Thinking through Citizen Journalism

Brisbane.
The post-lunch session at the CCi conference starts for me with a panel on citizen journalism which involves my colleague Jason Wilson from Youdecide2007 (and Gatewatching.org), Larvatus Prodeo's Mark Bahnisch, and Graham Young from Online Opinion. Their theme is the role of citizen journalism in the 2007 Australian federal election.

Mark Bahnisch speaks first, and highlights the fact that news blogging and citizen journalism is a form of work, and in the longer term cannot be sustained simply by opposition to government and mainstream media. The latter perception persists both amongst detractors and proponents of citizen journalism, however, even in spite of evidence to the contrary. Mark points to his own experience in the 2007 election campaign, running and contributing to LP as well as New Matilda, Crikey, and various other news and commentary outlets - this is a significant workload which in most cannot be sustained on a purely voluntary basis. (Indeed, Mark did receive pay for some of these activities.)

This kind of work generated some very diverse media content and was able to uncover stories and ideas which would not have been addressed in the mainstream media; it relied on significant existing networks both held privately by Mark and established through online social networking and crowdsourcing processes (and the establishment and maintenance of these also requires significant energy). Some of this work is not that far removed from journalistic practice or activities on which now well-established mainstream journalists and journalism educators first cut their teeth, but oddly enough, there continues to come some severe hostility to the new kids on the block from that direction - partly also because they are experiencing substantial change in their own media work environments.

The next speaker is Jason Wilson, who notes especially the rise of specialist, expert bloggers (such as the psephologists) during the election campaign. Jason interviewed the now famous Possum Comitatus as part of his research, who started blogging simply to archive graphs of polling data and found himself gradually becoming a hub in his own social network. Such specialists (also economists, lawyers, and other experts) do not need the mediation of journalists any more to place their material into the public sphere; it may be easier to teach a psephologist to write well than it is to teach a mainstream journalist the finer details of psephological analysis, Jason suggests.

Another key aspect of the 2007 campaign was the complete failure of the Liberal Party to engage with online media, which helped Labor to underscore the differences between the two political brands. This was probably not the sole reason why the Liberals lost, but it would not have helped. Additionally, Jason notes that AES data suggests a growing engagement (off a relatively low base) of the electorate with blogs and other online media, and it will be interesting to see how this will further develop. The Net itself, indeed, became a major campaign issue (with broadband a central element of both parties' policy releases), also indicating the growing role of online media.

On now to Graham Young, who thinks back to his view that the Net would be where political discussion would move in the near future; against this, however, he suggests that the impact of citizen journalism still remains limited and that there is no real sign that this performance will lift in the immediate future. The relatively limited size of the Australian population (as compared for example with the US) has a role to play here, of course; also, the mainstream media here are on the whole relatively uninterested in interacting visibly with online media.

So, what is citizen journalism and what can it do? There is a somewhat romantic notion of citizen journalists, Graham feels, and takes a somewhat functional view which describes almost anyone who makes online comments as citizen journalists - including especially also sites which are run by the mainstream media. Graham also points to the lessons from Youdecide2007 and Qlddecides as indicating that simple, accessible structures look set to remain more successful for the time being, by providing relatively low barriers to access and participation - the latter project took a much simpler approach and (given the short run-up time) was comparatively more successful. Overall, though, Graham suggests, the news agenda on both sites was much closer to what users wanted to read about than the coverage of the mainstream media.

Mark comments that in the US some of the major news blogs have effectively been mainstreamed, which at the same time has also opened up a space for local and hyperlocal forms of covering state and city politics and electoral races. In a place like Brisbane, there is no critical mass for this as yet, and it may take until the next election in a few years' for this to emerge.

They're now responding to questions from the audience. Jason suggests that the audience for Youdecide2007 largely consisted of already strongly politically involved users, and that most of them had already made up their mind about how they would vote. Mark says that for LP, the process of being able to respond and interact on the site in the first place showed users that there were communities in which they could engage, and that they could thereby exercise active citizenship.

Peter Black now shares his experience of the Microsoft Forum on Politics and Technology in Canberra yesterday, where he was collared by journalist Annabel Crabb who suggested that the blogosphere was superfluous because it did not break original news stories. Mark responds (to Annabel's views) by saying that the idea that the blogosphere must break news is nonsense; that said, during the federal election, for example, the Queensland election race was covered in the national media largely by journalists based in Sydney and Melbourne who in part relied on local coverage in news blogs and citizen journalism publications, so in a more indirect way, these outlets did create original journalistic content. He feels that there has been a fairly deliberate decision for news media to colonise the online space through their commentary 'blogs'.

Georgie McClean from SBS wonders how such tension between industry and citizen journalists may be able to be resolved in practice. Jason suggests that that dichotomy itself is one which has been built up deliberately by both sides (especially perhaps by the industry) to create strong distinctions between the camps, but that in practice there is a significant overlap between the two in personnel and practices. The oppositional paradigm is increasingly pointless.

Graham adds that he thinks of himself as a prospector looking for news, but requires the services of someone else to bring it to wider attention. What he does not understand is why the mainstream media do not have more people working this way for themselves - crowdsourcing additional information on stories, for example. Terry Flew adds that in the US it is increasingly common for news bloggers and citizen journalists to be featured on mainstream US news shows and channels; there is much less demarcation between media forms there.

John Quiggin notes that news during election campaigns is largely generated by the various parties' campaigns anyway, and that this material at least is equally accessible to industrial and citizen journalists. There is some independent fact-finding, but this remains limited. He also notes the propensity of cross-linking in blogs, which is largely absent in the walled gardens of mainstream media Web content, and thereby establishes limits to the ability of media organisations to effectively colonise this space.

Mark responds by saying that there is a distinction between political bloggers like himself and citizen journalists (who may be interested in creating more conventional news content) - the former take a clearly partisan stance, which also makes them useful discussion partners for politically aligned actors in the parties and elsewhere. He suggests that he has seen more internal Labor party polling than most industry journalists in Brisbane, for example, because Labor figures have a clear idea of what he might do with that material - discuss it on LP.

Anne Dunn suggests that cultivating contacts in the way Mark has described it is exactly what professional journalists do, and also notes that what the ABC does in training specialist broadcasters is exactly what Jason has described - providing domain experts with journalistic skills. At the same time, Jason says, there is an institutional bottleneck in places like the ABC; there is not the space for the diversity which exists in the open environment of the Web. Anne suggests that some kind of measure of authority remains important - but, as Jason says, that authority may no longer be provided by the institutional imprint of the ABC, but by other forms of recognition. Interestingly, Terry notes that there is now a large number of students who will do some journalism as part of their degree.

David McKnight goes back to the question of hostility between the two camps. Partly this is due to the ignorance of mainstream journalists, he suggests, partly also to the triumphalism of citizen journalists in positioning themselves as an alternative to mainstream media. Jason responds to say again that there is also a lot of interest from some players in the industry in new models - this comes often from specific groups in industrial journalism, however. Mark further notes the importance of commenting on blogs; this generates community loyalty and trust in citizen journalism in a way that does not exist.

My question is how we can define and measure the influence and impact of citizen journalism. Is it a matter of swinging an election, Mark asks, of attracting influential (but elite) readers, or of civic impact? Terry points to the US case of Barack Obama's controversial pastor, where a two- (or more-) step flow was apparent (from videos to blogs to more mainstream news channels); Jason suggests that some policy bloggers in Australia are having an impact on elite policymaking discources. Graham thinks that providing opportunities for open debate may not be enough if such discussion turns out to be highly polarised (which may undermine rather than strengthen democracy).

Mel Gregg focusses our debate on the citizen part of the term 'citizen journalism'. How are conceptions of citizenship different, for example, between Australia and the US? What kinds of people are recognised by these processes? Georgie McClean sees one definition of citizenship as engagement with public life, but this continues to privilege mainly those who are already political junkies, perhaps. Terry notes that there is a persistent bifurcation in this context between a civic republican tradition and an understanding that fundamental to citizenship is personal liberty. Mark adds that the notion of citizenship is often approached from an individualised rather than community perspective; we're only at the start of researching the role of blogging and other online practices in this context. Jason points to the core problem of Australia as having a very unevenly distributed public sphere, which centres around the major cities and has very limited purchase in more sparsely populated areas poorly served by mainstream media. He suggests that hyperlocal projects like Youdecide2007 do fill an important alternative role here. For Graham, 'citizen journalism' largely refers to people doing journalistic work without pay; the citizenship aspect does not play such a significant role in his personal practice, or certainly does not exist in the forefront of such practices.

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