I was recently asked to comment on citizen journalism trends in India. Here are some quick thoughts.
BACKGROUND:
Citizen journalism is news created by amateur reporters who were previously seen as audiences, viewers or readers. The roots of citizen journalism lie in the self-printed pamphlets that were distributed on the street-side. However, by enabling everyone to report news without the permission of gatekeepers like news organizations or editors, social media has democratized journalism and enriched it by bringing in a diversity of views and voices to it.
There are four aspects of citizen journalism. Do note that when I say blogging, I mean it in the broadest sense, including photo-blogging (on sites like Flickr), video-blogging (on sites like YouTube) and micro-blogging (on sites like Twitter).
1. News blogging: Re-blogging, commenting on, giving context on, or curating news that is often reported in traditional media. WATBlog and Pluggd.in, for instance, curate news on the IT/ Telecom/ Media industry in India.
2. Local blogging: Blogging about local news that is not usually reported in traditional media. For instance, the Metroblogging network, which has chapters in Mumbai , Chennai , Bangalore and Hyderabad, is focused on covering local city news.
3. Change blogging: Blogging about a cause or an issue. The Blank Noise Project, which writes against street sexual harassment is a good example of this. The Indian Water Portal Blog is another, especially Sharda Prasad’s K2K project .
4. Crisis reporting, which involves live blogging about a crisis as it unfolds. Often, these are game-changing events that bring citizen journalism into the mainstream, because citizen journalism is often the fastest and the most inclusive/ interactive source of news on these events. Examples include the Tsunami in 2004 and the Mumbai terror attack in 2008. While blogs like TsunamiHelp and MumbaiHelp have played an important role in coordinating such efforts, they are essentially distributed efforts.
Sometimes, corporates have experimented with their own citizen journalism initiatives, like MTV India’s My India Report and IBN Live’s Citizen Journalist. Similarly, there are citizen journalism websites like NowPublic, GroundReport, Merinews and Instablogs. Still, citizen journalism remains a bottom up, distributed phenomenon.
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2008?
Many observers have argued that citizen journalism on social media came into its own in 2008. First the Democratic party Netroots, led by blogs like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos, played an important role in president elect Obama’s campaign, both in the primaries and in the presidential elections.
Then, we got a preview of how important citizen journalism is likely to become in developing countries when social media played a leading role in covering the China earthquake and the Mumbai terror attack.
Two trends in citizen journalism became evident in 2008 –
1. Mobile technology is playing an increasingly important role in citizen journalism. In the 2004 Tsunami, citizen reporters in the affected areas text messaged updates to their friends who had access to the internet and they collated these text messages into blog posts and wikis. In the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, Twitter, which can be updated via SMS, became one of the most important sources of news on the crisis.
2. Mainstream media is now willing and eager to integrate citizen journalism in their news coverage. News organizations are not only promoting citizen journalism platforms like IBN Live’s Citizen Journalist, but also engaging in platforms like Twitter (see @DNAIndia, @BangaloreMirror, @IndiatimesNews).
PREDICTIONS FOR 2009
We will see a continuation of these trends in 2009 –
- Citizen journalism will play an important role in the 2009 Indian general elections. Young people in India are very engaged with politics in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack and this engagement will make an impact in the 2009 elections. This will include more debate on the many problems facing India and even specific political parties and candidates. This will also involve a serious “get out the vote” campaign to get more young people to go out to vote. Some politicians will also experiment with social media. BJP’s V K Malhotra, for instance has a Twitter account @VKMalhotra .
- More news organizations will experiment with citizen journalism, both by creating citizen journalism platforms on their own websites and by actively tracking social media for stories and sources.
- We will see some new initiatives for tracking and curating citizen journalism, in order to make sense of it, especially in the 2009 general elections. This can include a social voting website like IndiaTalks which I intent to launch later in the year, or an automated website like mumbaiterror.informm.in created by social media measurement company Informm, or a mix of both. In fact, Venkat Ramna from Informm, who is a friend, promises to quickly put up election2009.informm.in in the run up to the 2009 election.
- We will see Twitter and other mobile based applications like SMSGupShup and MyToday, playing an important role in the 2009 general elections, both in the campaigning and in the coverage of the elections.
You should also see this great series on citizen journalism in India by Pramit Singh: 1, 2, 3, 4. When I have some time, I’ll update this post to include some of the interesting points in Pramit’s posts.
