CITIZEN JOURNALISM

What concerns may news organisations have with the emergence of citizen journalism?

Journalism is becoming more and more redundant with the emergence of user-generated content. 61% of adults now get their news online, making the web the third most popular news platform.

News organisations are responding to this by incorporating multiple media platforms, such as websites, phone apps, etc.  They are now integrating social features on their sites for a more engaging experience for the audience.

37% of internet users have contributed to the creation/commentary of news.  (2009)

How have news organisations responded to the rise of citizen journalism?

‘… when major events occur, the public can offer us as much new information as we are able to broadcast to them. From now on, news coverage is a partnership.’

- Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism and ex-BBC journalist.

For example, ‘The New York Times’ is one of the few sites currently onboard as a launch partner for twitter’s new ‘@anywhere platform.’  (an easy-to-deploy solution for bringing the Twitter communication platform to your site.) This makes it easier for people to follow site authors.

They are also integrating ‘citizen journalism’ networks. For example, the CNN ‘IReport.’ This is a public journalism initiative to enable people from across the world to report stories.

The BBC’s Global news director has demanded that all BBC journalists must use social media.

Jürgen Habermas

A German sociologist and philosopher, best known for his theory on the ‘concepts of communicative rationality’ and the ‘public sphere.’

‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere’ is Habermas' examination of a kind of publicity that originated in the eighteenth century, but still has modern relevance. It begins by attempting to define what Habermas calls the ‘bourgeois public sphere.’ He defines the public sphere as the sphere of private people who join together to form a "public." He traces the history of the division between public and private in language and philosophy.

The Public Sphere is being part of a society where people can discuss and share opinions on the greater good, specifically politics related. The bourgeois society ‘cultivated and upheld these criteria.’ However the media has destroyed this by having a larger focus on consumerism than politics. Media became the medium for advertising rather than the public’s source of news à reduces the access to the public sphere.

Before the bourgeois public sphere came representative publicity. It involved the king or lord representing himself before an audience; the King was the only public person, and all others were spectators. The public and private realms were not separated.

Economic developments were vital in the evolution of the public sphere. Habermas emphasizes the role of capitalist modes of production, and of the long-distance trade in news and commodities in this evolution. The most important feature of the public sphere as it existed in the eighteenth century was the public use of reason in rational-critical debate. This checked domination by the state, or the illegitimate use of power. Rational-critical debate occurred within the bourgeois reading public, in response to literature, and in institutions such as salons and coffee-houses. Habermas sees the public sphere as developing out of the private institution of the family, and from what he calls the "literary public sphere", where discussion of art and literature became possible for the first time. The public sphere was by definition inclusive, but entry depended on one's education and qualification as a property owner. Habermas emphasizes the role of the public sphere as a way for civil society to articulate its interests.

The development of the fully political public sphere occurred first in Britain in the eighteenth century. The public sphere became institutionalized within the European bourgeois constitutional states of the nineteenth century, where public consensus was enshrined as a way of checking domination. The fully developed public sphere was therefore dependent on many social conditions, which eventually shifted.

Habermas argues that the self-interpretation of the public sphere took shape in the concept of "public opinion", which he considers in the light of the work of Kant, Marx, Hegel, Mill and Tocqueville. The bourgeois public sphere eventually eroded because of economic and structural changes. The boundaries between state and society blurred, leading to what Habermas calls the refeudalisation of society. State and society became involved in each other's spheres; the private sphere collapsed into itself. The key feature of the public sphere - rational-critical debate - was replaced by leisure, and private people no longer existed as a public of property owners. Habermas argues that the world of the mass media is cheap and powerful. He says that it attempts to manipulate and create a public where none exists, and to manufacture consensus. This is particularly evident in modern politics, with the rise of new disciplines such as advertising and public relations. These, and large non- governmental organizations, replace the old institutions of the public sphere. The public sphere takes on a feudal aspect again, as politicians and organizations represent themselves before the voters. Public opinion is now manipulative, and, more rarely, still critical. We still need a strong public sphere to check domination by the state and non-governmental organizations. Habermas holds out some hope that power and domination may not be permanent features.