28 May To what Extent does DIY or citizen journalism challenge the conventions of mainstream news media?
In the 21st century where everyone is digitalised, this DIY Journalism has become very common. But what is DIY journalism or citizen journalism?
Fifty years ago, Newspaper and the daily news show on the television was the only source how the public got information what was happening in their home town and around the world, also known as news. Newspapers would decide what they want to publish and what not. It wasn’t like today where there would be a hundred Newspapers around and you could choose which one you would like to read. The range of different news was limited, and people could only rely on limited newspapers. Whether this Newspaper would represent their political opinion or present what they were interested in. With the digitalisation, this has changed massively. With your smartphone in your pocket, everyone can be a journalist. Everyone can spread their opinion all over Social media and you can choose from a million of options what you want to read on Social media. What kind of news you want to consume, what you are interested in and what you want to see. Social media networks are something we enjoy, we do it in our spare time. Henceforth we don’t want to see anything which doesn’t interest us, which may even take us out of our comfort zone. However, we live in Filter bubbles, we choose what we would like to see on social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and many more and we stay in that filter bubble.
In the 21st century, we have both the DIY journalism, where bloggers, influencer and “self-made Journalist” and basically everyone who posts content on social media and Traditional Journalism. The BBC, ITV, The London times, etc.
But the traditional Journalism where there would be one newspaper, which decides what the public consumes is over. The range of Newspapers in the local supermarket is huge and you can choose whatever news we would like to consume. But News is mainly consumed nowadays online. Printed newspapers are dying out.
So what are the pros and cons of traditional journalism and citizen journalism? It is clear citizen journalism is the future of Journalism and News. It is often discussed that journalism, in general, is not objective, whether Traditional journalism nor DIY journalism. But objectivity is probably the most important thing about journalism in general. Objective Journalism has to be balanced, fair and viewed and present by every angle but this is probably also the reason why it is so hard to be objective and unbiased. People, in general, don’t trust the news and that doesn’t matter whether it is the traditional journalism or independent bloggers and DIY journalist. According to the PRWEEK only 32% of the British population trust the news, the numbers have gone up in the last couple of years. However, people do switch off the news because they think the news agenda is either too depressing, too biased or controlled by hidden agendas[1]. So this is definitely a contra point for both of the journalism types. Citizen journalism offers a wide range of information provided by independent people, it is considered more truthful even though people still think it is biased. Due to the digitalisation journalists, not just DIY journalists also big news company can give a live update on the news. This considered as very helpful and informative. It is being used in many areas of journalism such as elections, terrorist attacks and ongoing events over a couple of days. The goal of this is to provide the public continuously with information.
DIY Journalism has many good sides such as it has more user-generated content. On social media everyone can upload content their choice, everyone can share their opinion on things if this is like or hate. If the content is appropriated which is shared is discussable. Fact is people can upload and produce any content they want and spread it to the world wide web, and this is a two-sided face. A big benefit of citizen Journalism is that it challenges the Media and “forces” people to view things from a different kind of angle, it provides different perspectives. It also provides an active voice for the public. Rather that citizen journalism works against professional journalist it assists them. The public has a chance to inform journalists about current events and it gives a professional journalist a huge advantage when they were unable to cover the event, citizen journalists can provide them with information.
The Cons of Citizen Journalism is more of an organisational way. Citizen journalists have no training within the law so they would post whatever comes across them, they might not know the law/rules for that kind of situation and when it comes to a sue and a process they won’t have a company which takes over the process cost and basically handle it for them, it will all be on one individual person.
Another contra is copyright. It can be overlooked easily not just by citizen journalists also professionals but again the individual person would be standing there by themselves. But probably the main Contra is for the professional journalists. They went to University did a degree and citizen journalists didn’t. The Industry is already hard enough for journalists and when there is so much competition with untrained journalists it makes things very hard.
According to The New Yorker, journalism has been around for over three hundred years[2]. That it has changed in this time is more than obvious. Significantly in the late 1930s where Adolf Hitler changed Journalism into propaganda to manipulate people and brainwash the public. This kind of “Journalism” has been used over many years and is probably the worst contra about journalism. The Government can use Newspapers and Journalists to spread them believes and that is the reason why so many people have trust issues in the media. They are scared that they only publish what the government tells them to and for a few news companies that might be right.
The traditional media, especially television have a huge impact on peoples believes. But the most significant change within journalism came in the last couple of years. With the digitalisation, the consumer of news and media has moved online. Newspapers are being rarely consumed and people gather their news online. So, we still call them traditional media services although they are not as traditional anymore as they used to be.
Traditional Media services have a huge benefit as they have a high viewer count and most of them broadcast throughout the whole country. Their coverage is very large. It gives an immediate delivery of a message to a large number of people at a time. Trained Journalists produced the content, researched well to make sure that the news which is being delivered are not fake. The big news companies such as the BBC cover the whole world and you can get immediate updates from all over the world in just one app or website.
An important contra point of traditional journalism is, that it is a one-way communication process. People can consume but only give limited feedback on the published work. Due to the digitalisation and that the newspapers have now moved all online they make their money out of an advertisement. If you want to consume online without paying for it, you are forced to see adverts. Not only that it is annoying for the consumer it also makes the news company more and more biased. For example; if they advertise coca cola on the left side of their website and coca cola is going through a huge scandal at that time you can be very certain that they wouldn’t cover it as much and detailed as they would if coca cola would advertise in their online paper. A disadvantage compared to Citizen journalism is the sentiment aspect. The Traditional news only publishes facts, which is good so they are unbiased but people do miss the sentiment in the news. Consumer complains about how cluttered it is and how they often get confused about what is written and what purpose it has.
So all over, Citizen journalism does challenge the traditional journalism but not in a way that it could overtake traditional journalism. People will always rely on traditional media sources and use citizen journalism as a second opinion or a different kind of angle to see things from. They are both very important and they support each other in different kind of ways. I personally think Traditional journalism wouldn’t be as huge if citizen journalism wouldn’t exist. But exactly this challenging made the Mainstream news way easier to consume for the public and this was a step into the future for everyone.
[1] PRWEEK, Trust in traditional media grows-but UK now a nation of news avoiders`, says Edelman trust barometer, January 22 2018, by John Harrington
[2] The New Yorker, Out of print, March 24 2008, by Eric Alterman
