Is citizen journalism necessarily civic journalism, or is there a distinction between the two?
Civic journalism involves journalists using the media to engage citizens in public issues – by deliberating on public agendas, framing issues, civic mapping. And often the journalists aspired to engage the citizens in the journalism, more than the community.
So-called citizen journalism involves citizens engaging in the community by using media as a form of civic participation. In other words, their acts of making media are the participation. They don’t seek to cover community; they seek to build it. They are entirely different in my view in terms of motivations and conventions. They sometimes can have similar outcomes. But they cover communities from the inside-out, not from the outside-in. And I’d suggest that we are already seeing that they do their journalism much differently than traditional journalists.
When citizens use media as a form of civic participation, when do their efforts really indicate news or tilt more toward private interests? To be more precise, do you see citizen journalists building community and, at the same time, providing news? The two terms aren't necessarily the same, but they aren't mutually exclusive either. So, are there some examples you can point to where citizen journalism is both building community and providing legitimate, credibile news?
ReplyDeleteJan's response suggests that 'journalists' are by definition outside of their communities and 'citizens' by definition are from the inside. She seems to indicate that citizens wouldn't engage in civic journalism because civic journalism is more about journalism than community.
ReplyDeleteWhat if we mix up those categories? What if journalists were to act more like citizens in terms of their attachment, connection and investment in community life? What if journalists and citizens act together on work that has community building at its core? This seems like one possible evolution of public journalism in an age of citizen journalism.