not leaving it to political leaders and other institutional arrangements. The question then is how this can be achieved. To explain this in relation to Citizen Journalism, the concept of social capital offers an entry point. Various literatures points out how different people have conceptualised the term social capital. Ostrom (n.d, 176) sees it as “shared knowledge, understanding, norms, rules and expectations about patterns of interactions that group of individuals bring to a recurrent activity”. He notes that people engaged in joint venture accomplishes much per unit time. This statement is correlated with network building or relationship building, and then they form the basic requirements of the later. On the other hand, World Bank (1998 cited in Ramzi, 2012, p.450) sees it as “institutions, relationships, views and values that rule in act and interactions among people and have contribution in economic and social development”. This can also be viewed as a form of institution building outside the formal frameworks. The basis of social capital as being enshrined in structure of relationship is affirmed by Ponthieux (2004). Coleman (1988, p.188 cited in Ponthieux 2004, p.5) presents another interesting paradigm by stating that the concept can’t be defined, but can be seen when individuals act with social structures. Putnam (1993, p. 6-7 cited in Siisiainen, 2000, p. 2) understands the concept in terms of social allegiance and alignments. The basis of his inference is derived from the studies done in Italy whereby he looked at the preconditions for building prosperous society. The observation made by him was that civic society is the basis for a prosperous society as seen in Northen Italy which was successful as compared to the southern one. He postulates that engagement by citizens in public activity leads to mutual cooperation, vital social networks, equal political relations and citizen participation. Siisiainen (2000, p. 3) posits that social capital is like moral resources that is manifested through trust, social norms & obligations and social networks of citizens’ activity in voluntary associations. The above discussions can be used to allude to the growth of Citizen Journalism based on the fact that collective action and need to participate in the societal process has necessitated emergence of Citizen Journalism outside the traditional media which is controlled and full of bureaucracy. Traditional media has numerous controls that often hinder its rapid turnover, yet citizen journalism does not have this level of control. For example, professional journalists require editing checks prior to print or delivery, where-as the Citizen Journalist and therefore citizen journalism is often more immediate and presents the information without restriction. Perhaps, this prevents the public from fully engaging in professional journalism as it is often overly edited and objective. And therefore, an apathetic attitude towards traditional media has resulted. 4.0 Analysis and Discussions Historically, the norms and value system of traditional journalism has aimed at giving a chronological account of happenings in the audio visual and written form whilst striving to guarantee quality and accuracy. This means that for professional journalists to enhance the content of Citizen Journalism’s veracity and validity they have to align themselves with the later (Hermida, 2010, p.299). In order to raise standards in citizen journalism, we need to be aware of a couple of factors. The first would be to redefine the role of journalism and attract the public to engage in the public sphere in an institutionalised manner, but without the gate- keeping role. In order to achieve this, the ultimate goal would be to get involved in the Twitter platform so that others can draw their subsequent news from the institutionalised media houses. The hope would be that this reduces the apathy that has been associated with traditional media reporting and has driven people to look for individualised and collective production outside the media institutions production. This subsequently makes one question how do professional journalists ensure that news is transmitted through professional journalist rather than collective or individual efforts. It appears that being proactive is an essential element in the process and media houses and journalists have taken this initiative and are now making use of Twitter and other social media platforms (Hermida, 2010, p.299). The end result would be the creation of a culture that allows people to channel news through the expected format, but draw from the realms of citizen journalism to create the news. However, this calls for professional journalist to regain their previous status of being investigative and authentic rather than focusing on the personal and rather mundane issues of celebrities. They need to re-focus on reporting newsworthy items which are more in line with the norms and values of traditional journalism. While there is fear from the sceptics in the media fraternity, this needs to be considered as the way forward in order to raise the standard of citizen journalists. Tung (2001, p.40) citing Darwin indicates that it is not the strongest that survives, but those who are able to adapt to change. Professional journalists should be willing to accept the fact that they have to actively engage with citizen journalists and that citizen journalism does have its place in keeping the world informed. In order to attain what Allan (2006 cited in Markham, 2011, p.5) calls as a maximum number of authors as the guarantors of truth, professional journalists should build their own blogs and Twitter handles where they can interact with the audience. This implies that he or she as a professional journalist will have those who are following him or her and can post stories on his or her page. The beauty of this approach is the ability to elicit mixed reactions from the followers of the professional journalist who can then edit the same information and present it in a professional manner. Moreover, the same concept can be applied to media houses as a corporate entity. This can be attained by having a culture that draws the public back into the public sphere domain and addresses the unique needs of the diverse society. This would imply that news items need to be issue driven, transparent and have contact points that are friendly to citizen journalists. Following on from this is the segmentation of the content so as to cater for the varying media needs of the consumers. Nowadays the public is so diversified that it might actually be difficult to attain this as professional journalists need to determine what will satisfy their readers (Mckee, 2005, p. 2 & 3). Furthermore, journalists can’t claim to be knowledgeable in all areas so there does need to be a set of sub domains that cater for the wide interest of the public. In designing Twitter handles for engaging in public discourse, the overriding theme shouldn’t be personality based, but content based and this will then allow people who are interested in this to join the conversation or contribute to the discussions. Thus, the solution could lie with the professional journalist taking the lead in having twitter handles dealing with various areas of interest so that the public can channel the news through them. However, the difference that they will have to adopt is to act as a moderator rather than an inhibitor of ideas. 5.0 Conclusion The aim of the paper was to examine how professional journalists can raise the standard of citizen journalism on Twitter. In essence, professional journalists should help improve the accuracy, validity, real time reporting and quality of the information reported in order to improve the level of citizen journalism. However, this can’t be addressed in isolation and there are other factors that are driving the public away from institutionalised media to individual and collective media production, such as social media sites like Twitter. This paper advocated that professional journalists need to have a two point advancement approach. The first is that professional journalists need to be direct participants on social media, sites such as Twitter, so as to be conversant with citizen journalists and subsequently cater for the online community. Knowledge and awareness of what drove this population to be content with citizen journalism would also need to be considered by professional journalists. The second advancement is that professional journalists need to fragment the news items according to the numerous demands of the public and those who are citizen journalists. 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