Citizen Journalism
May 7, 2009
In a converging world, socially and technologically, with communication at a global level, new media has given power to the people when in comes to the media they consume in their daily lives. The everyday citizen has the ability to communicate with those in the other side of the world in an instant. This freedom of ease to communicate within our society has seen the rise of public involvement in communicating the events one may experience or witness in their daily activities. Media professionals have come to know of this new media development as Citizen Journalism. Terry Flew discusses how countries around the world have established online communities for people to report news outside of the mainstream structure and gate watching. This blog will look at how citizen journalism is influencing the music industry.
The music industry relies heavily on consumer/audience enjoyment and participation. Citizen journalism has produced many opportunities for independent and major labels to benefit from. Individuals are now able to review CDs, performances, festivals, anything really that they have participated in, giving music professionals a large first hand feedback system free for them to use in the development of future endeavours. Independent “zines” are being produced which are available free or for next to nothing. The creation of social networking sites has allowed people to collaborate online blog, podcast, and share news and information about the music industry. Mevio.com is a great example. This site allows its users to upload video podcasts of themselves and others and report on music events and news that they have witnessed. This can be viewed and sorted by other members of the site into channels containing their most popular podcasts. There has however, been some scepticism about citizen journalism. Many opinions of this new style of reporting are that this could become problematic as by promoting citizen journalism music labels are giving the power to the consumer leaving them with the ability to make or break new artists or events. Also, some professional journalists are taking a negative approach to citizen journalism, as it doesn’t follow the traditional hierarchal structure and guidelines of mainstream news and journalism, but follows a more personal account and reflection of events that will contain opinion as well as fact. Regardless of negative views, this style of journalism has become very popular among the public with the ability to access and contribute to it.
Dr. Alex Bruns discusses in his book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage how change to media is inevitable and that traditional news media companies are learning to use citizen journalism as an open source of information for stories or interviews. Giving people the ability to report on events witnessed in their lives opens up a new source of opinion and information that traditional media sources can use to build stories, or in relation to the music industry, develop and produce music and events from audience reviews, blogs, podcasts and many more. Citizen journalism has given the everyday person a voice in the new media society and the capability to influence people on a global level.
