Section 2, Topic 7:
From this article by the Star, we can see the bad side of citizen journalism and social networking. As we all know that recently there has been a major uproar in Egypt, where President Mubarak’s government was over thrown by the citizen themselves. Apparently, it all started by one Egyptian man who posted on Facebook, unhappy about their president, it instantly caught fire and spread uncontrollably thru to the citizen, thus the reason for the chaos created.
From this article, we can also see the power of social networking and how it could influence so many people, by just posting unhappiness with the government. For better or for worst, in this case it was for worst, as Youtube clips did not help the situation as many clips of protest is being uploaded by the citizen themselves, displaying the brutal truth straight to people’s home on the situation that is going on in Egypt.
According to Mortensen (2011), citizen photojournalism, adopts a strategy of publishing it first, and then later validate it later. Furthermore he added that visual testimonies by amateurs have saturated the news media. On top of that he also acknowledges this is a news source. An example of this Youtube clip, captured by a citizen and being broadcast by CBS new channel.
Again the reason for the active participation of the citizen, is to be blame on technology and its advancement;
Firstly, without mobile phones with camera, amateur cannot be recorded ‘on the fly’, thus it would not be easy for them to start recording anything they like.
Secondly, the power the internet, with this it gave birth to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the previous king of social networking, Friendster. Furthermore with sites likes Youtube, where a user could easily create an account and start sharing video of any sort except explicit and racist contents.
Thus we can deduce that these are perfect match to fuse chaos to the masses, without using much resources, time and even effort. This have create a new way where media is being convey to the public audiences as traditional news channels such as CNN, CBS and BBC have their own Youtube and Twitter to post clips and bits of news.
[Word Count: 372]
Check out how blogs and it structure can affect the community here
Reference List:
Mortensen, M., (2011) “When citizen photojournalism sets the news agenda: Neda Agha Soltan as a Web 2.0 icon of post-election unrest in Iran” Global Media and Communication, Vol 7, No. 1, pp. 4-16
No comments:
Post a Comment