If Everyone's A Journalist, Then What Am I?

This week’s reading and tutorial discussions revolved around participatory journalism; an increasing trend that has seen the role of content creation shared with users who would traditionally be defined as part of the audience rather than solely disseminated through top-down channels. Institutionalised journalism has historically existed independently of society, objectively observing events from the outside and reporting their findings. Over-time, society has become more complex and it is this complexity that has spawned participatory journalism.

Institutionalised media outlets inherently wield the power to select the information they process and distribute and in a hyper-complex society, this will of course result in unavoidable gaps and silences in reported issues. Quandt (2011) raises the concern that “journalists might manipulate information or take sides as they move through the various news production stages” and that this potential abuse of power operates with information that is generally inaccessible to the public. Furthermore, popular interest is becoming increasingly fragmented, spawning highly specialised topical interests that require individualised information that is simply outside of institutionalised media’s abilities.

This is where participatory journalism comes in, mobilising would-be journalists to have their say on issues that they are contextually specialised in and democratically benefitting journalistic independence through an expansive pool of voices. Of course, including these new journalistic voices into a heavily entrenched medium is going to be difficult, if it is even going to happen at all, and it is in this interesting time that we find ourselves as media students who will soon be seeking a career in the industry. The future of journalism in a shifting media landscape has been called into question and after finding myself back at university due to the publishing company I worked for not being able to keep up in the digital age, I for one am nervous.

References:

Quandt, T 2011, 'Understanding a new phenomenon: the significance of participatory journalism', Participatory Journalism in Online Newspapers: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, pp.155-176