What is Citizen Journalism?

According to Mark Glasser (a journalist, quoted on Wikipedia) "The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others."

Citizen journalism turns the tables on traditional news - turning the consumer of media into the producer of media. For civil society, the phenomena provides opportunities for sharing information and shaping ‘mass' media - and reaching global audiences at the same time.

Women'sNet has embarked on a year-long Citizen Journalism project, supported by the Open Society Foundation (OSF).

Save and use the Citizen Journalism Manual 2009

Introduction to the project

The need to create local content relevant to South African women and girls in languages that they understand and on issues that are of importance to them is well established. Indeed, the idea of relevant and appropriate content extends to other marginalised groups whose access to media creation is limited (if at all present) and who lack technical skills to produce media products themselves. In addition, their own experiences, opinions and knowledge are usually overlooked as viable sources of information.

In newsrooms across the world decisions about what is news and in the public interest, are made within a context marked by unequal power relations. Most often the result of this is news and information products which are defined by the views of those in power. Considering this in a climate in which arguments for media diversity have gained greater currency, the notion of media ‘giving voice to the voiceless' takes on significant meanings. In addition, the media is dominated by syndication practices which decrease diversity of content - where the same news item is reproduced on many radio stations - a different voice, but exactly the same content (so much for diversity!). Further, the current competitive media environment and the emphasis on "bottom-line", does little to encourage interrogation or analysis of events or news, with a focus on deadlines and copy.

Notions of media diversity and ‘giving voice to the voiceless' have been expanded by the rise of citizen or participatory journalism, or the act of citizens being actively involved in collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information. No longer relegated to the role of consumers of media only, ordinary citizens now have the opportunity to participate in media production and through this, provide a greater diversity of content, as well as possibly contribute towards shifting patterns of representation of the marginalised ‘other'. Indeed proponents of the citizen and public journalism movements argue the potential of online tools to deepen democracy through increasing the extent to which ordinary citizens are able to participate in democratic projects.

South Africans are not ‘voiceless' - but lack access to the tools and skills they need to make their voices heard. Marginalised voices need advocates to clear space for their voices to be heard above more powerful ones, and to provide access to the tools and skills they need to make their voices heard.

Proactive participation, interrogation and knowledgeable interventions by activists, including feminists and human rights activists is necessary to shape new innovations and to take advantage of existing software and hardware opportunities. Our increased participation has the potential to shape and define technologies (both software and hardware); content and regulation of the World Wide Web.

Women'sNet has long been involved in creating the space and platform through which marginalised groups, particularly women and girls are able to articulate their concerns and interests, evidenced through our Girls'Net, (S)he-bytes and digital stories projects.

Now that technologies for producing media are cheaper and more accessible, and with the advent of better bandwidth, Women'sNet can work to increase the capacity of individual activists and organisations to participate in the citizen media movement, as a logical progression of our work.

The overall objective of the project is to:

Increase the capacity of civil society to use media to support their social change efforts, thereby enabling civil society organisations to provide diverse, critical, reliable and relevant information that democracy requires.

The goals of the project are:

• To contribute to the vibrancy and sustainability of the media in general by enabling a culture of debate, information sharing and engagement through our work with civil society

• Increase the capacity of civil society actors and human rights activists to use ICTs as a tool for information generation and dissemination

• Increase the capacity of civil society actors and human rights activists express their approaches and opinion, and to produce content that is engaging, relevant and critical,

• To increase the diversity of voice and issues available to South African media actors, and South Africans in general and to increase engagement by the public in content developed by civil society

• To deepen democracy though vibrant engagement prompted through citizen media

• The media is implicated in citizenship and democracy in a number of ways including:

• providing access to information that helps individuals know their rights and realise them

• providing sufficient information so that people can make decisions and form opinions; in other words, providing different sides to a story

• creating products in which people are able to recognise themselves and aspirations in the representations provided.

 

Despite this, critiques of media continue to be around representation and bias in reporting. The Women'sNet citizen journalism project is a direct response to this critique it aims to both increase the numbers of people involved in media production as well as impact on the kinds of content in circulation; thereby contributing to the creation of content that deepens citizenship and democracy.

For more information, please contact us!