NET 11 Topic 2.1 - Into the Blogosphere

A very interesting reading this week was Rebecca Blood's 'weblogs: a history and perspective' published on her blog 'rebecca's pocket' in 2000.  It delves into the way blogs were first developed and the explosive way that society took up the art of blogging.  In the beginning, the 'filter' style was the most common, whereby bloggers would scour the net looking for interesting or relevant links, provide a link to them on their site and some sort of commentary.  These people searched the net to find interesting (perhaps to a particular group or around a certain activity) material so you didn't have to, effectively 'filtering' the net for the rest of us.  That was beginning to change in an around the late 90's, when more and more people were creating their own blogs of all kinds.  The 'online journal' style emerged, where one's personal thoughts and musings were recorded not in a locked diary kept under your bed, but published on the web for the world to see.  It was still a relatively small community, this 'blogosphere' because you had to have the knowledge and skills to operate relatively advanced tools and know basic HTML.

The explosion in the number of blogs came in 1999 with the creation of the first free build-your-own-weblog tools (e.g. pitas, Blogger), which saw thousands upon thousands more blogs started.  No longer did you need to know much about the web.  The personal online diary style of blogging exploded, with each blogger positioning him/herself within a location or community of their own choosing by the list of others' blogs on their blogroll.

Sky Croeser posed the question on the Discussion Board: What are the key differences between 'citizen journalists' who blog and 'investigative/professional journalists' who publish in mainstream media? Is it whether or not they get paid? Or is it a matter of training and experience? (or both, or something else entirely?)

Here James Farmer argues against the merits of 'citizen', or 'participatory' journalism.  He makes an interesting point that like other professions that the public are exposed to constantly and are most familiar with (another example is teachers), are the ones everyone has an opinion on or feel that they could do without too much trouble.  Farmer asks, "when was the last time you encountered a "citizen doctor", valued a report by a "citizen researcher", took off in a plane flown by a "citizen pilot" or saw justice meted out by "citizen policeman"?" He instead would prefer the usage of the term 'citizen media', effectively referring to all the comments, pics, videos etc about a particular topic or event that may be happening (for example, the Olympics) yet remains respectful of the 'profession of journalism'.

I tend to agree with all of the above.  Let everyone note an event has occurred, have an opinion and make a comment about whatever they like, but don't call it journalism.  I do think that 'hyperlocal' news gathering or a localised 'citizen media' has a lot of potentially useful applications, particularly in the dissemination of news quickly. A professional journalist  cannot always be there on the ground as quickly as a passerby.  If that passerby can gather some information, maybe even take a photo and share it (for instance through Twitter), then they have drawn attention to the event, shared perhaps critical information, and provided a basis for further investigation by more specialised professionals.

So in answer to Sky's question, I believe all of those things seperate professional 'Journalists' from citizens media. The fact that they are trained, paid, and provide a more in-depth analysis and theoretically unbiased, correctly referenced and balanced reporting of issues or events.