Citizen Journalism

From Citizen Journalism to Citizen Paparazzi

Citizen journalism is used to describe a form of media that allows the public to become journalist by reporting online (Tryemayne 2007, p. 240) whereas citizen paparazzi is not really a new concept, it is just taking picture using the cameraphones and videophones (Glaser 2005). But the big question is how did the citizen journalism turn into citizen paparazzi?

The very famous incident that cause the citizen journalism to transform themselves into citizen paparazzi was the London bombing. When the victims of the London bombing was in pain and suffering, flashes of light coming from digital cameras, videophone and 35mm cameraphones can be seen all over the place (Glaser 2005). Instead of lending a hand to the victims, the citizen paparazzi were busy taking the best pictures that shows the most gruesome shots of the victims (Glaser 2005). Why were these citizen paparazzi eager enough to get the nicest shots?

(source from: http://www.rwevans.co.uk/~r/rwevans/wevansnet08/p-mid089LondonBombing.jpg )

Example of a citizen paparazzi's picture

The reason why the citizen journalism has change to citizen paparazzi and taking the nicest shot of the situation is so that they can post it in their blogs, wikipedia etc. The picture will help improve the their blog's credibility due to the fact that there is visual proof because according to Nielsen and Morkes (1997) the internet users mostly judge the web's credibility by looking at the quality of the web's content.

In the book, the 'Text Shift: Examining the reading process print, visual, and multimodal texts', Walsh (2006) describe that "written part is only one part of the message, and no longer the dominant part" therefore therefore they are striving to get the best pictures and why they are turning into the citizen paparazzi. If citizen journalist include pictures in their document, it will make the reader's life easier because the according to Karen Schriver, it is faster to search for a specific information by looking at the graphics instead of the prose.

But overall before becoming a citizen journalist or a citizen paparazzi, we have to be a decent human being. Instead of taking gruesome pictures of the victims, we should help them out and respect what they have been through.



Reference List:
1. Glaser, M 2005, 'Did London bombings turn citizen journalists into citizen paparazzi?', Online Journalism Review, viewed 12 June 2008,
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050712glaser/

2. Morkes, J and Nielsen, J 1998, Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages, viewed on 10 June 2008
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/rewriting.html

3. Schriver, KA 1997, 'The interplay of words and pictures', Dynamics in Document Design: Creating text for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York, ch. 6 pp. 361-441

4. Tremayne, M 2007, Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, New York

5. Walsh, M 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 24-37