Essay Assignment

The growing technological development and public access to digital media has resulted in everyday computer users being able to quite easily create and publish reasonable content (Kawamoto, 2003:16). Areas such as photography programs and music producing software are becoming increasingly available to the average person due to user friendly tools and decreasing purchasing costs (Thurman, 2008:1). This increase in the access of digital capabilities is allowing ‘amateurs’ to engage in publishing fair standards of digital content which in turn has created many concerns and challenges for the professionally trained and highly skilled person (Kamamoto, 2003:17). This essay will argue that technologies such as mobile phones and blogging on the internet, allows members of the public and everyday computer users to readily participate and play influential roles in the journalistic arena. The concept of ‘citizen journalism’ will be defined and investigated. The digital media’s that provide tools of production which allow citizen journalists to report and publish content will be examined. Finally the issues, challenges and impacts that professional journalists face from the capabilities that digital media’s grant to citizen journalists will be explored.

According to http://www.mediasmart.org.uk/parents-media-glossary.php
‘citizen journalism’ is ‘when members of the public engage in journalism’ The media website provides examples of citizen journalism ‘include providing pictures or film of events to news organisations or reporting events in blogs’. For example, images and video footage can now be readily captured on mobile phones through built in cameras and video recorders. Therefore, anyone who owns a mobile phone with these technological capabilities is able to capture events as they are witnessing them. The increase in the utilization of these ‘personal technology devices’ combined with the applications of the internet, are contributing to the operation and engagement of citizen journalism (Internetrix, 2006:1). This is attributed to the fact that through combining these digital mediums, members of the public are able to provide news institutions with their recorded images or video footage by uploading them online (Bainbridge, 2008:409). Therefore these digital opportunities allow everyday citizens to provide a global reporting of their recorded events (Savageau, 2009:1). As a result of this operation, citizens are producing news content which may otherwise have not been exposed to the public sphere. It is these actions which allow amateurs to engage in the journalistic arena as citizen journalists (Bainbridge, 2008:413).

Bainbridge’s 2008 text states that ‘some of the biggest stories or news images of the past decade have been …published online, by people who are not professional journalists’ (Bainbridge et al, 2008:409). For example, many live recordings of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 2005 London bombings and 2001 Twin Tower attacks were provided to the global community by citizens who captured the accounts on their camera phones (Bainbridge et al, 2008:409). Consequently, this digital production and publication of news content by everyday members of society is impacting the methods of public access and consumption of news (Savageau, 2009:2). Influential and breaking news and current affairs is now not only sourced from professional media organizations and journalists-as it was when these digital media opportunities weren’t readily available-but are also being supplied from the average person or ‘citizen journalist’ (Internetrix, 2006:3). Therefore, news is being documented and broken on online formats though the participation of everyday citizens. This powerful reality is illustrated by New Haven Independent editor Paul Bass, stating ‘power of the press now belongs not to those who own one, [a media organization] but to those who own a modem’ (Fanselow, 2008:4). Therefore Bass’s view outlines that contemporary digital mediums, such as the aforementioned portable camera’s and video recorders, combined with the open source abilities of the internet, permit any owner of these technologies-which in today’s society is becoming relatively ubiquitous- to capture, produce and publicize news to an international audience (Savageau, 2009:3). This significant change in the production and dissemination of news content has definitely allowed the world of journalism to transform. See ‘We the Media’ at http://www.authorama.com/we-the-media-1.html for readings on this transformation.

However, it is not just the visually recorded and published content of news that is providing citizens with the opportunity to participate in the journalism profession. Online blogs are also providing the means for everyday people to contribute and play an active and even prominent role in the reporting of news information (Stovall, 2004:30). Bainbridge’s 2008 text defines a blog as an ‘interactive chronological website that contains observation and comment and associated links’. See http://www.net-insight.co.uk/glossary.php for an online definition. In previous times, the technological tools that permitted the act of blogging were exclusively accessible to individuals who understood how to operate the HTML code (Bainbridge et al, 2008:410). In today’s information age, the development and availability of user-friendly and free of charge applications, such as “Blogger.com” make blogging simple for anyone who wants to engage in it (Thurman, 2008:1). Journalist and lecturer at London’s City University, Neil Thurman, states “blogging sites…have helped facilitate a rapid growth in the number and popularity of independently published websites that overlap the space traditionally occupied by the mainstream news media” (Thurman, 2008:2). Therefore, the increasing numbers of ‘citizen journalist’s’ and their actions of blogging news and information is creating s substantial impact on the professional journalism industry (Fanselow, 2008:3).

Unmediated ‘bloggers’ and unqualified ‘citizen journalists’ have created numerous issues and challenges for trained practitioners and their occupational norms (Thurman, 2008:15). For example, ‘censorship and control of information is almost impossible’ as people do not need to adhere to regulations or guidelines in order to post information, chronicles, images or videos (Savageau, 2009:4). As a result many journalists have expressed the belief that these areas of accessible citizen journalism, such as blogging, are destabilizing professional news values. See http://www.glog.nl/wiki/upload/docs/thomas%20j%20johnson.pdf for further reading on this issue. Author of ‘Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production’ Dr. Axel Burns, represents this view stating many journalists believe ‘citizen journalism may…undermine professional journalistic ideals of objectivity and impartiality, leading… to the uncontrollable dissemination of unsubstantiated rumours and the publication of highly partisan opinion pieces as 'news' (Bruns, 2008:1-access power point at http://snurb.info/node/830). In turn, grammatical aspects, level of accuracy and fairness in the publications produced by citizen journalists are areas of concern for the conventional news media (Thurman, 2008: 15). Many qualified and professional journalists believe that while citizens can provide substantial public insight and valuable footage for witnessed events, the majority of these everyday people do not have the contacts, knowledge or trained experience to deliver researched objectivity (Savageau, 2009:4).

In summary, digital media’s such as portable cameras and internet applications such as blogging are mediums which are providing increasing accessibility for anyone to actively partake in the recording, scrutinizing and global dissemination of news. These technologies, with the open source capabilities of the internet, are avenues for everyday computer users or amateurs to become citizen journalists and participate in an arena which was once conserved for the qualified journalist (Stovall, 2004:30). Many believe these digital tools for citizen interaction are challenging the journalism industry in areas such as news value, competition, quality and level of professionalism. Despite these increasing concerns and challenges for the professional operation of the journalism arena, many people believe society ‘will always need trained media people to do a professional job of producing news for mass consumption’ (Bainbridge, 2008:410 ). Therefore, although digital media’s are providing access for citizens to produce news content, qualified journalists will continue to deliver professional news information for the online and global community.

Reference List:


Bainbridge et al. 2008, Media & Journalism. New Approaches to Theory and Practice, Oxford, Victoria.

Bruns, A. 2008. Beyond the Pro/Am Schism: Opportunities for Collaboration betw. Professional and Citizen Journalists under a Produsage Framework’. http://snurb.info/node/830. Sited 19th October.

Fanselow, J. 2008. The New Wave of Citizen Journalism. http://www.ncl.org/publications/ncr/97-4/01.08Fanselow.pdf. Sited 20th October.
Internetrix. 2006. Citizen Journalism & the Internet Revolution
http://www.internetrix.net/page/articles/newsletters/2006/august/citizen-journalism/. Sited 17th October.

Kawamoto, K. 2003, Digital Journalism. Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism. Rowman & Littlefield Publications, U.S.A

Savageau, J. 2009. FTC Steps in on Citizen Journalism, Internet, and Impacts on the News Industry. http://pacific-tier.com/blog/2009/08/ftc_steps_in_on_citizen_journa_1.html. Sited 20th October.

Stovall, J. 2004, Web Journalism. Practice and Promise of a New Medium. Pearson Education, Inc, Boston.

Thurman, N. 2008. Published in New Media & Society: Forums for citizen journalists? Adoption of user generated content initiatives by online news media. Sage Publications, U.SA. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=neil_thurman

Links:
http://www.mediasmart.org.uk/parents-media-glossary.php

http://www.authorama.com/we-the-media-1.html

http://www.net-insight.co.uk/glossary.php

http://snurb.info/node/830

http://www.glog.nl/wiki/upload/docs/thomas%20j%20johnson.pdf

Essay Progress

So I thought it would be appropriate to blog my progress for our essay. From my previous posting, I advised I was going to persue question number two. After several hours of research...I found many creidble sources on what cyberspace is (and its concept) however was finding it quite difficult to answer part b of the question (being is it still relevant to contemporary society). Therefore after feeling quite bamboozled and getting a lack of reliable sources to persue this area..I have decided that I will switch to my original pondering of question 3. I looked into this question again (about the internet allowing providing the 'tools of production' for everyday computer users to produce content of a fair standard)and found the idea of amateurs vs proffesionals/highly skilled people producing digital content, easier to understand, research and devlop a strong arguement which I could relate to. I am going to persue the idea of citizen journalists (especially in the creative area of blogging) vs professional journalists online, and how the internet has provided every day people with the ability to have their work published, recognized and participate in the journalistic arena.

Back to square one and the research process!

Week 12

Soo...after Steven Stockwell's lecture on Virtual Philosophy last week, along with Jules taking our tute in which we were were informed of his shoe purchasing addiction lol (which had resulted in what sounds like a very large collection of nike's) we are now in week 12-meaning the essay is due this friday!

The topic I have chosen is question number two:

'The idea of the internet as cyberspace has been part of our contemporary culture for some time, particularly in the popular medium of film. But is this concept of cyberspace still relevant to our contemporary society? Discuss with reference to your own experience of contemporary media.'

I chose this question as firsty I found it to be the most interesting and intriguing as it is relevant to today's society and I'm able to relate to the topic through my own experiences with modern media forms.

Well i best get researching!

Week 10-Gaming

This week's lecture content was regarding gaming.
Recommended readings have been posted on the learning at gu website and I shall ponder through these in the upcoming days. The lecture information informed us that the gaming world is actually a serious business industry and one which someone can make a great fortune in. Many people I know are addicted to the game 'farmville' on facebook..I'd have to say my preferenace in the more old fashion games of tetris, solitare, pacman and mahjong. Smae goes for playsation's, as I don't think you can go past Super Nintendo's Mario Cart and battle games. I think gaming provides many people with an escape from the everyday demands of life such as work and study..and allows people to tune out of the strains of academic work for a while. Although when games start to go beyong a leisurely activity or fun ever now and then, and begin to take over ones life (such as my brother with shooting games, where he will risk missing dinner to keep his high score) can then become a bit of a worry. I'm sure many people find gaming addicitive, spending there weekends in video arcades and computer rooms. I think games are a great form of entertaning but really shouldn't occupy the majorities of one's day where subordination of more important things in life, such as social interaction and study commitments occur. Gaming addicts have the potential to isolate themselves from society, restricting themselves from meeting new friends and engaging in conversational communication.

Never the less, wii sports, tetris and mario world are games which I'm glad have been made in order to provide me with sometiems much needed stufy breaks, escapes from the demands of the world and a bit of entertaining fun.
I'm sure the people who were involved with the technological boom of today's gaming world are laughing straight to the bank!

Week Nine 'Art' Task

For week Nine's tute task, we were asked to create a piece of art, or we take a picture of something we'd made previously and then scan/upload it into our blog. I've never really made much art in my life, purely because I'm really bad at being artistic or creative-I'd say drawing a stick figure is as arty as I get lol. I would love to be able to sketch, paint or be good at any arts & crafts, but although I try-unfortunately I wasn't born with the arty gene. So when it came to this tute task, I was definitely pondering what on earth I could come up with. Last year (when I have a few personal things going on and was feeling a bit down for a while) I made a collage of images/words of things I enjoy/like in life that make me happy. Pictures/words of travel, destinations, and things that are special and enjoyable to my life (e.g. friends, family, home, beach etc) were put togehter into a photo frame, which I've hung in my room so when I'm feeling down or pondering things-it reminds me of all the things that make me happy. Anyway although it isn't a masterpiece but it's probably the closest thing to art I've made and meant something to me at the time I was putting it together. I guess it felt a bit like self reflection. Well here's the image below:

Lecture Discussions

Hello there fellow blogers,

After I wasn't able to make Jason's week five lecture, week seven was the first time I had been introduced to this lively American character. After providing us with his knowledge and expert advice on technology, in specific to downloads (with much of this information being completely foreign and new to me)he again took this week's lecture (week 9) to inform us on operating/interacting with software. To re-cap the information and understandings I gathered from his week 7 lecture on downloading, see the dot points below:

Mini Nova: This is able to download Microsoft and adobe files (something which is said to normally cost thousands of dollars to purchase legitamtely).

-Jason advised Microsoft operates under a code

-Portableapps.com, provides free dowloads.

-When you try to delete a file off your hard drive, it hasn't actually been properly erased. Instead you have only delted files name and not the actual file.

-But there is a way you can erase the whole file so it no longer exists on the hard drive.

-"Eraser portable" is a program which can be dowloaded from portableapps.com (mentioned above) and it fully erases these unwanted files from the hard drive.


-An application called 'openoffice.org' is fomred by volunteer workers and provides all that Microsoft office does..but it is free of charge. The only down fall is that because this software does not operate to automatically update itself, this means it has no protection against viruses.

-We were quickly informed of 'blender portable', a site where 3D animations can be downloaded

-Another site which provides software for free public consumption is Sourceforge.net

-However, many of these softwares are not automatically ready for Mac computers

-On a further note re Mac's (which i had no idea about)is that Macs actually can get viruses, but they're pretty small and isn't many of them-definitely on a much smaller level the what PC's can get.

-Additioanlly, we were introduced to the concept of 'Micro-charging'. What i took from this is that micro-charging is where people create applications and then charge a small fee to each person that downloads and uses these applications. In the long run if we can download applications that will save money, whilst providing these people with a small profit then this benefits everyone

-Finally something that we don't normally think much about too much is that the majoriy of things are driven by software- examples being air conditioning systems, cars and so forth. In our everyday lives we don't think twice about how or why a light turns out, the ice maker works or how we can flick the TV on with a remote, we all just used to wanting these things quickly and expecting them as part of our daily routine.

These ideas led us into Jason's week 9 lecture.

This lecture (which he advised would be his last lecture to us for the semester) guided us through the steps you should think about when learning/understanding a new program.

Adobe flash was used as the guiding example, and although he advised many of us may find the content pretty basic-it is important to undersand the simple steps and founding ideas of operation in order to apply the process when using other programs.


Jason advised of the following information when trying to learn a new program:

1: Find out what it is that needs to be done and discover the best software to do it.

2: Make sure you have searched around for different software.

3: Once you've decided on a progam you now need to start finding out how to operate it.

4: It's important to remember you won't be able to learn everything striaght away. This is because good software is meant to have 'deep levels'that you learn over time. Therefore it can take years in order to be able to know and understand all of the tools/aspects.

5: Make sure you don't approach the program being scared. By Playing with it you'll most likely be able to do simple things.

6: Therefore by starting with the simple functions you are already familar with, you'll generaly find you can already use about 20% of tools/features through knowledge from using other softwares.

7: You MUST continually save your work so you don't end up screwed. Jason quoted "Save your work damnit!". You shouldn't ever save on top of the same file. Therefore through multiple saving/different versions under seperately named files you will have far less risk of loosing you work. Remember to name the file something you'll be able to recognise and recall.

8: You can definitely try search the help area for your questions, but Jason said the help section normally "sucks". Alot of them are made for advanced users of the software and are always much help to first time users.

9: Try not to get caught up with one problem, go onto something else or navigate in other areas. You can search google for tutorials that explain the software's functions (but never pay for any of them, keep searching until you find a free site).

10: If you become a member of online forums, you'll be able to find discussions where people have posted answers to many common questions (which may help you with your queries).

11: If you need futher help, you can use tutorial books or videos-but again, don't buy them!

12: You really shouldn't need to take a learning course for the software (Jason advised, dont!)because you can source al the information on the web for free.

13: A downside to learning a new software is that because it may take considerable time, in this time a new update of the software may come out and you'll have to learn these new functions as well.

14: Finally, software is 'all about content'.If you're able to make something that you felt was pretty simple to do, then this generally means alot people will be able to as well. In order to avoid making cliche things (e.g picture changes in photoshop) it is important to keep searching, trying new things and doing some in depth research.

Therefore the key is to keep trying, searching and practising and you will find what you need!

Downloading Gimp Portable

From the discussion from the previous post re both of Jason's lectures (on freeware apps and operating new software) this information linked to the tute task of : Dowloading one of the freeware apps that Jason outlined.

The lecture content was relatable and helpful as firstly I was provided with the names and functions of numerous free dowloading applications, and the following lecture gave insight for approaching a new program.

I chose to dowload 'GIMP' portable, from portableapps.com. The software is described as 'image editing on the go' As a package for image editing, the site advises 'you can take your images with you and do your editing on the go'.

Sited at: http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable

After I downloaded the program, I had a play around with the features using the original image below-I thought it was nice and sweet:)



Then playing around with a few shading/smudging/shadow tools, I came up with the terrible transformation below. I know it's far from a masterpiece so please try and contain your laughter-but it's the best I could come up with for my first time haha.