NDM News: Citizen journalism and hyper-reality

Examples

• High-speed chase by police to catch Rodney King, an African-American who was eventually surrounded, tasered and beat with clubs all filmed by onlooker from apartment window. Made prime time news internationally, it was a focus for complaints about police racism towards African Americans. RESULT : 4 COPS WERE CHARGED WITH ASSAULT AND USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE BUT WERE LATER ACQUITTED OF CHARGES SPARKING HUGE CIVIL UNREST . 
• London Bombings - July 2005
•  Asian Tsunami - 26th December 2004
• Mumbai, India: Bombings - late November 2008
• Hudson River Plane Crash - 15th January 2009
• Seung-Hui Cho - Undergraduate 23-year-old who regularly sent photos, written pieces and videos to NBC news

As a result, of these first-hand accounts the reaction they got had everyone springing into action and looking into what had just broken. 

Theories 

• Crowd Sourcing - Eventually leaving the media unmediated

Benefits to institutions 

• They are buying into the world of UGC - Buying up social networking sites.  e.g) News Corp brought Myspace. 

Benefits to audience 

• First-hand accounts
• Less censored
• No longer passive receivers of news
• Can access the news from wherever they are

Wider issues and debates 

• The riots that followed the acquittal, killed and injured many was it really necessary to prove a point?
• Would the four police officers even have been charged in the first place, if it wasn't for onlooker George Holliday grabbing his video camera? - " King's beating would be just another hidden incident with no consequences" - Sara Mills (Article writer)

SHEP

1. Social: Greater accessibility - Shareable through the internet on sites such as Twitter, Myspace, YouTube and Facebook
2. Historical: Audience were passive receivers of news in the past, with news being only produced by big news conglomerates. Now... we are creators and receivers
3. Economical: Big organisations are suffering with the rise of UGC, Less profit for large organisations. e.g. Nobody is buying printed newspapers anymore. News companies have needed to become more inventive with the way in which they make their profit. e.g. advertising.
4. Political: What is going to happen to the media if eventually it is a unmediated world? How are we going to know what to believe and what not to believe?

1) What is meant by the term ‘citizen journalist’?
The term citizen journalist refers to regular people like you and me who over the years have had greater access to filming capabilities through our phones and other devices which has allowed us to play an active role in the creation of news. We can rapidly collect and distribute footage we collect via the internet for all to see which then gets shared and can end up becoming a viral news story, just the story of Rodney King. 

2) What was one of the first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people’?
The case of Rodney King, that was captured and shared by an ordinary person in a matter of minutes and before long went viral with all the major news conglomerates in a wide variety of countries broadcasting the news about Rodney King and the police brutality towards him.

3) List some of the formats for participation that are now offered by news organisations.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Snapchat
• Instagram

4) What is one of the main differences between professionally shot footage and that taken first-hand (UGC)?First hand UGC, is different from professionally shot footage because it is unedited in the moment witness accounts; the video quality is likely to be quite low in comparison to that of professionally shot footage as first hand UGC is typically shot off of people's camera phones whereas professional shots are done with high quality cameras and a complete camera crew. 
5) What is a gatekeeper?
The people who decide what is and what isn't the news. They decide what should and should not be broadcast. We can send in as much UGC as we want but it is the gatekeepers decision as to what gets onto the daily news bulletins. 

6) How has the role of a gatekeeper changed?
With the rise of UGC, the role of a gatekeeper has changed from being the people who filter what is and what is not news. To the people who just manage the UGC content that they get sent day to day and deciding what parts of it if any at all can be used in their news bulletins. 

7) What is one of the primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC?
Journalists primary concern is losing their jobs, with the rise of UGC it is a concern that there will be fewer and fewer permanent trained staff at news organisations; leaving less and less people to deal with the rise of UGC and managing all the content.that people send in. 

Another concern would be that without moderation sites could be overrun by bigots and fools. By those who shout the loudest and have little else to do but make posts. The fear of being dominated by defamatory, racist and other hate fuelled content raises questions about unmoderated content.


8)What impact is new/digital media having on:

• news stories

NDM will mean that news stories are probably going to have a lot more UGC content within in them. As a opposed to the company using content that their own journalists have collected and editied.  However, the increased use of UGC does leave the question will these first-hand accounts still be run through gatekeepers and censored. Because if not it could lead to more hard-hitting news being shown to what is already a desensitised audience as a result of what they are shown in the news. 

• the news agenda (the choice of stories that make up the news)

UGC, will impact the news agenda I think quite a lot, this is because rather than journalists sending through urgent emails that should be broken straight away it will be citizen journalists replacing this. If journalists send it in it still has to run by the gatekeepers which sometimes can result in certain news conglomerates being last to break the news that they were originally the first to obtain. However, with citizen journalism it likely to be broadcast straight away. However, as I mentioned it could lead to more hard hitting and unmediated potentially low-brow news.

• the role of professionals in news

The role of professionals has already changed dramatically and stands to change further in my opinion. Professional journalists in permanant roles will be reducing in numbers but of who is left they will no longer be in the position of sitting by a computer and writing the articles for the print issue or surfing the net and keeping and eye on a number of sources for the news to break. Instead they will simply be there to manage the UGC that gets sent into news conglomerates by citizen journalists. They will be deciding what is what and what is good to broadcast. But soon I think even that will be no longer eventually I think the media will end up unmediated, but if and when this happens what are we supposed to believe?

Hyper-reality and the digital renaissance

Examples

• Graham Bell launched telephone in 1876 - Revolution in communication systems and sewed the seeds of a more wide ranging transformation about the way in which society thought about itself and culture.
• Substitution of face to face interaction interaction with a hyper real experience mediated by technology
• Skype dinner parties 
• Eadweard Muybridge's experiments with stereoscopic images in the 1870's - developed into a staple venue for romantic courtships in the 20th century
• Cinema,television, music videos and computer games all invite the audiences to suspend disbelief and inhabit of a paperless fantasy world.
• BAUER's Kerrang! - Successful brand that exists in a post digital age across multiple platforms (website, TV and radio station)   
• Bebo, Facebook and MySpace embody postmodern culture
• September 11th - Terrorist attacks on America in 2001  

Theories 

• Jean Baudrillard - Simulacrum and Simulacra
• Frankfurt School theorists like Theodore Adorno: Viewed the gramophone record and cinema as a means of distracting the working class from their disadvantaged social positions.  
• Mark Zuckerburg  - Bullying
• Albert Bandura - The Bobo Doll Experiment 

Positive aspects of new technology (or 'digital renaissance' 

• The way in which technologies are embedded into our lives reinforces traditional structures of society and culture
• Interactivity
• Prejudice no longer matters
• Re birth in the way that we think about society and culture in the developed world from the proliferation of creative digital hardware to social networking
• More innovation and social interaction

Negative aspects of new technology on audiences and society 

• Impossible to take a moral stance on media technologies
• Body image issues
• The use of telephones/television and the internet are all symptomatic of societies decay

Wider issues and debates 

Is the advancements in the digital world a positive impact on today's society or a negative impact?

Have the advancements in technology come to fast? Are we struggling to keep up with the developments?  

What do these advancements that keep coming in technology mean for society in terms of work? (Print media industry - Journalists lost/loosing jobs with the takeover of User Generated Content) 

1) The article was written in 2009. Offer three examples of more recent social networking sites or uses of technology that support the idea of a 'digital renaissance'.

Instagram - Providing live videos and the ability to create stories in a matter of minutes that can be shared with thousands of people at the click of a button. 

Skype - The ability to have a live video stream going and share one moment or experience with millions of family and friends - Skype dinner parties

Facebook - Live streaming service

2) How do live streaming services such as Periscope or Facebook Live fit into the idea of a 'digital renaissance'? Are these a force for good or simply a further blurring of reality?
Live streaming services like Periscope and Facebook fit into the idea of the digital renaissance as these services are an advancement in technology. Users of the services can easily record their surroundings or something they are doing in the moment and share it with millions of people within a matter of minutes with a few simple clicks. These types of live streaming services are a force for good because they encourage better audience interaction and discussion of views and values etc. However, these services are a further blurring from reality because some people begin to hide behind the camera and deceive others from what is the truth (Reality); they live every second of their lives behind the lens of a camera. 

3) How can we link the 'digital renaissance' to our case study on news? Is citizen journalism a further example of hyper-reality or is it actually making news more accurate and closer to real life?

I think that the digital renaissance can be linked to our case study on news because it allows us to see how the advancements in technology over the years has changed the way in which we consume and distribute news and how our views of the media and other things have changed because of the way in which technology has changed. I feel like citizen journalism is both a further example of hyper reality and also making news more accurate and closer to real life. Citizen journalism provides us with first hand accounts of uncensored news which is real life and it could be more accurate because it is shared in the moment with thousands of people. However, citizen journalism could also be an example of hyper reality because is what we are fed through citizen journalism an imitation of real world processes or is it an actual representation of someone or something.