Hi there, welcome to my inaugural blog post!
In the spirit of citizen journalism, I will expound on what I think it means for all of us.
As film critic Molly Haskell once observed, “The Internet is democracy’s revenge on democracy.” With that in mind, the same can be said for citizen journalism. In essence, it is a reclamation of our own history. The power to record history without having to be part of an established media, academic or government institution or elite is nothing short of revolutionary. This newly-created power is the defining watermark of early 21st century history.
That said, the new opportunities to overcome our default status as passive media consumers comes with its flipside. Abundance of this said opportunity has awesome potential, but can also be somewhat underwhelming. I say ‘underwhelming’ because of the sheer information overload of the internet itself. A straw poll of everyone you know who is frequently online will confirm one of the massive pitfalls of citizen journalism: Separating the wheat from the chaff can be a full time job on all its own. With (relatively) complete freedom to post your opinions, observations and research online, comes the fact that much of it is total junk. Citizen journalism can be very poorly written, contain little or zero fact, overt bias, logical fallacies, and various other examples of lazy punditry. (Much like traditional journalism itself!)
Despite these pitfalls, many internet users would also agree that we must accept the cons along with the pros. It’s far too late to turn back the clock on the information revolution anyway. What we should now be concerned with now is: How do we retain and protect these new-found capabilities to record & interpret history ourselves?
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