Concerns over two particular problems with American society have grown over the recent years. The first and perhaps more broadly evident is the volatility of the economy. The Great Recession and the feeble job market that accompanied it shook the faith that many held in the nation’s markets and financial institutions. An ever-widening wealth gap has not helped to reinstate any of the confidence that was lost, and a government that has proved at many times to be ineffective and often in deadlock has allayed few fears. This wariness of the economy and those who hold sway over it provides a useful segue to the second issue. Civic involvement and engagement in the United States have been proclaimed by many academics to be on a downward trend. There is disenchantment over the government’s ability to affect change and represent ordinary citizens; at the same time, many have also argued that there is a lack of participation in the sort of community organizations that dominated the social lives of previous generations. The purported result has been twofold: hesitation to voice opinions over government channels and the demise of service organizations like the Rotary Club.

While it would be presumptuous to think that both of these problems could be solved in full by the application of a single new program or technology, many of the symptoms exhibited by these systemic failures can be combated on the local level. Communities across the United States have chosen to do this by means of complementary currencies. These methods of exchange are meant to be used in parallel with the extant notes that are recognized as legal tender by the federal government. Though ways in which these currencies are backed, exchanged, and represented vary across different implementations, almost all were established with several common advantages in mind. One of these is that complementary currencies cannot be used in transactions outside of the community where they were issued. This results in the creation of a trade barrier that prevents cash from flowing out of the locality, insulating all members from volatile national markets and promoting the patronage of local businesses. Complementary currencies are also often designed to encourage utilization of the community’s full labor potential and to discourage hoarding of wealth.

Alongside a desire to create healthy local economies is also a push to encourage civil interaction. A notable example of the potential of complementary currencies to spur community involvement is the Fureai Kippu currency used in Japan. Created to tackle the lack of care available to the country’s rapidly aging population, the basic unit of account is an hour of service rendered to a senior citizen. Accumulated credits can then be spent once the holder is themselves an elderly. Another more experimental attempt at using an alternative currency to foster engagement occurred in 2011 with Macon Money. A number of residents of Macon, Georgia received bonds of values ranging from $10 to $100, albeit with a catch. Each physical note had been cut in half before it had been issued; to redeem their notes, holders had to find their missing half. Matching halves were deliberately distributed to neighborhoods separated by physical or socioeconomic distance; the notes themselves, which could only be used at local businesses, bore images of famous historical residents and celebrated town values.

Despite benefits such as these, widespread adoption of complementary currencies is hindered by multiple problems. The difficulty of and time needed to create the infrastructure for a new currency can be prohibitive, and result in a high barrier of entry. Once a framework is established, local businesses must also be convinced to accept it as a form of payment in order for circulation to start. Finally, issues of poor inclusivity prevent digital-based currency systems to be truly egalitarian. In this paper, we propose the outline for an open-source digital framework that can be used to quickly and easily establish a customized complementary currency, as well as possible approaches to bridging both the digital divide and the initial reluctance of merchants. The impacts of different monetary options are also discussed, as well as the positive effects that such a platform might have on the civic engagement and development of the community.

Full paper here.

Gladwell finds fault with the idea of social media being transformative to how activism is done. High-risk activities that actually effect change, he insists, rely on “strong-tie” relationships – bonds that usually form from lengthy face-to-face interactions fostered by physical proximity. The friendships that result are what give people the inspiration necessary to participate in activities where they face the possibility of arrest, violence, or even death.

The claim that the “weak-tie” networks generated by social media are ill-suited for the hierarchy-driven, heavily invested work of running large campaigns or highly-coordinated responses is probably correct. Physical locality or at least a preexisting interest is required for digital platforms to fulfill any goals; this means that just because you build it doesn’t mean that people will come. The failure of Americans Elect is a perfect example of a costly digital space that was created to cater to what turned out to be a vacuum of interest. Even many of the volunteers behind Rynda, a movement that turned out to be relatively successful, admitted that the participants were mostly those who were inclined towards volunteerism in the first place, and that the existence of the platform did little to recruit people who weren’t previously civically engaged. The availability of interest was therefore critical to the respective failure and success of these two platforms – interest that Gladwell would probably claim to be most readily engendered by strong-tie relationships.

But Gladwell seems to conveniently ignore everything on the Internet beyond Twitter and Facebook, which serve as a pair of colossal and conspicuous straw men which he can dispatch with ease. Ignored are things such as forums where netizens can operate under the aegis of anonymity and therefore perform acts that while may not lead to bodily harm, are certainly not zero-risk. Anonymous and its LOIC attacks come to mind, as do the many darknet markets, which can be argued to be the components of a protest against what their clientele see as overbearing national governments. If we are to measure effectiveness by Gladwell’s standards, which seem to lean towards the quantitative, then the billions of dollars of commerce have flowed through sites such as Agora and the Silk Road should be clear evidence of how transformative digital technologies can be.

And this is all without bringing up an unfortunate movement that has gained prominence since he wrote his article: ISIS. The terror group’s adeptness at using social media to recruit disgruntled youth across the world cannot be ignored. Traveling across the world to fight in causes that one feels aligned with is not something new – many Americans, for example, went to Europe to fight in the Spanish Civil War and even the Second World War before the United States joined the conflict. On the other hand, the scale, rigor, and scope of what ISIS does – Youtube channels, FAQs and message boards for those looking to join, responsive recruiters eager for outreach – is unprecedented and feasible only due to digital media platforms. So while social media might not have revolutionized how effective movements are fundamentally organized, they certainly serve as a transformative force multiplier, allowing in this case for the radicalization of young adults across the world and prompting them to take part in unequivocally high-risk activities.

Yet putting life and limb on the line isn’t usually necessary to shape how things are. Gladwell seems to equate activism with inherently higher-risk actions such as taking to the streets in protest or sitting-in at adversarial environments. In reality, those whose blood is less inclined to boil can still be activists. Change.org, which takes advantage of the maligned weak-tie networks and the worst parts of slacktivism, has waged successful campaigns against large corporation and influenced the decisions of lawmakers. Open-source projects, employing a mixture of both hierarchies and unstructured collaboration, have led to invaluable and complex pieces of software such as Linux. Gladwell’s assessment is ultimately correct in spirit but highly reductionist. Will activism always require those who are deeply invested in the cause and some degree of organization? Absolutely. But the internet and the bevy of things that it brings – anonymity, weak-tie networks, and ease of dissemination – are indeed game-changers.

There’s oftentimes a fine line between social justice and vigilantism. The internet has made both information collection and sharing quick and effortless, allowing for social movements to spread rapidly while lowering the barrier needed to participate. This, however, means that masses of well-intentioned people working towards change can end up focusing their vitriol on a few defenseless and mostly undeserving individuals who happen to be so unlucky as to have insulted the sensibilities of the majority in some way. The unfortunate cynosures then find themselves the target of the ire of thousands, if not tens of thousands of strangers, and owing to the public nature of the condemnation, facing very real consequences such as death threats and the loss of their jobs and livelihood.

These cases where the internet is whipped into a fury over some perceived slight are as much social movements as any and deserve study. The most prominent recent example involves the owners of a small pizzeria in Walkerton, IN, who when questioned about their state’s contentious Religious Freedom Restoration Act by a local news crew, had the apparent gall to say that while they would never refuse service to gay patrons, they would never cater to a gay wedding. Their remarks, distorted and amplified in enormity, quickly became the latest fixation for many on the Internet. The pizzeria’s Yelp page was defamed with scathing reviews and pornography, the owners were denounced by one of their Senators, and the family that owned the store announced that the store would be closed, and that it might prove impossible for them to continue living in the state.

While it can be argued that such bigoted views are reprehensible, the punishment in this case certainly did not meet the crime. This was a family that owned a small business that had never, in all its years of operation, been asked to cater to a wedding, let alone a gay wedding. Their statements were essentially irrelevant to the national dialogue. Yet their opinions became the front of a national battle over discrimination, when instead the attention should probably have been focused on how ambiguously worded and poorly written the piece of proposed legislation was.

It’s an interesting exercise to see what platforms were used in this bout of off-color activism, and see how they compare to classic principles of political organizing. The story was first published by the local TV station WBND and eaten up by many online aggregations, which regurgitated the statements with little additional reporting. These articles were then shared over Facebook; people took up their complaints on Twitter. The Yelp page, easily findable on Google, was populated with low reviews. As news spread that the store had been closed indefinitely, putting the family in possibly dire financial straits, a GoFundMe campaign was started to provide support. It eventually amassed close to a million dollars. As of the time of writing, a wave of opposing, anti-gay commentary has risen in response to what was perceived as brutal intimidation at the hands of liberals.

It’s easy to draw parallels between what happened in this case and digital campaigning against SOPA – knee-jerk reactions by many who saw their responses as a part of their identities as digital citizens and were therefore more than willing to spread the word and work towards the bill’s demise. Social media facilitated a need that was already there, a desire to distinguish themselves as part of a specific group. The same case can be made for forms of political campaigning that appeal to voters’ loyalties to identity-defining groups such as working class or ethnicity; acting towards the cause then becomes not only a responsibility but an affirmation of one’s own place in a community.

What distinguishes this from traditional forms of political campaigning is perhaps the lack of leaders. Even campaigns embarked by groups such as Anonymous tend to have leaders who are given more responsibilities and power than others. Motivation in this case, however, seemed to stem mostly from each incensed individual. Nor was there really a need for organization as the target seemed so defenseless and the cause so obvious. The restaurant’s Yelp page was easily accessible to any who had the ability to perform a Google search; sending scalding tweets at their Twitter tag also required little more than a desire to do so.

The lesson to be taken away might then be one of accountability. Mass movements such as the Ice Bucket Challenge and Marriage Equality Profile Picture did not necessarily have leaders either – but the consequences expected were largely positive and not targeted at a small group of people in particular. When the purpose is condemnation, however, it might be wise to have someone in charge to make sure that things don’t go too far.

Note: An overview of what happened can be found here.

Monithon, its name a contraction of the words monitor and marathon, is citizen-based monitoring effort in Italy that seeks to evaluate the success of local projects funded by the EU. Small groups of volunteers, sometimes from the Monithon development team and otherwise comprised of concerned citizens, assess the progress of projects and identify potential problems as they crop up. Finding projects to watch over is made easy due to OpenCoesione, a government-initiated open data portal that provides visualizations for funds allocated and projects supported. The result is ample access to valuable data given to committed volunteers armed with the skills needed to make sense of it.

This entire model demonstrates well what monitorial citizenship entails – groups of individuals paying attention to government-funded works in their areas of interest. When split into its discrete components, however, elements of both participatory and justice-oriented citizenship also shine through. Much of it has to do with OpenCoesione and the willingness of the government to release data to the public. But, as mentioned in Ethan Zuckerman’s post, just having data is never enough. Luckily, “open data days” and other data analysis workshops have sprung up in Italy in order to teach individuals and young students how to interpret the information at their disposal. This data literacy is vital as it sets the foundation for multiple types of civic engagement. From the technical skills taught come the potential of participatory citizenship; students who know how to assemble garbled data into coherent narratives are capable of participating in projects such as Monithon that rely on skilled interpreters of statistics. Such workshops can also introduce students to the critical mindset held by justice-oriented citizens. It takes a stolid mind to work on discerning between good government practices and poor ones without thinking about the structural implications of the results. Thus, while being trained in data analysis might not be a direct exposure to the more abstract, structural analytics associated with justice-oriented citizenship, it certainly offers a glimpse of what problems may lie deep within the data and what flaws may exist in the system.

Questions remain as to how Monithon might be made even better. For one, participatory movements are difficult to expand. The case study on Rynda pointed out that the platform created served more as a way for previously active citizens to interact and allocate resources, rather than encouraging support from usually disinterested segments of the population. Giving workshops for students and getting them involved early on certainly approaches this problem , but it’s possible that participation could be harnessed from a greater number of people, as with Social Cops. What was required from the average contributor for Social Cops, however, was simply an indication of whether or not their trash was collected. While movements can be made highly successful by decreasing the commitment necessary to be involved, it’s a markedly different sort of participating than what developers or data analysts do. Providing data may even be more akin to an act of personally responsible citizenship – donating information as one would food or money. The efficacy of limited scope can also be brought into question. Can many groups of people narrowly focused on specific projects lead to national discussions about things such as systematic disenfranchisement of certain social groups, or other dialogues that require an analysis of structural as well as infrastructural context? Perhaps a new method could be made, similar to Monithon but with a slightly different purpose: for the identification of far more nebulous systemic failures.

Creating usable, flexible, and inclusive platforms for civic media remains an incipient struggle; any working example even halfway close to the ideal civic technology is at least a couple decades’ worth of design innovations and adaptation hurdles away. Nevertheless, a good idea of what this might entail can be garnered by sampling extant creations that perform remarkably well for certain functions. The resulting chimera that would emerge from assembling these various traits would be somewhat similar to what you would expect: inclusive towards all parties, adaptable to user needs, decentralized to some degree, and easily integrable with other platforms.

As internet access proliferates even among demographics with low incomes, greater importance is placed on the quality of use rather than availability of connection. Users may be separated into several tiers; a grossly generalized distinction would be between regular browsers, content creators, and developers. A truly inclusive platform would seek to engage users from all these categories – by making the code open source, allowing for content creation, fostering social connections, and allowing public access to datasets. Most contemporary platforms exhibit some of these elements. Flickr, for example, has an easy to use API to allow for analysis of a formidable collection of photos, and also serves as a social site for photographers to congregate and share content. All the code, however, is written by Yahoo engineers, potentially depriving the site from innovations that would arise from open development.
Although inclusiveness is vital to a civic project, it should not come at the cost of effectiveness and organization. Large open source endeavors such as GNU/Linux operate with hierarchies that allow for contributions from thousands of people to coalesce into working products. Hierarchies of management, as long as they are transparent and supported by users, are often not only boons, but necessities. Striking a balance between top-down management and decentralization is difficult, but not impossible. The Wikipedia model seeks to have editors reach a consensus on most disagreements on their own; several levels of moderators, and at the highest echelon, the Arbitration Committee, are ready to step in should tensions escalate. Anyone familiar with Wikipedia knows such a system has its flaws, but the idea of having supervisors interfere only when necessary is appealing as it combines the benefits of stricter hierarchies with those of unguided collaboration.

Perhaps the most important quality a project could have is knowledge of the place it occupies in the media ecosystem. Developers who are acutely aware of this design platforms that focus on a few specific things, instead of attempting to accomplish disparate objectives. This, however, is not enough. An effort must be made to allow maximum integration with other projects and tools that exist, taking advantage of the increased ease of use and output potential that results from creating suites of tools. Having user interfaces that follow a standard or set of guidelines or making available APIs that provide for integration multiplies the effectiveness of tools by removing the learning curve necessary for users and developers as they move from project to project. In the end, this is the larger picture – a media environment that is organic, allows for fluid movement, and which meets the needs of the many by being a seamless web of smaller elements.

The Great Recession has nominally ended but faith in the economy remains to be restored. Shaken by the experiences of previous years, many Americans have begun to seek alternatives to the standard U.S. dollar, citing the advantages of autonomy and insulation from the national market. Of these non-standard currencies, the one that has received by far the most attention from the press has been Bitcoin, due to the controversy surrounding its facilitation of less than legal online transactions.

Less well-known but equally noteworthy are the numerous local currencies that have begun to crop up across the United States. Whether existing in physical form as bills and coins or purely in electronic denominations, they are circulated only locally and are accepted as forms of payment by neighborhood establishments. Common arguments for their existence are centered around the importance of the community. The inability for their value to be transferred to places outside of their point of origin serves to both encourage investment in local businesses and buffer the local economy from volatility on the national level. Such currencies can also prove to be a boon for those unemployed by increasing the purchasing power of individuals and thus encouraging the hiring of more people. Other advantages differ with the ways in which the currency is implemented. Japan, for example, has a form of currency called the “Fureai kippu,” which can only be obtained by assisting the elderly; accumulated credits are stored until the owner is a senior citizen, at which point he or she can use them to pay for services rendered by other elderly or younger individuals. Time-based monetary systems also exist, in which hours of labor are traded within the community. The premise of these two latter cases in particular is that apart from serving as an economic device, such currencies also are valuable civic tools that encourage members of the community, especially youth, to interact with their neighbors and take up civic roles and duties.

Having a community currency available as a supplement to federal dollars therefore provides opportunities for a myriad number of ways in which to encourage civic involvement, cohesion among neighbors, and the growth of small businesses. However, it’s unlikely that any one implementation of an alternative monetary system would satisfy the various needs of many different communities. I therefore propose a platform that would allow local governments and communities to easily create and distribute their own form of electronic currency. The specifics of how the currency is backed and generated, as well as the terms of exchange between it and federal currency, would be left open to allow for adaptation to the unique circumstances that face each town. In its most simple form the tool would be an app that serves as an e-wallet and indicates stores and job listings that deal with the currency. A more complicated and holistic version would consist of a suite of tools to allow for the basic infrastructure of the system to take hold. Possibilities would include QR codes that could be printed onto an ID or paper that would identify wallets and allow money to be exchanged from individual to individual or a range pre-coded options dealing with how the currency is generated (hours of labor, exchanged from federal currency, etc). With the success of some current models such as the BerkShares model, many communities could hopefully develop alternative spheres of exchange that satisfy both economic and social needs.

Change.org was launched in February of 2007. Since then it has taken great care to balance delicately its existence as a for-profit organization and its role as a platform for collective action. The flaw in government that it seeks to correct is that of responsiveness and consumer representation. Its way of doing this is simple. Individuals or users start their own petitions on the website; their target is contacted through email to notify them that such a petition has been created. Collecting signatures is a matter of convincing those on social media networks to fulfill an act of slacktivism in its purest form: clicking a button to indicate that they’ve signed the petition, and if they feel particularly moved by the cause, having them write a short comment about why. So far this method has proved remarkably successful through a matter of sheer numbers. Perhaps the most famous example is the petition that was started by a lawyer representing the parents of Tayvon Martin calling for the prosecution of his killer, George Zimmerman. Created just as the story was gaining coverage by national sources of traditional media, it eventually collected over 2 million signatures, many of which were added after the goal – the prosecution of George Zimmerman in a court of law – had been reached. Other successes have to do with consumers appealing corporations to change certain practices; the threat of mass boycott or public ire offered by hundreds of thousands of signatures is often enough to have companies considering other options.

But as effective as Change.org is as a tool for applying pressure to those in power, it rests uneasily with Benkler’s idea of the networked public sphere. The freedom from commercial interests he alludes to isn’t entirely present. Although it costs nothing for individual users to create petitions on the site, the company subsists on revenue from charging for the promotion of petitions and the hosting of petitions for non-profit organizations. The latter makes its business model more akin to those of companies that exchange user data for money; the tacit understanding is that while signing the petitions paid for by one of these non-profits, you will enter your email and therefore be added to the organization’s mailing list. And though the model under which it operates certainly relies on a massive number of users to generate excitement, momentum, and support for its petitions, it is with a process that can hardly be considered collaborative. Most users rarely participate outside of supplying signatures and possibly sharing links on social networks – movements related to the petition and any follow-up actions are coordinated and conducted almost entirely by those who organized the petition in the first place. This low investment of resources requested of the average participant is arguable what makes Change.org efficient – it unites a vast number of minor indications of support into something formidable. It, however, comes at the cost of true, meaningful interaction with public issues. There is nothing very introspective about clicking a button or sharing a link on a cause with which you are already aligned. Change.org might be a valuable tool to direct collective action, but it must not be mistaken for a public sphere or a platform engendering true, substantial participation.

When the public approaches Wikipedia it is with a caution usually reserved for miracles: two parts amazement, one part suspicion. It seems unbelievable that such a comprehensive and remarkably well-written collection of encyclopedia entries could have originated from the frenzied throes of anarchic crowd-editing. Yet as much as we are beseeched to not rely on Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information, it is unquestionably the default go-to for almost all non-critical fact-searching. This is because the face it presents is one of pedantic, certainly inoffensive neutrality. We are assured by its prominent signs signaling the potential bias of certain articles and the often-encountered “citation needed” that Wikipedia is humble, well-intentioned, and self-qualifying. Its trustworthiness is engendered due to this seeming transparency; we are told frankly what might be wrong, what needs to be fixed, and assured through the virtue of its open-editing policy that everything will be done in a fair and egalitarian way.

Unfortunately, this pretense is charming but ultimately untrue. In theory, Wikipedia is open for anyone to edit. In practice, the aspiring contributor is likely to find their first article or even edits swiftly removed by much more seasoned veterans. Sometimes this is because of mistakes made due to inexperience. Other times the reasons are less tenable – the edits may have gone against the oldtimer’s vision for that particular article or drawn ire through any number of other ways. Both the result and the cause of this intense scrutiny of newcomers is an exclusive and self-regulating class of elite editors who are too prolific to ban but are often irascible, heavily opinionated, and wildly uncivil. Combined with Wikipedia’s emphasis on the “consensus,” which amounts essentially to a staring contest where the last person to make an edit or argument that is not reversed or countered wins, this has led to a great number of passionate and heated debates over trivia and minutiae. While such battles provide fine entertainment for the onlooker, they can prove to be frustrating for those involved, and a source of disenchantment for those who find themselves being attacked with technicalities by the more experienced, who then go on to ignore the very same rules themselves.

Even more distressing is the wide gender gap that exists within the editor community. The precise estimates vary; however, the general consensus is that the ratio of males to females hovers somewhere close to 9:1. This manifests itself passively as a systemic neglect of women of historical and cultural importance and more actively as cases where the biographies of female artists and authors are written with undue emphasis on their relationships with famous male icons. More damning evidence of a gender bias occasionally pops up. The gradual relocation of women novelists from a page entitled “American novelists” to one called “American women novelists” sparked controversy in 2013. Just recently, five feminist editors who had been embroiled in arguments concerning the bias of the Gamergate controversy page were banned from editing any gender-related articles by ArbComm, the highest judiciary committee of the Wikipedia system. The creation of a Gender Gap Task Force to counter the extant power imbalance and to encourage the participation of more women editors has not stopped the occurrence of events such as the ones detailed above.

Consider that Wikipedia is one of the most accessible and reasonably thorough repositories of human knowledge and you will see why this is a cause for great concern. The community of authors of this compendium would fit snugly into Habermas’ description of the bourgeois public sphere, shortcomings and all. At the cost of a truly invaluable resource and reference open to public contribution comes an atmosphere of exclusion and the marginalization of a substantial segment of the population. Entry into the ranks of editors requires the willingness to face rejection and undergo extensive training, as well as running the risk that your voice might still then be drowned out by the majority or by those more persistent. With the community supported and encompassed by the platform itself, the possibility of subaltern counterpublics existing to represent views not expressed by the majority is doubtful. Pressure for change might then only come from two sources: the gradual inclusion of women within the ranks of editors and public outcry against the administrators of the organization itself. Wikipedia as it currently exists undoubtedly enriches the world – but does so in a way far from what it professes to be.

I remain unconvinced that there is a growing crisis in civics. Ours schools may be woefully incompetent at educating students on the fundamentals of our nation’s government and history; there is no indication, however, that this problem at the present is any worse than it has been at any point in time. Likewise, it’s probably true that younger generations have little to no inclination of joining the musty old ranks of institutions such as the Rotary Club; it is equally likely that they have found berths in volunteer and community organizations far more suited to the Internet era. The demise of the behemoths that have dominated the social landscape for decades past should be no cause for alarm, so long as their niches are filled by successors.

Yet while a declinist view might be too eagerly pessimistic, many persistent problems in civics remain unsolved. In an era where faith in government is steadily waning, the spirit of volunteerism still thrives, but at the cost of an estrangement from the political structure. The problem is thus one of disenchantment with the idea of government as an agent of change. From this comes the perceived irrelevance of the state and the casual ignorance with which it is approached.

How then, to inspire confidence and recast the image of the government as force for social progress, especially among the young? One method is to make painfully obvious the ways in which policies have a direct impact on individual lives. I propose the creation of a webapp that, upon the entering of a user’s location, income, ethnicity, and other information, direct them to debates on current government actions that have a high possibility of affecting them directly. The app would ideally give a succinct outline on how the user would be affected, present arguments made on both sides, and ask the user for an initial, cursory vote, as well as a short summary of why they voted in that direction. With the user’s permission, it would then show Facebook friends that voted similarly and differently, and allow them to initiate conversations. Such a tool could be integrated into civic studies classes quite easily and would harness preexisting social connections to spark dialogue. Having been shown what is at risk, students would be incentivized to stay informed both for their own best interests and for the substantiation of any views that they might have supported and broadcast to their network of friends. The next logical step would be to suggest local organizations or other groups that are relevant to what they have discussed, with the hope that they would get involved.

This is all well and good, but it faces the challenge posed to any sort of tool on the Internet: how would we convince people to use it? Some solutions may be found within last week’s readings. It could be made a part of the classroom, or the freshman orientation process at universities. If designed well enough, it could be spread across social networks. The idea is to have it necessary for the average citizen to use it only once. Having been faced with the implications of certain policies, they would then be obliged to stay informed.

Take your pick of any of the major events of 2014 and you would be hard-pressed to choose one that did not involve citizen journalism. This past year, ordinary individuals often equipped with nothing more than cell phone cameras reported on and at times changed the course of national and international affairs. From the streets of Ferguson came footage of billowing tear gas and heavily militarized riot police; from Crimea, reports of troops bearing Russian equipment and uniforms sans insignia. In the case of Eric Garner’s death, it was the act of citizen journalism itself – the recording of the illegal chokehold by a bystander – that turned what would otherwise have been yet another tragic killing into a flashpoint for national outrage.

But citizen journalism in the digital age consists of more than the creation of content by non-professional sources. It is the generation, but also aggregation, proliferation, and editing of material by ordinary citizens, often to increase the visibility of what might not – or for political reasons, cannot – be covered by traditional media outlets. The sheer quantity of content that is uploaded onto the Internet every day is phenomenal and has made the attention of users a commodity even more coveted than before. In addition to playing the role of reporters, the citizen journalist must also add the positions of editor, marketer, and due to the temporal persistence and ease of retrieval of information, curator to their civic roles. In a media ecosystem where the propagation of information is just as important as the initial content, these latter titles are the ones most commonly adopted by the average netizen. Every upvote on Reddit, every like and share on Facebook is a small yet crucial act of citizen journalism that when summated, results in the spread of national dialogue. And if you were to peruse my Facebook wall, you would find, among everyday banalities, a static and carefully pruned selection of articles which offer great insight on social issues, many of which came to my attention after being shared by friends.

Much of netizen journalism is therefore reporting on reporting, or rather, the facilitation of the spread of existing information, and a prime example of this would be chinaSMACK. Its spectrum of coverage consists of anything from regional Chinese news events to national controversies to popular blog posts and reactions of Chinese netizens to world events. It is noteworthy that none of the content that it generates is original, save for the occasional article summary; the site is dedicated almost exclusively to English translations of Chinese articles and netizen comments. Its role is that of an indispensible middleman who collects and formats information so that it may bridge two separate social spheres. It mirrors what we all do when we share and promote articles with the intention of making our friends better informed.

The obvious downside to all of this, however, is the dreaded confinement in the echo chamber. If aggregators such as chinaSMACK are to be neutral parties, they must carefully choose to translate articles and comments from differing viewpoints. Similarly, if all my friends are of a certain political disposition, it’s awfully easy to only see articles that I would inherently agree with. Productive dialogue would thus be stifled. The diversity of the Internet provides certain checks to this – the opposing views are out there, if only we would seek them out. How to encourage people to do so remains the question.