Citizen Journalism II
Is citizen journalism entering a new phase with the rise of social media? It is quite obvious that nowadays the availability of the technology to capture and share information is unprecedented and creates ample opportunities. But it is disputed whether that fact automatically leads to the improvement of journalism in terms of quality, diversity and independency. Moreover, the developments result in questions of organization.
There seem to be two main concerns for the near future: what will be the behavior of the audience and what kind of funding or business model is needed to maintain quality journalism?
Behavior of the audience
The main contradiction with regard to the expected behavior of audiences in the near future is that one dynamic seems to be fragmentation into particular niches and networks and another is the need for strong quality news brands that function as anchor in the overload of information.
So, on the one hand social media provides for the opportunity for particular networks to organize themselves around particular topics of interest. No longer are their members forced to watch centrally produced news-programmes hoping for an interesting topic to come by. They can neglect anything they are not interested in and exchange only that particular information they consider relevant. The downside of this development is that people are caught up in their own niches.
On the other hand, the enormous amount of information and sources increases and might lead to uncertainty and distrust with regard to the quality of information. In this ‘news-jungle’ brands as BBC, CNN or NOS might remain important for people.
It is expected that in the near future these contradicting dynamics will probably develop parallel to each other.
The consequence for citizen journalism is that there is space for bottom up innovation and independent initiatives and there are possibilities for cooperation between citizen-networks and existing news-brands.
Funding, business models and innovation
Taken these new developments in consideration it is relevant to pose the question how quality journalism can be financed in the future.
Initiatives such as VJ movement or Marokko Media try to develop their own business models. Marokko Media, for example, is able to benefit from its very specific audience. Parallel to their journalistic function they are able to connect certain institutions to their Dutch-Moroccon users for policy or research-purposes. Of course it is questionable to what extent qualitative independent journalism can be combined with the agendas of institutional partners or even companies. But it is clear that the particular network of audience of an independent media initiative provides for certain opportunities along this line of thought. Other possibilities to earn money might emerge from the development of technology of paying systems. For example, if users can pay a small amount for their views automatically just by clicking on a link.
In the discussion on the feasibility of a strong field of new (citizen) journalism several problematic issues arise. One issue is that competition with publicly funded mainstream media seems to be a problem for innovation. For starting initiatives it is difficult to compete whether they have a good business model or not. Another issue is that to keep a medium alive a critical mass is needed. Especially if not only producers but also consumers-as-producers become relevant. In the context of the Netherlands this might be an obstacle because of the relative small audience. It might even result in new journalism initiatives using English as main language. On top of that the initiative and motivation of citizens to contribute to serious journalism could be overestimated, especially if new initiatives professionalize and are not really cutting edge anymore (as happened before in the radio-scene).
So, how to start bottom-up in a field in which publicly funded media dominate? How to find the right balance or connection between the niches, particular networks and the mainstream media? How to keep crowd-sourced news reliable? How to keep quality journalism in the near future? These are urgent questions that should be explored in the coming years.
At the State of Social Media Summit these issues will be discussed during the round table conversation on the future of journalism in a networked world.
