Civic and Citizen Journalism 2006 Abstracts
Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group
Sense of Community as a Driver for Citizen Journalism • Clyde H. Bentley, Brian Hamman, Hans Ibold, Jeremy Littau and Hans Meyer, University of Missouri-Columbia • Persons who registered with a Midwestern citizen journalism site in order to gain the ability to author on it were surveyed on their motivations. Using the registration rolls of MyMissourian.com, the authors conducted a Web-based survey that tracked media usage, interest in politics and attitudes toward community information. The study showed that the sample of citizen journalists was highly interested in community building and local information.
The Next Generation 60 Years Later: How Civic Journalism is the Offspring of the Hutchins Commission of 1947 • Judy Buller, Notre Dame de Namur University • The Hutchins Commission released its historic reports in 1947. With the 60th anniversary upon us, it is an appropriate time to revisit the roots of social responsibility – and to examine the forms the next generation has taken. This paper illustrates how civic journalism became that next generation of social responsibility.
CivicMinded Crises: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Government Communications and News Coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita • Maria Fontenot, Kris Boyle and Amanda Hall Gallagher, Texas Tech University • This study examined coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in five newspapers based on themes introduced through government press releases. Specifically, it compared the coverage to the press releases and investigated the role of civic journalism in the coverage. The findings suggested there was no connection between the press releases and newspaper coverage. Additionally, civic journalism was influential in the way the newspapers reported the disasters.
Surveying Citizen Journalism: Describing emerging phenomena that posit a renovation of the public sphere • Lewis A. Friedland, Hernando Rojas, Christopher Long, Eulalia Puig Abril, Victoria Hildebrandt, Nak Ho Kim, Eunsun Lee, SeungHyun Lee and Yong Jun Shin, University of Wisconsin • This paper presents work being pursued by a network of researchers interested in systematically describing, documenting and understanding citizen journalism efforts. To do so, we combine qualitative and quantitative techniques, and develop a three tier research strategy that includes: a) a case narrative; b) surveys of citizen reporters; and, c) analysis of content.
Freedom of Expression and Information Society • Nikhil Moro, The Ohio State University • Civic journalists of the information society, many of whom are bloggers, represent varied theoretical traditions of freedom of expression. They also represent an individualization condition that has been discussed as one of the important social effects of the Internet. This paper uses these arguments to develop a normative theory of freedom of expression for the information society.
Citizen Journalism, Technological Convergence and Development: Transforming Villages through Cable Audio • Veena V. Raman, Pennsylvania State University • This case study examines how a cluster of villages in South India have been transformed by a community managed cable audio service that delivers radio to local households, linked to a computer training centre. Citizens act as journalists, operate the audio center, produce all the programming and have influenced politics and local development. This is significant given that India has resisted allowing community radio arguing that local broadcasting would foment political unrest.
“The Newspaper With a Conscience”: Discourse on Journalism’s Responsibility to Society and Civic Life in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century • Ronald R. Rodgers, The University of Florida • This paper examines late nineteenth and early twentieth century discussions by the magazines and trade press about the newspaper’s responsibility to society that foreshadowed by many years the Hutchins Commission’s landmark call for a socially responsible press in 1947. Newspapers were viewed, as one speaker put it in 1910, as the “chief educator of the masses.”
Participatory journalism opportunities on major newspapers’ online sites • Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College • In 2005, ordinary observers of major news events such as the London transit system bombings and U.S. hurricanes became part of the news coverage by supplying firsthand accounts and selfproduced images. An investigation into the opportunities audience members have to engage in participatory news coverage aside from such big events determined that online news operations of major U.S. newspapers are beginning to use devices that open the gates for participatory journalists with some regularity.
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