Citizen Journalism: Theory and Variations on Theme

Theory and Citizen Journalism

The Missouri TMC survey documented in a practical sense what researchers had found about both citizen journalism and neighbor-to-neighbor type content.  Since the 1940s, communications researchers have sought to explain the popularity of some information over other information via the uses-and-gratifications model.  U&G is an approach that looks at media in terms of how it meets the social or psychological needs of the person using that medium. It assumes an active audience and states that an individual has an identifiable set of needs and that the individual uses the media to fill those needs  

Four audience needs have been consistently found in U&G research: information, personal identity, a block consisting of integration and social interaction, and entertainment.  While traditional newspapers address most of those needs, citizen journalism appeals especially to the integration and social interaction block by allowing individual expression among a group of similar-minded people.

The Missouri research team tested this in 2006 by surveying people registered as authors on MyMissourian.com. The survey quizzed these citizen journalists about their lifestyles and uses of other media. The results showed a marked difference from normal newspaper audiences as measured in national studies.  The citizen journalism participants had moderate consumption of local media, but very little use of national media.

The participants in the study were also highly driven by an interest in alternative political opinions and the desire to build community.  This may be explained in part by the fact that the majority of respondents were married Baby Boomers who grew up in the Peace Corps/Vietnam War era.

A rising explanation for the citizen journalism phenomenon is social capital theory.  Social capital is a blanket term for the networks, norms and social trust that allow coordination and cooperation in society.  The social capital model says that a person’s involvement in local groups or organizations builds trust with others in the community.  One invests social capital to earn standing, but that investment also enriches the community and encourages investment by others who benefit from the initial investment.

Robert Putnam linked this to the online phenomenon in his popular book, “Bowling Alone.”  Putnam theorized that the Internet is the new mechanism of “bridging and bonding” in society - bridging together people of different sorts while bonding or bringing together people of like backgrounds.

Unlike older models of community that relied on face-to-face communication, the Internet social capital model theorized a virtual community where people interact without ever seeing each other.

While Putnam did not specifically talk about citizen journalism, his social capital concept fits well with the 2006 Missouri study.  Jeremy Littau, one of the graduate students who helped design MyMissourian, tested the social capital/citizen journalism link for his masters thesis and found that citizen journalism participation indeed predicted social capital production in the form of civic engagement, which can be measured as participation, volunteering, and activism. But the surprise was that there was no statistically significant difference between writers and readers on any of the measures, whether it was media use or community involvement.  Citizen journalism seems to attract those highly involved in their communities both coming and going - readership and writership.

Variations on Theme

Citizen journalism sites and publications that attempt to distribute user-generated information throughout a community have flourished in the United States - though seldom with economic gusto.  Dozens of independent sites ranging from the S.D. Fridge Door to the Daily Gotham operate with volunteers or minimum paid staffs.  Traditional media organizations have also launched citizen journalism initiatives.

Like much of Internet-based media, citizen journalism sites have struggled to find a viable economic model.  Part of this may be cultural - the notion of giving freely of your information does not lend itself to hardball advertising sales.  Web sites as a group share a problem with screen real estate - there is much less space for advertising on a computer screen than on a newspaper page.  Also, many of the early advocates of citizen journalism were looking for a social alternative to traditional news media so focused on grants and volunteers rather than revenue and employees.

The appeal of society-wide discussion is great, but the history of citizen journalism shows that social discussion has the greatest potential in a community small enough for an individual to comfortably identify with.  The practice of drilling down to these small social, geographic or virtual communities has come to be known as “hyper-local journalism.”

While CNN’s iReport has a large following, the national citizen journalism sites have generally fared worse than the local sites.  “We the Media” author Dan Gilmor’s Bayosphere failed to attract a following and the ambitious citizen journalism chain Backfence.com found that its 13-city hyper-local strategy was just not hyper-local enough.  While the opportunity to talk is appealing to Americans, the opportunity to talk specifically to your own people appears to have greater appeal.

Nevertheless, “citizen journalism” is now a broadly recognized term, certainly one heard often in newsrooms across the country.  A Google search of the term produces hundreds of thousands of references.

Media organizations small and large have begun to integrate citizen journalism concepts into their fare.  Perhaps the most obvious of these changes was the introduction of citizen comments about staff reports on the Web sites of newspapers and television stations.  Media organizations have also revisited other online techniques for audience interaction.

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