Margaret’s 3rd year journalism blog

Media Convergence: User Generated Content

In our highly technologicised world, citizen journalism is becoming more prominent, with members of the public able to take decent snaps or footage with tiny digital cameras or mobile phones. The concept allows people, aside from journalists, to contribute groundbreaking information and upload it for the world instantaneously.

With various forms of medium arising, this also is blurring the traditional role and news delivery of news organisations. For example, on most major news websites, you’ll be able to find written & audio material, video stories, podcasts and blogs.

Millions of people read blogs each day. But does this come at a cost to the traditional forms of journalism? If 50 million that read newspapers and around 33 million Americans read blogs every day, it seems only logical that media outlets try to appeal to the latter audience as well.

Blogs allow global citizens to conversationally express their knowledge, ideas, opinions and research on a platform viewable to others around the world (just as I’m doing now). Increasingly, news sites such as The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, feature blogging which allows members of the public to make comments on certain issues, celebrities or events. In fact most news sites allow citizens to contribute their opinion in some form or another.

In the past year, CNN paid around US$750,000 for the domains www.ireport.com and www.i-report.com, for its new website completely made up of user-generated content.

Some believe that with the prevalence of blogging and citizen journalism, quality journalism is diminishing because ‘everyone’ is a reporter. The role of the journalist and the blogger are  becoming more intertwined. For example, in America, bloggers confirmed that President George W. Bush had evaded military service before CBS journalists were able to.

This animated video created by journalism students dabbles in the debate around the future of citizen journalism. Interestingly it concludes that moving forward, thar rather than journalists becoming obsolete, they will work in the industry side by side with citizen journalists to ensure quality news.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU5LonkXbCE

Wikis are also gaining ground, whereby the entire content is amendable by other web browsers. This presents the issue that biased, prejudicial and false news could easily be reaching the masses.