gatewatching

Recent public spats between mainstream industrial journalism and citizen-led media – news bloggers and citizen journalists – actually mask their increasing interdependence, and obscure the advantages to be gained on both sides by recognising and nurturing this. A comparison between two recent moments of exchange between the “MSM” and its citizen counterpart illustrates both the scope of the conflict, and the underlying reality: citizen media is heavily reliant on the mainstream as a source for activities of “gatewatching” and metacommentary, and professional journalists are increasingly willing to turn to citizen media for news, talent and content.

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citizen journalism citizen journalism

Welcome to Gatewatching.org. This site is a group blog run by the three of us - Barry Saunders, Jason Wilson, and me, Axel Bruns. (We may rope in a few more of the usual suspects over the next few months - watch this space…) What we’re looking to do here is to track and analyse the further development of the phenomenon of citizen journalism, in Australia - where we’re all based - and elsewhere; in fact, the upcoming federal elections in Australia in late 2007, and in the U.S. in late 2008, should produce plenty of interesting developments for us to observe and examine. In the Australian context, we’re also part of the team behind an ARC Linkage research project into citizen journalism which is currently in the process of launching a hyperlocal citizen journalism site for the upcoming election, at youdecide2007.org.

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citizen journalism, media citizen journalism, journalism, media

So, I’ve been kicking around on Facebook lately. My colleagues have posted some interesting analysis of Facebook, which I am still thinking about. I like Facebook, in a way that I never got into Myspace. I’ve caught up with friends from highschool who I haven’t seen for years, even played scrabble with them, but there’s still that concern about privacy.

Anyways… This struck me the other day. I live on the Northside of Brisbane, so I was unsurprised when I got an invite to a Northside related Facebook group. Read more…

citizen journalism, social networking academic, citizen journalism, facebook, social bookmarking, social networking