Normally, I'm pretty gung-ho for social media and citizen journalism. I really do believe that journalism isn't some high-and-mighty, elitist profession. Real people with drive and curiosity can report news and write analysis, regardless of their educations.
As such, citizen reporting is a good thing because I generally think "the more information to work with, the better," no matter the source. As responsible professional journalists, it's our job to filter through that information and present the best version of the truth we can at the time we have to publish it.
That said, I'm not blind. I know that social media has its dark side. When those of us with cell phone cameras and pocket HD cams get hypnotized by the viewfinder and see the events around us as more breaking news and less real life, we cross into dangerous, almost inhuman territory.
In the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, Paul Carr wrote an essay for TechCrunch that criticizes a blogger at the base for sending out tweets from within. He acknowledges that this woman probably thought she was doing the right thing by spreading information, but the fact is that she was wrong on almost every detail she tweeted.
Here are three paragraphs from his essay. I urge you to read it in its entirety at TechCrunch because we need to remember that living in this wired world has a price.
And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.
What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.
And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.
Edit: More thoughts on Carr
Michael Becker has been blogging about academia, digital culture and journalism since 2005. He is the Web editor of the
9 Comments
I’m a journalist student and I find your site rather interesting. Very nice work.
I’m on the fence about how I feel about citizen journalism. I agree with your thoughts about citizen journalism. I don’t think that journalism should be an elitist profession. I think there are some valuable contributions from citizen journalists. Sites like Twitter have enabled citizens to comment on various events and post information. However, I think this causes chaos and multitude of thoughts and ideas. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but how can we be sure this information is accurate? Hmm...
Thanks for reading. You’re hitting on the problem right there. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff in these social networks?
The easiest way is to think of them like you’d think of any other source of information. That is, be skeptical. Gone are the days when we could blindly believe sources just because they were published.
People may still have in the accuracy of printed matter like the Encyclopedia Britannica or World Almanac, but I’m not so sure. The Web has taught us one powerful lesson about accuracy: It never existed. Only varying degrees of accuracy existed, and that accuracy, such as in multiple-volume encyclopedias, was only as good as the copy editors and fact-checkers — and don’t forget that, in truth, most of those errors remained in the printed matter, even after they were discovered, because correcting them would have cost too much money in reprints.
Reporters have always been fact checkers and curators of information. We need to keep up that tradition now. You wonder how we might go about validating information we see online. My answer is that it requires hard detective work and a willingness to call up the people behind the online avatars and actually find out what they know.
Of course, when you add “the gatekeepers” to this equation it becomes even more dicey. What is even more important than the facts of any particular story, is the stories that are chosen for publication. Which, of course, is one of the primary reasons we have citizen journalism in the first place. I think most of us realize that “old media” wasn’t doing their job, or wasn’t allowed; whatever the case may be. “New media” is here to stay people, get used to it. “New Media” has it’s issues and facts and accuracy are definitely some of them. However, equal time, “gatekeepers” etc are no longer issues. Moreover, the saying “never let the facts get in the way of a good story” existed long before “new media”.
“Gatekeeper” has such a harsh connotation to it, but that is also one of the roles of mainstream media. Editors in newsrooms decide which stories to publish based on their judgments. Which news is important? What does the public need to know?
Sadly, this selection is often done with revenue in mind and not any thought about what people should know to be functioning members of a democratic society. So citizen journalists step in to “fill in the gaps” they perceive in the mainstream media’s coverage.
I’m all for that, except when that leads to citizen journalists who believe they are on a crusade against some news industry conspiracy — people who believe they are “exposing” the stories that the mainstream media is sweeping under the rug.
Maybe I’m naive, but in all my years in the industry, I’ve never seen any hint of such conspiracies to hide “the truth.” Mostly what I’ve seen are lots of people who are almost always stressed and crunched for time. They wouldn’t have time to conspire if they wanted to.
People have always been dissatisfied with newspapers and the media’s coverage of events. Before now, few people had access to tools that would let them publish their own news to a wide number of people. Now they can, and that ability is having a profound effect on the whole newspaper industry, casting journalists in a new light. Is this a good thing? I can’t judge that, but it is an important thing.
@Tom... I don’t think we need “gatekeepers” in the sense that this information is invalid we can not use it or this is good information lets use it. I think if the information is factual then it should be used, if it’s not then it shouldn’t. I think their needs to be a distinction between what is news and what isn’t news. Is Twitter considered news? Can we consider what we read on Twitter news? I think the ideas and comments are great on Twitter, I read them and I read them regarding Fort Hood. The problem is how do we know which comments are truth and which are not? I think facts are important and I think Michael is right about the time constraints. I think too many journalists are pressured with getting the story done and on the air and don’t have time to double check and double check again to make sure everything is accurate. I am a journalist student and I haven’t worked in the industry but that is what I have been told. I don’t want to assume anything so please correct me if I am wrong.
@Michael... I agree that we need some system of determining what is factual and what is not. Citizen journalism is great and I think it adds to our field. Sites like Twitter, we need to be cautious what we read on there as a lot of information can be misrepresented. We need some other way to fact check this. Moderating and removing ideas I think is not an option as this would impose on the 1st amendment and I think that isn’t what should be done. I agree may be calling people out for misinformation is a good idea.
“Moderating and removing ideas I think is not an option as this would impose on the 1st amendment and I think that isn’t what should be done.”
What do you mean? Can you expand your thoughts here?
Joegullo,
Respectfully, I’m not arguing about what is news or what isnt news. That to me is immaterial and being a journalism student you have no choice whether you think you need or don’t need gatekeepers. They exist, they’re usually called editors.Keep in mind the massive amounts of information/stories that are out there? You can only pick and choose a few of thousands. Right there is “gatekeeping” These stories are chosen for a variety of reasons which I won’t go into here, although they usually have to do with what helps to sell more whatever...Anyway, citizen journalism has no editors or gatekeepers, However as Mr. Becker points out it also lets anyone publish without corroboration which can bring out the crackpots. So if you are like me, you try to find a healthy balance of both...
I posted some more thoughts about Carr’s essay in a new blog post. It didn’t quite fit with the discussion going on here. Read it, if you like, at http://www.hypercrit.net/2009/11/17/reconsideri....
I posted some more thoughts about Carr’s essay in a new blog post. It didn’t quite fit with the discussion going on here. Read it, if you like, at http://www.hypercrit.net/2009/11/17/reconsideri....