AR; On international news and the internet

Guy Berger writes about how the internet affects (or at least proposes to affect) the concept, idea, practice and flow of international news (the article is about to be published in the International Communication Gazette).

“This article shows that while some First World media [...] are chanting the mantra of becoming ‘hyperlocal’, it is much of the first world that is experiencing the Internet as an international medium, albeit from a subordinate cultural and linguistic position.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced with the the paper; there were a bit too many connections only briefly pointed at, neglected or presented somewhat hazily, so that it all did not come together as a coherent argument. That said, it has some good and interesting points.

Hyperlocal citizen journalism

Here you can find an interesting paper from Bruns, Wilson and Saunders, exploring the roles that citizen journalism might assume in a networked media system. It is less revolutionary as Bruns’ article on the networked ideal model of deliberative democracy. It is more focused too: it takes as a starting to point the claim that “online citizen journalism is unable to conduct investigative and first-hand reporting” – which I guess I often seem to agree with.

(I do. Well, with some reserves.)

The article on the other hand formulates a much more articulate argument, giving examples how, in what context could “first-hand reporting” be a function of citizen journalists. However, it also reaches the conclusion that the professional side cannot be taken out of the equation (for me the most interesting point was the finding that on a semi-professional news site pros articles attracted most of the attention, but amateur journalists’ posts generated more comments and discussion).

I commented on the article on Bruns’ blog, hopefully my comment won’t be lost in one of the spam filters.