A model for citizen journalism?
- 4 May 06, 10:49 AM
One of the issues that many in the media business have been debating is the success of OhMyNews in South Korea.
The pioneering South Korean "citizen journalism" website has some 33,000 citizen reporters, though it still uses professional editors too.
The question for many is whether this can be replicated in other countries. But as Rebecca MacKinnon of explained, there were specific factors which led to the rise and success of OhMyNews.
It is a relative new democracy where the mainstream press was controlled by the political elites and OhMyNews offered an alternative to a new generation who wanted to make themselves heard.
What is key is how the technology allowed this disenfranchised generation to participate. With some 86% of homes online, the internet proved a key enabler.
The situation was compared with Japan, which is also technologically advanced. But as MacKinnnon explained, the culture is very different and the political process much more established.
Would something like OhMyNews work in countries like the UK? It strikes me that we may be some way off from this happening here.
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It comes down to an issue of credibility.
The perception is that mainstream news outlets are responsible for verifying what they print.
Bloggers have no such accountability.
You may find people writing on a service like OhMyNews, but it will be a long while before it takes traffic away from bbc.co.uk.
If you need an example for why I feel this way just look at Internet upstarts like Matt Drudge, who has been writing the Drudge Report for almost ten years.
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I agree with the comment above and will add my opinion that, as a U.S. citizen, perhaps the United States could benefit more from an OhMyNews model given the state of journalism (if you can even really call it that), at present. This was fun. Peace.
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We at want to amalgamate traditional journalism with all its virtues of fact-checking, attributing, impartiality, diversity of opinion, etc. with that of participatory journalism.
Although Wanabehuman is not mainstream and stil remains a small weblog, I feel that the quality of output is ensured by this dual method. As editors are aleays at hand to help writers to reach a certain standard set out in our Writer's Guidelines. In this way, writers are able to write about anything but workign with the editors, we can attain a certain degree of credibility through the quality of our work.
A true grass-roots citizen journalism site such as iTalkNews and OhmyNews are great for local and community news, and for gathering wide-ranging views on certain national and/or international topics, but not for factually correct news reports on national or international news as such (see Financial Times columns by Gapper).
This is why we think that an amalgamated approach is conducive to the current environment. Our grass-roots writers need guidance, like anyone starting out. Albeit, with breaking news such as Buncefield, the Asian Tsunami and 7 July London, you look foremost to grass-roots journalism - but not in the longrun.
The main aim for the industry is to make participatory journalism make money. Without this drive, I fear the aggregators and portals who are soon to catch these free flowing blogs and wikis, etc. into their net, will start to dictate what truly is newsworthy or not. If that makes sense!
Many thanks.
Wanabehuman Team
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