Citizen Journalist, Reporting for Tweeting (for Tweeting, for Tweeting, for...)

In a time where public distrust in the media is high, citizen journalists have once again emerged as an additional source of information provided by someone who is not tied to the agenda of the owner of a network or news conglomerate. Citizen journalists are private individuals who create user-generated content by performing all the same tasks a professional journalist would do like gathering information, reporting on information received, analyzing data and trends, and sharing those findings with others (Rogers, 2019).

 

According to Tony Rogers article for ThoughtCo “Understanding Citizen Journalism,” “citizen journalism was once hailed as a revolution that would make news-gathering a more democratic process — one that would no longer solely be the province of professional reporters. It has had a significant impact on today's news, with many believing that citizen journalism is a threat to professional and traditional journalism.” 

Citizen journalism is not new—they literally helped create a nation. Before there were blogs, there were pamphlets. “Citizen journalism is as old as our democracy,” says Tom Alderman in a HuffPost blog from 2008. “Early American news purveyors were citizens with a printing press in their basements putting out screeds about bad King George” (Alderman, 2008). Today citizen journalists can take on many forms, mainly digital ones: bloggers, podcasters, social media, etc. They can produce content quickly and since they are not beholden to no one, and that content can be quickly uploaded onto social media or other digital channels. Blogs or podcasts that allow the citizen journalist to editorialize can be produced in an incredibly timely manner. 

So, much faster than a printing press and a pamphlet and a guy handing them out on a street corner.  

Sounds great, right? As someone who is on the list of people who are now suspicious of much of the news I see reported and who has previously called before to a return to the journalistic objectivity that was present as a reaction to the days of Yellow Journalism, I would like to say yes. But I am not so sure.

 

It sounds good in theory, but unfortunately, those very same citizen journalists can eventually become party to the very same things that have made people distrust traditional media: advertising revenue, inserting themselves into the story, letting their own bias or opinions generate the content they produce and unfortunately being a part of one of the biggest problems we face in our pursuit of information—the echo chamber.  

First, the danger of citizen journalism is that the citizen can be wrong. Professional journalists working for legitimate news organizations do have access to editors and fact-checkers, although fewer and fewer each year. Alderman quotes University of Georgia journalism professor David Hazinski in his blog. “Citizen journalism really isn't journalism,” says Prof. Hazinski. “It's gossip. Where is the training, experience, standards, and skills essential to gather and report news? It opens up the news flow to the strong possibility of fraud and abuse” (Alderman, 2008).  

Or even the spread of misinformation. Wrong and Twitter, a very common social media platform for citizen journalists, do not go well together. First, Twitter will not allow you to edit tweets, so if you create a thread of information and any of that information is wrong, you cannot correct it. You can only delete it. That sounds simple: if you tweet something wrong, delete the tweet. But often, that initial tweet gets thousands of likes, comments, and re-tweets. Twitter users are often reluctant to give up that level of engagement by simply deleting. They may tweet out a retraction, but that original, incorrect tweet remains online, continuing to be re-tweeted over and over by other users who have no idea that the tweet is not correct.  

Another aspect of citizen journalism is the citizen themself. I am a person who knows what I like, what I support, how I believe, how I think, and how I feel. All those things influence what I read, what I write, and what I say. A citizen journalist is also a person (unless they are a bot, which happens from time to time). They may choose stories to share that reflect what they are interested in or how they feel. They may even unintentionally (or worst-case scenario, intentionally) insert their bias or opinion into a news piece in a way that professional journalists are encouraged not to do. But even objectively sound reporting can still be biased—even if an article is factual in its entirety, did you seek out the opposing viewpoint to compare? Did you insert bias by the omission of facts? Did you only choose one side of the story to share?  

A journalist, citizen or professional, who allows that to happen is in danger of being part of the echo chamber. A news echo chamber “describes a phenomenon where people tend to interact with those whose opinions are similar to their own, and filter bubble describes the phenomenon of people not interacting with opinions different from their own” (Yiu, 2020).  

For example, say I prefer the first Darren on the television show Bewitched. I do not like the second Darren. I only watch episodes with Darren number one. When I go online, I will only read stories about the first Darren. On social media, I only follow other Darren number one fans, and I only join groups full of other Darren number one fans. If I read or hear anything about Darren number two, it is information that is comparing him to Darren number one.  

So:  

1. 1. I only read, see, or hear things from people who also only like Darren number one 

2. 2. The only time I read, see, or hear something about Darren number two is through the lens of Darren number one fans 

3. 
   

What type of information am I likely to read about Darren number two in this situation?

It will most likely be negative, and that is because I am trapped in a Darren number one echo chamber. (For the record, I DO prefer Darren number one, but I am fine with Darren number two.) 

In a study to visualize an echo chamber, researchers mapped tweets over several days that were centered on controversial topics like gun control and abortion. They placed the tweets on a horizontal axis by their assumed political affiliation. Then tweets from accounts that the tweeters frequently interacted with were also placed according to their political affiliation, but this time on a vertical axis. This plotting showed how likely it was that people choose to echo only the tweets of those who share similar beliefs with them, meaning that in this case, liberals interacted with liberals, and conservatives interacted with conservatives (Yui, 2020).  

So, a citizen journalist, particularly one that has a large digital footprint, is in danger of becoming part of an echo chamber, where their readers think one way and are only interested in material that thinks the same way. This is what has happened to cable news—the different cable news networks know who their audiences are, and they only cater to what will continue to keep those audiences engaged.  

People who get caught up in an echo chamber also tend to have a distorted view about how many people feel the same way that they do. Pew Research did a study to find out exactly what part or percentage of America was on Twitter. They conducted a survey of about 2800 Twitter users and measured their characteristics and behaviors online.  

Their study found that “much of the content posted by Americans on Twitter reflects a small number of authors. The 10% of users who are most active in terms of tweeting are responsible for 80% of all tweets created by U.S. users” (Wojcik & Hughes, 2019). So even though a Twitter or online mob may seem to dominate your feed, it actually only represents a small portion of the population as a whole.  

So, while a citizen journalist may seem like the answer to our woes with professional journalism these days, there are still many negatives involved. There is no magic solution to how we fix all this. The eventual answer may be that we are all going to have to relearn to think and research for ourselves, which will mean stepping out of our echo chambers and into the rest of the world.

References:

 

Alderman, T. (2011, May 25). “Citizen Journalism: Can We Trust it?” HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/citizen-journalism-can-we_b_97286 

Rogers, T. (2019, January 15). “Understanding Citizen Journalism.” ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-citizen-journalism-2073663 

Wojcik, S. & Hughes, A. (2019, April 24). “Sizing Up Twitter Users.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ 

Yiu, Y. (2020, March 18). “Visualizing Twitter Echo Chambers.” Inside Science. https://www.insidescience.org/news/visualizing-twitter-echo-chambers