How could “Citizen Journalism” be defined? The term refers to two broader concepts, to narrow it I’m going to refer to the ten elements of journalism that Kovach and Rosenstiel enlist in the Introduction of “Elements of Journalism”:
- Journalism’s first obligation is the truth
- Its first loyalty is to the citizens
- Its essences is a discipline of verification
- Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
- It must serve as an independent monitor of power
- It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
- It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
- It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion
- Its practitioners have and obligation to exercise their personal conscience
- Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.
With this ten elements its possible to have a better idea of what journalism is and what does it requieres. In essence there’s a strong relation from the journalists and the public, the public trust in what the journalists publish and use that information to participate in the public debates of the society.
In the other hand the citizens are the public actor, not just an individual, but the action of the individual in the collective. So I would define the Citizen Journalism as the active role of the citizens in the process of the news, collecting information, analysing it, and disseminating it to the public. Also one key difference that I find is the backup of an institution, the citizen journalists doesn’t have this backup as the “traditional” ones does.
In Mexico there has been an uprising in citizen journalism during the last years, the “war of drugs” has led to the emergence of new news sites from “El Blog del Narco” (covering confrontations and violence) to new mapping projects of missing people and clandestine graves.
Photo: Sopitas.com
The #PorLosDesaparecidos is a project that tries to map all the 26,000 missing people (Data from 2013, and counting), it is an effort from a group of people in Mexico D.F, they took the database from the National Commission of Human Rights and also allow to more people to register missing people, the result is a crowdsourced map that shows where were reported the missing people, it could help to know in which states are more dangerous, then correlate the information with the political parties in the government and start to trace some history.
#PorLosDesaparecidos
I find very interesting the new role that the citizens are playing in democracies, now the power isn’t only in the voting, the use of information with new tools are empowering them, It’s easier to tell a story in new ways, even stories that might not be appearing in traditional news outlets or that could represent a direct confrontation to the government found their way through the citizens.
In a country where the traditional media are too close to the government and where the violence is uprising, it’s important to empower the citizens to participate in the public debates, to encourage them to take action, even if its with a blog post a tweet or a map, I believe that the main goal is to have an conscious society that could speak for it self.