CitizenSpin

Citizen-journalism already overtaken by big media in UK?

While Ohmynews is changing the way news is produced in Korea, and Dan Gilmour is changing the way news for the San Francisco Bay Area of the US with Bayoshpere – here in the UK citizen journalism isn’t really taking hold.
The thought was prompted by a conversation with a journalist from the Media Guardian. He was wondering why citizen journalism was catching-on elsewhere in the world but not here.

Yes, I’ve previously posted about the amazing response from the public when it comes to reporting the London bombing. Although, since the initial coverage there have been a number of articles questioning the role of citizen-journalism. Mark Glaser at the Online Journalism Review covers a number of angles – including the account of a victim who says:

"The victims were being triaged at the station entrance by Tube staff and as I could see little more I could do so I got out of the way and left," he wrote. "As I stepped out people with camera phones vied to try and take pictures of the worst victims. In crisis some people are cruel."

And this people’s paparazzi concerned John Naughton at the Guardian who wrote of ‘ghoulish voyeurism’. Although, when recent arrests were made, ITN and the Daily Mail bought-up material shot by bystanders for an exclusive on the arrest of two men in West London. ITN's enthusiasm can be seen by the wide range of contributions and contribution methods they invite.

The enthusiasm of the big-media in Britain for citizen driven content could be one reason as to why dedicated citizen journalism sites have failed to materialise. And the public are turning to the mainstream media for their coverage. After the 7th July the BBC Web site saw a surge in traffic, and it was inundated with eyewitness accounts - 20,000 e-mails, 1,000 photos and 20 videos. With the mainstream adopting citizen-journalism on this scale, is there any need?
The success of Ohmynews reflects concerns about press freedom in Asia – citizen-journalism provides a viewpoint which may be considered more impartial and challenging. So in this case citizen-journalism provides a new perspective.
Dan Gilmour’s Bayoshpere, offers the chance for people in the area to contribute but it has a focus: “It is a site of, by and for the people of the San Francisco Bay Area, with special attention to the region’s primary economic engine, technology.” In this instance, citizen-journalism is providing coverage for a common interest group with a shared geographical location – silicon valley.

The BBC is even in on the act when it comes to bringing together groups with a a common interest – it’s campaigning site iCan was recently relanched as the BBC Action Network – as covered on BBC News Online.
If you look for examples of people in a defined geographical area in the UK there are many examples of parish council sites - type "Village News" into Google and you get - http://www.pembury.org.uk/, And some of these sites have been brought together with UK villages online.

So, you could argue that people are pretty well served in the UK, with media which is perceived to be independent, and gives a good geographical spread. What citizen-journalims needs to thrive is: dissatisfaction with big media; shared community - geographical or interest based. Perhaps the opening for citizen-journalism is in the area of groups who perceive they’re not well served already – would Muslims think they were well served by the mainstream media in the country at the moment?

Matt

Online information - credible & reliable?

So how do you judge whether information online is credible and reliable? My dissertation aims to research the level of trust that readers attribute to blogs, and who writes them.

With this in mind I’ve been looking at news, or journalistic values – as a way of providing a scale to judge the various sources of information against.

As far as BBC News is concerned it has five main values: truth, impartiality, inclusivity, fairness and accountability.

The Radio-Television News Directors Association, an organization exclusively centred on electronic journalism, maintains a code of ethics focusing on -- public trust, truthfulness, fairness, integrity, independence and accountability. RTDNA publishes a pocket guide to these standards.

So using these values as a basis, it’s possible to develop a list of semantic differentials – against which readers can judge content online.

Trustworthy … undependable

True … False

Integrity … unsound

Impartial … partisan

Fair … biased

Independent … unfree / partisan

Neutral … aligned

Inclusive … selective / exclusive

Accountable … unanswerable

Accurate … wide of the mark

Sensational … moderate

The idea is that people will complete a questionnaire, and judge information from a variety of sources – PR professional, CEO, journalist and fellow consumer – against these variables.

Matt

Blogs, podcasts and camera phones shift power from broadcaster to consumer

"What's going on … is a gradual transfer of power from broadcaster, distributor and supplier, to viewer, listener and consumer."

- Ed Richards, from the media regulator Ofcom, talking at the Westminster Media Forum.

The Guardian reported his views that media consumers are being liberated by new technology. Richards is the regulator's senior partner in competition and strategy and believes a phenomenon is emerging as consumers created their own television schedules, music compilations or news footage.

As reported here before, he sees the recent coverage of the London bombings as a watershed. 24-hour news channels, bulletins, camera phones and text messages combined to give a snapshot of convergence in the media industry. Consumers contributed content like never before, and it provided new insights and perspective to the events as they unfolded.

"Much of what we saw in how people communicated with each other, how they shared information, how they found information and followed events offered an acute illustration of many of the trends we see more generally in the UK."

He also told the meeting that he viewed podcasting and blogging as ‘liberating’ media consumers – user-generated content is breaking the domination of ‘big media’, but it’s a phenomenon which has only just started.

"The self-creation of content and the self-distribution of that content . . . is a really important and significant long-term development which we have hardly scratched the surface of."

As such it is difficult to see where it is heading. It’s already clear that big media is jumping on the bandwagon of podcasting, in order not to miss the boat as it did with blogging. And were after that? I was on a DV shooting and editing course recently, and video production is coming down to an accessible price – will videocasting (or whatever the video equivalent of podacsting is) be next?

Matt

The creative revolution: 'challenge' and 'chaos' for corporations

“Institutions will come under increasing degree of pressure and the more rigid they are, the more pressures they will come under.”

Clay Shirky talking at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford, as reported on BBC News. The International Herald Tribune gives background to the conference - including the launch of the Apple Mac and the compact disc.

“I’m predicting 50 years of chaos,” he adds, “Loosely organised groups with be increasingly given leverage.”

A lot of what is being talked about is in the arena of creative collaboration – people working through the channels and tools of the net to develop new products and services. And the development is being driven by consumers. The example of the mountain bike is quoted – developed by frustrated Californians who were unhappy with ordinary bikes. 65% of bike sales are now mountain bikes. The internet is aiding this kind of collaboration.
“It’s when the net combines with these passionate consumers that you get the explosion of creative collaboration,” according to Charles Leadbeater – Tony Blair’s favourite political analyst.
Addressing the conference, U2 front man Bono said:

“… if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now you need a laptop. If you wanted to make a film, you needed a mass of massive equipment and a Hollywood budget. Now, you need a camera that fits in your palm and a couple of bucks for a blank DVD. Imagination has been decoupled from the old constraints, and that really, really excites me. I'm excited when I glimpse that kind of thinking writ large.”

But it’s not just technology and making consumer goods that’s aided by the net, Bono sees greater potential:

“What I would like to see is idealism decoupled, idealism decoupled from all constraints: political, economic, technological, whatever. The geopolitical world has got a lot to learn from the digital world, from the ease with which you swept away obstacles that no one knew could even be budged, and that's actually what I'd like to talk about today.”

And, of course, when you combine the net with passionate consumers or campaigners, you get communication challenges for corporations.

Matt

Study warns politicians of blog power

The internet is an amazing way of bringing together people with common interests and concerns. I’ve written before about the BBC’s attempt at promoting political activism – a site which both brings people together and provides material for programmes if they raise significant issues or achieve anything.
Now research by the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC) suggests that websites played an important role in swinging public opinion against Europe’s constitutional treaty in the recent referendum.
The Financial Times (13/07/2005) quotes Franck Ghitalla who led the study:

“I hope that politicians realise that the internet is a political territory that must be used. In terms of political marketing, the Yes campaign did not have a good strategy.”

Many of the sites set up during the French referendum on the European constitution contained a mass of documentary information. 2.5m web pages were analysed for the study. It also found that the web was mainly an instrument of the left – anti-globalisation campaigners, trade unionists and radical leftwing parties. The study concluded that few websites set up by established media organisations were deemed authoritative.

Matt

Internet provides 'perfect' product and price information

We all know you can get a good deal on goods and services on the internet. But information available online appears to be changing the way consumers are researching their purchases – and has implications for ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers.

“Car makers in the US find that eight out of ten buyers have used the internet to research not just the exact vehicle they want, but also the price they are going to pay. The situation with consumer electronics is similar. Nowadays, if someone wants to work out which flat-screen TV to buy, they start their research online, even though the majority will not complete the transaction there.”

That’s according to Paul Markillie, marketing editor of The Economist’s writing in the Intelligent Life magazine (Summer 2005 – p33).
America’s Online Publishers Association says that research indicates more than 90% of people aged 18-54 say they would turn to the internet first for product information. And in Europe the latest research indicates the growth in internet use - with the Internet and less time with so-called "traditional" media like TV, radio, magazines or newspapers. The research published on OPA Europe, asked consumers about their media consumption habits over the past year, 61 percent of the respondents said they spend more time on the Internet today than a year ago, with 32 percent saying they spend "much more time," and 29 percent claiming to spend "somewhat more time" online.
So where are people going for their online information? There are commercially run shopping comparison sites search engines provided by Google, Yahoo! maor MSN.
There are also sites where consumers find out information on products and services from each other – www.moneysavingexpert.com is one of the largest in the UK – the bulletin boards are full of tips and reviews, all generated by the users of the site.
And there is other consumer generated media – campaigning sites, and blogs where people proffer their opinions on goods and services.
The internet is moving the world closer to perfect product and price information. When armed with such information it makes consumer more confident and bold enough to walk into a car dealership and refuse to haggle. But as to which information has greater influence, and what consumers believe in what they read appears to have been researched little.

Matt

Will podcasting do for audio what blogging did for text?

Is podcasting the latest subject of media hype, or will it become the audio equivalent of the online blog? That’s the question posed in The Economist’s – Intelligent Life (Summer 2005, p93).
Adam Curry is quoted as the ‘father of podcasting’, and his ‘Daily Source Code’ has 95,000 subscribers. And there is considerable excitement around the potential for growth – new research from The Diffusion Group (TDG) quoted by BBC News claims a US audience alone of 56 million by 2010. And that’s before you take into account Apple’s latest release of iTunes which includes a directory of 3,000 shows.
But the Economist article goes on to suggest that commercial interests will win out – and the commercial potential of podcasting will be exploited. On a small scale it highlights the Lascivious Biddies, a four woman band from New York, who let the audience join them backstage in their ‘Biddycast’. “The band was inspired to podcast when guest-appearances on other podcasts quintupled their album sales.”
At the other end of the scale I’ve already highlighted the growing interest of mainstream media – and my own employer, the BBC, has started trials of podcasting established programmes - my article here, and details of BBC trial here.
However, Charles Arthur writing in the Independent, takes a much more measured view – highlighting the shortcomings of the Podcast format:

“Podcasts take contend and put it into a form which can’t be indexed by search engines or be speed-read, and which you can’t hyperlink to (or from). A podcast sits proud of the flat expanse of the internet like a poppy in a field.”

So – a niche form of distribution for radio? An democratisation of broadcast media which will allow much more choice of programming? A fad which will be exploited by mainstream media? The Economist article asks: “Will big new players squash the eccentric vitality of the small-scale podcasters who started it all?”

Matt

London bomb: Citizen Journalism Comes of Age

The explosions in London last Thursday (7/7/05) have seen citizen journalism in the UK come of age. The London blast saw over 50 people lose their lives, and hundreds were injured and trapped on tube trains.
Today’s Guardian newspaper claims ‘Public provides new dimension to media coverage’ – in which it acknowledges the contribution made to mainstream media coverage by ordinary citizens with mobile phones – taking both still pictures and video.
The article quotes the BBC’s director of news, Helen Boaden, who says:

“Within minutes of the first blast we had received images from the public and we had 50 images within an hour. Now there are thousands. We had a gallery of still photographs from the public online, and they were incredibly powerful.”

In fact the BBC experienced unprecedented traffic to it’s web site as a result of the incident.
The BBC, Sky and ITV news made extensive use of video provided from mobile phones, which was able to capture the scene in the tube trains immediately after the bomb blasts.
The BBC received many still images and a number of videos – some of which were used and can still be accessed online. Boaden added:

“It shows there is a terrific level of trust between the audience and us, creating a more intimate relationship than in the past. It shows a new closeness forming between BBC news and the public. We are into a new world now and each big story that happens confirms that.”

Some of the images were deemed too graphic to show, and so it is evident an editorial process takes place before material is shown – however the public are becoming the eyes and ears of newsgathering organisations.

See also:
BBC London: Mobile Phone Videos Submitted by the Public
BBC London (Jon Gaunt Show): Audio of Eyewitness Accounts

Matt

Internet activist sought by BBC social action network

Online activism has been given a boost as the BBC re-launches its groundbreaking iCan site this week. The website aims to help people to get involved in their local community. BBC news online covered its re-launch on Tuesday and the site, renamed Action Network can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/actionnetwork.
The original BBC iCan site was flagged up as an example of citizen power in action by Dan Gillmor in his book ‘We the media’ - which I've previously mentioned in connection with activism. It provides a good example of how publics can come together to become active, and how the Internet can facilitate this.
BBC News Online quotes Martin Vogel, Action Network project leader: "The new look and feel for Action Network makes the site easier to use and the name change will give a clearer indication to the users what the site offers.
"What hasn't changed is BBC's impartial role, providing a neutral platform to help anyone in the UK become more involved in local civic and democratic activities."
What’s also interesting about the site is the way that successful campaigns can feed the BBC’s traditional media outlets – be they local radio, or national TV. So the new media and citizen media is driving the traditional media agenda.

Matt

Better jobs to people with clever blogs?

Time spent on your resume or CV could be better spent blogging according to an article in the latest edition of The Economists Intelligent Life (Summer 2005, p141). The article Blogging up the Ladder suggests that an intelligent blog can be an aid to creating and individual online brand, which in turn can be used to further your career.
The article quotes the example of Biz Stone, author of two books Who let the blogs out and Blogging, who was recruited by Google after both sides carried out due diligence on each others work online. In fact the article goes on to quote the ubiquitous Dan Gillmor in saying that a blog could soon become a must for anyone who wants to make it to the top.
The article goes on to say:

All this illustrates a broader trend. As people spend ever more time online buying things, participating in discussion groups, and having our names cited by others ever more information about them gets posted on the internet. In the process they begin to acquire and online persona, which needs managing carefully.

So not only do corporations need to think about reputation management online, but the same applies to individuals. It would be interesting to find out the positive aspects for the individual blogger anyone found a new job?

Matt