Exploring Citizen Journalism with Dan Gillmor’s We the Media

I shared this post on my Google+ account:

I've been trying to figure out what's happening with modern journalism--it seems like an article shared on Facebook gets more credit than it should without examining the source. I'm starting Dan Gillmor's book (We the Media) to start sorting through #citizenjournalism .  #amreading 

I got this book recommendation after expressing an interest in citizen journalism. I want to look at what kind of journalism and news is most valuable to people, or perhaps where they get their news. What makes a source credible?

Preview

From taking a brief preview of the book, I can see that Gillmor covers a wide range of subjects. Just from browsing I’ve seen blogs, talk radio, SMS, file sharing, podcasts, photography, and wikis as sources of information, as well as several others. Gillmor introduces his topic by talking about how the public both fact checks and adds to the professional media—people become both producers and consumers of news. Gillmor seems to take an overall positive view of grassroots journalism, though he has cautionary sections.

Early Social Proof

I made the mistake of first only sharing my Google+ post with my private circles, but I went back and made the post public. No comments yet, but I’ll give it more time. As I discuss later in “Who Cares,” I did find people on Twitter who were independently interested in the topic and book.

Similar Books

I discovered through searching related books in Amazon and Google Books that Gillmor has since written another book, Mediactive, a book that seems to have a call to action. The description says that in this age of information overload, we all need to become “active consumers and participants” of media to avoid being deceived. One of the other recommended books was The Elements of Journalism, which from its description seems to say that technology is harmful to good journalism. It is mostly directed at journalism professionals and tells them what is currently wrong with the system and how they should work to fix it and preserve good journalism.

Who Cares?

I searched Twitter using both #wethemedia and #dangillmor and found that these hashtags are pretty reliable when looking for posts on grassroots media. Lots of people seem to have caught on to Gillmor’s ideas, and many of the tweets were direct quotes from him (some from this book, some not). It looks like some people are studying him for university courses, which isn’t surprising, though it is nice to see people excited enough about something they are learning in school to post socially about it.

Formal Reviews

I found a 2006 review of Gillmor’s book using the HBLL site. To say it was a little antagonistic would be an understatement. I actually found myself wanting to defend Gillmor’s ideas, even though I haven’t finished the book. The author of the review claims that the biggest flaw with Gillmor’s book is that he doesn’t take class and the elitism of this new type of media into consideration (since half of the world has yet to make a phone call) and that Gillmor gives technology too much a mind of its own (taking people out of the equation). I’d argue that it’s pretty clear to most readers that Gillmor isn’t talking about media in third-world countries. Clearly the situation of news dissemination is different in different places. The author also reminded me of  Michael Wesch’s “The Machine is Us/ing Us.”

Informal Reviews

I read quite a few reviews on Goodreads. People gave a variable number of stars to the book (3–5), but they all had something in common to say—that this is a good introductory book to grassroots journalism. Clearly I’ll need to do some more reading once I get the basics here. Something I’ve seen repeatedly quoted or paraphrased is this: “This evolution—from journalism as lecture to journalism as a conversation or seminar—will force the various communities of interest to adapt.” The idea of journalism as a conversation seems to have a central role in this book.

Educational Institutions

I found a course at Stanford that uses Gillmor’s book. The course title is “Digital Journalism,” which is interesting. They have sections on what constitutes the “public” and open source journalism.

Multimedia

I found this YouTube video of a short lecture by Dan Gillmor at UNC Chapel Hill about the ideas in his book. I liked that he showed examples of what he was talking about, like the tourist video footage from the tsunami in Southeast Asia. I actually prefer his writing to his speaking, in this context anyway.
 

First Impressions of the Book

I found the whole book online for free through the library, so that was exciting. I first wanted to read chapter 1 to get a handle on Gillmor’s opening arguments. I found even more evidence for refuting the nasty review of the book I read earlier (he mentions in the first paragraph that this book is just about American journalism). What I found most interesting was that he discussed how personal journalism had been around for a long time, before the Internet. It reminded me of Alan Lui’s article about history and social computing (which expressed the same sentiment—things have been around for a long time). I then turned to chapter 9, “Trolls, Spin, and the Boundaries of Trust.” Gillmor gave some great examples of Internet hoaxes, trolls, and various misinterpretations of fact. He talks about the need to abolish anonymity on the Internet while admitting that it has a place in some contexts. Mostly, we need to know and trust the source of our information.

My Thinking So Far

Well, I’ve learned a lot so far, but in the end I’ve really just picked up more search terms for more research. I’d like to read more in Gillmor’s book (luckily it is well written). I’m curious to see what he and others think the solution is for getting reliable information while still enabling grassroots journalism.