“Playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information” (Wikipedia, 2008, Citizen Journalism).
Citizen Journalism, also referred to as public journalism or participatory journalism makes it possible for all citizens to participate in the act of journalism. A form of journalism largely created by the revolution of Web 2.0 and the array of networking environments that came with it, and so the people began expressing themselves through weblogs, mobile computing, chatrooms, wikis and messageboards (Wikipedia, 2008, Citizen Journalism)
So how does one become a citizen journalist? Bruns (2008) suggests that citizen journalists begin with an idea that interests them and that will interest their peers and starts developing, similarly to open source software development. Their peers and the wider community then comment and evaluate the information, add their own views, displaying in its essence produsage at work.
“Gatekeeping selects the stories to be covered in the products of mainstream journalism”, ‘Gatewatching’ relies on the users to ascertain what is interesting and worth sharing with their peers (Bruns 2008, 71 - 74). Axel Bruns identifies ‘gatekeeping’ and ‘gatewatching’ as important elements in controlling citizen journalism.
“Industrial software production operates on a principal of ‘develop to marketable quality, then release,’ whereas open source releases its projects in no more than embryonic versions, divides the production process into granular produsage tasks, and then engages in the open and communally organized development of software to what we continue to refer to as ‘commercial quality’” (Bruns 2008, 74).
Bruns is arguing here that the new concept of produsage is reversing the conventional industrial production process by releasing projects into the marker that are unfinished or only in the early stages of development.
We have evolved to an online, multiple networked environment where a citizen journalism movement has developed, and so in order for this movement to take its place across the many websites that make up the movement it has developed a “sophisticated array of processes, tools, and technologies” (Bruns 2008, 70)
Producers are now users and for journalists to survive and succeed in an online environment they must begin to embrace produsage and encourage users to also produce and explore the elements of the news.
Bruns concludes with (2008, 85) “Produsage-based citizen journalism is the first step towards restoring access to the public… produsage based citizen journalism has broken the commercial hold of industrial capitalism in the journalistic industry.
Bruns, A. 2008. AB. News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: Perpetual Collaboration in Evaluating the News in Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, 69-100. New York: Peter Lang
Axel Bruns. (2008). Wikipedia: Representations of Knowledge in Axel Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, New York: Peter Lang, pp.101-136.
(Wikipedia, 2008, Citizen Journalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Journalism)
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