Question:Does Participatory Media Need Legacy Media to Break Stories into the Mainstream?
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I’m a big believer in the power of participatory media, and believe that citizen journalism and citizen activism will play an increasingly important role in business, development and government.
However, even for a die hard enthusiast like me, it’s almost impossible to ignore the reality that participatory news media has an interesting two way dynamics with legacy news media. Participatory news media (still) derives most of its legitimacy from legacy news media, even as it progressively hacks away at the power of legacy news media.
Consider this. Legacy news media — newspapers, television channels, and wire agencies — are still doing most of the first hand journalistic reporting. Bloggers, at best, have taken some stories that were “under-reported” in legacy news media and amplified them, sometimes through background research, so that legacy news media is forced to pay attention to them. This is especially true of online citizen activism.
Even in cases where bloggers have committed “acts of journalism”, and broken stories from a developing crisis scene, often in the form of photos or videos, such acts of journalism have relied on lagacy news media to reach the mainstream.
So, whether we are talking about citizen journalism or citizen activism, participatory media is most effective when it is able to push up important stories into the legacy news media.
That’s a theme that is common to almost every single item in this list of the biggest moments in citizen journalism.
Working by itself, the reach and effectiveness of participatory media is severely limited, especially in a country like India where internet penetration is still in single digits.
So, I’m suggesting that the legacy media versus participatory media debate is a waste of time. Participatory media is a potentially important source of stories for legacy media and legacy media is the most important medium for citizen journalists or citizen activists to break a story into the mainstream. As things stand today, participatory media needs legacy media more than the other way round.
I’m also suggesting that media literacy and media savvy (and they are different things) are important skills for bloggers, and it is essential to master these skills to be effective, both in terms of identifying important stories and breaking stories into the mainstream.
Do let me know what you think.
Related posts:
- Bad News for Participatory Media: OhMyNews Ends Payment System and 8020 Media Announces Closure
- Check Out Media Re:public For Some Great Research on Participatory Media
- The Techmeme List of the 50 Biggest Stories of 2008 is… Boring
- Signal vs. Noise in Participatory Crisis Reporting
- My SXSW Interview with BBC on How Social Media is Changing News Internationally
Rafi, and
Indian Blogosphere Condemns NDTV’s Bullying of Blogger Chyetanya Kunte Over Criticism of Anchor Barkha Dutt’s Sensationalistic Coverage of the 11/26 Mumbai Terror Attack | Gauravonomics Blog 3:04 pm on January 29, 2009 Permalink |
[...] have written before that “participatory media is most effective when it is able to push up important stories into the legacy n….” Part of the reason for the difference in media coverage in the two cases was that media [...]
Rafi 1:12 pm on February 3, 2009 Permalink |
Let me try to udnerstand what you’re saying: we should be viewing legacy journalism and citizen journalism as cooperative tools, not oppositional ones.
Am I interpreting you correctly?