Key Publications:
- Book: [weblink:28] (New York: Peter Lang, 2005)
- Website: Gatewatching.org
Research Projects:
- Participatory Journalism and Citizen Engagement
- Youdecide2007.org
- Mapping the Australian Political Blogosphere
Related Topics:
Related Blog Posts:
The concept of gatewatching describes the process of identifying and posting about interesting stories which is a core practice in citizen journalism, news blogging, and other related fields; it's the 'open news' alternative to the 'closed news' practice of gatekeeping as it has been a mainstay of conventional, professional, industrial journalism for the past century and more.
Many gatewatching communities, like the technology news site Slashdot or the citizen journalism site OhmyNews, now offer a more comprehensive, intelligent, and multiperspectival coverage of the goings-on in their field of interest than their mainstream counterparts at any time of the day; others act less as a replacement and more as a complement to the journalism industry, offering a diverse and often very different view on events in the news. Almost all of them distinguish themselves by providing not simply 'the news' as a finished product, but by covering newsworthy events as an ongoing process and offering a space for the continuing discussion, debate, and deliberation of further developments and their implications - a shift from the industrial production to the communal, collaborative produsage of news and opinions.
Gatewatching and related concepts were first introduced in my 2005 book [weblink:28]. Many articles and presentations about gatewatching and citizen journalism are available here, and with Jason Wilson and Barry Saunders I also publish the group blog Gatewatching.org.
