In "Blogger of the world, unite' Antony Lowenstein discusses how the new technology era ,has lead to a new form of journalism ,conformed it and has caused to die at some point.
According to Lowenstein a good example to exhibit that was in 2006 Lebanon war , Israelis and Lebanese were able to connect to one another and share thoughts and opinions in the middle of the crisis , through blogging and were even able to realize to what extent they are culturally similar.
This technology however, is not only used in non-democratic countries, and has a stance and its place in even democratic nations today, as the mainstream media popularity declines ,more people reach to blogging to voice their opinions about various issues without a biased network monitoring their views.
He believes that the growing number of bloggers probably commenced in late 2005- to 2006 when massive media holders started to become more interested in making money rather than objectively reporting and analysing news.
I personally agree with the part where he recalls bloggers more honest about their biased opinions since they acknowledge their “past associations and inherent
Biases.” And this transparency in their opinions in the form of blogs can receive the readers respect more than the journalists we come to see and read in ordinary media productions.
Even a growing number of politicians are turning to blogosphere to demand and earn the popularity they have already lost through the old version of media broadcasting. There have also been cases that newspapers hire their own journalists to combat the lost readers though papers.
Coming from a country where censorship is incredibly strong and gets even stronger due to the growing number of opposition supporters and followers, I realized from an early age that how the existence of blogosphere can help a major part of the society to be aware of their surroundings and political decisions when we do not have an objectified view on the news , and not only that , there are times that the news will not be published and publicized because of its sensitive political significance .
To conclude, if the new media king is not alive to bring us the latest news there may be times that the society will fall behind of the real breaking news that is occurring.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Citizen Journalism : We are the Media
Citizen Journalism is the phenomenon that offers every active society member to become a media broadcaster and play an active role in collecting, analysing and reporting the news.
In other words when ordinary citizens use their own news stories they witnesses themselves, videos, images and etc, to broadcast a recent event or incident, the platform for such news does include any limits and can be on blogs ,to Facebook and Youtube.
There are diversified theories and opinions about this phenomenon , some write positively and some disagree and claim” this is not journalism “ and the term journalism ,is ethically and academically wrong to be mentioned in “ citizen journalism” , since people spend years in universities and educational providers to study this profession and whatever comes out of ordinary citizens cannot be trusted , due to the fact that they have not been professionally trained to be unbiased about the news stories. Therefore, the outcome of citizen journalism cannot be trusted.
However, Citizen Journalism has proved to be quite effective in my opinion, an example to illustrate the effectiveness, is what happened in June 2009 election in Iran, where thousands of protesters, demonstrated for their vote and right, in the streets of Tehran.
If it wasn’t for the phenomenon of the Citizen journalism and the mobile videos, images , blogs ,twittering and Facebook status’s from the protesters themselves, we were not able to see what actually happened in Tehran and other major cities of Iran.
In fact these videos and images were that reliable to the point that even massive media broadcaster chose to show the videos and images on their TV stations as an evidence of what is happening in Iran as we speak. For instance BBC News Corporations constantly aired recent videos of Iranian demonstrators.
Even capturing the death of a young woman , Neda agha Soltan, who turned to an Iranian martyr and a symbol of strength and consistency for demonstrating against the government, to make sure she and others like her ,did not die in vain.
According to A. J. Liebling, “freedom of the press is for those who own it” and Since in Iran , and so many other dictatorship regimes ( sometimes even in the western media )The media news and broadcasting news has to fit in to a particular framework and advocate for particular ideology that promotes the existence of the regime, it can be hardly believed and trusted of the outcome of news reports , in this case Citizen journalism can be quite efficient and effective in terms of approaching the reality of news stories without biased opinions distort and manipulating information.
As what we saw in the Iranian Television was the exact opposite of what actually was happening , showing that everything is calm and not even mentioning the protesters.
Of course , The Iranian Television Broadcasting has had the reputation of being totally corrupted and not a lot of people tune in to hear the news and usually rely on foreign media broadcasting televisions through satellite. (such as BBC Persia , CNN and VOA ).
In other words when ordinary citizens use their own news stories they witnesses themselves, videos, images and etc, to broadcast a recent event or incident, the platform for such news does include any limits and can be on blogs ,to Facebook and Youtube.
There are diversified theories and opinions about this phenomenon , some write positively and some disagree and claim” this is not journalism “ and the term journalism ,is ethically and academically wrong to be mentioned in “ citizen journalism” , since people spend years in universities and educational providers to study this profession and whatever comes out of ordinary citizens cannot be trusted , due to the fact that they have not been professionally trained to be unbiased about the news stories. Therefore, the outcome of citizen journalism cannot be trusted.
However, Citizen Journalism has proved to be quite effective in my opinion, an example to illustrate the effectiveness, is what happened in June 2009 election in Iran, where thousands of protesters, demonstrated for their vote and right, in the streets of Tehran.
If it wasn’t for the phenomenon of the Citizen journalism and the mobile videos, images , blogs ,twittering and Facebook status’s from the protesters themselves, we were not able to see what actually happened in Tehran and other major cities of Iran.
In fact these videos and images were that reliable to the point that even massive media broadcaster chose to show the videos and images on their TV stations as an evidence of what is happening in Iran as we speak. For instance BBC News Corporations constantly aired recent videos of Iranian demonstrators.
Even capturing the death of a young woman , Neda agha Soltan, who turned to an Iranian martyr and a symbol of strength and consistency for demonstrating against the government, to make sure she and others like her ,did not die in vain.
According to A. J. Liebling, “freedom of the press is for those who own it” and Since in Iran , and so many other dictatorship regimes ( sometimes even in the western media )The media news and broadcasting news has to fit in to a particular framework and advocate for particular ideology that promotes the existence of the regime, it can be hardly believed and trusted of the outcome of news reports , in this case Citizen journalism can be quite efficient and effective in terms of approaching the reality of news stories without biased opinions distort and manipulating information.
As what we saw in the Iranian Television was the exact opposite of what actually was happening , showing that everything is calm and not even mentioning the protesters.
Of course , The Iranian Television Broadcasting has had the reputation of being totally corrupted and not a lot of people tune in to hear the news and usually rely on foreign media broadcasting televisions through satellite. (such as BBC Persia , CNN and VOA ).
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