Hvordan vil journalistikkens rolle ændre sig som følge af borgerjournalistikken?

Abstract

It can be argued that 2006 was the year where Citizen Journalism saw its breakthrough in mainstream media, at least in Demark where several substantial media outlets embraced User Generated Content and in various forms invited citizen participation in the creation of the daily news. Citizen Journalism is, however, a general term which covers an array of different functions and formats; User Generated Content or blogging is not necessarily journalism, and the direct involvement from the media users in shaping the news is a challenge to mainstream medias traditionally undefined role as gatekeepers for public information. The potential of Citizen (participatory) Journalism was implied when bloggers – working as a collaborative research unit – drew the attention of the mainstream media to what were apparently faked documents which had been presented as authentic in the renowned news program 60 Minutes (Rathergate). The South Korean newspaper Ohmynews, launched in 2000 with the slogan ‘Every Citizen is a Reporter’ and devoted to a combination of traditional reporting with so called Guerrilla Journalism, is the prime example of successful citizen journalism in the world. In 2003 three Danish journalists adopted The Ohmynews model as the basis for the first Danish media for Citizen Journalism, Flix.dk. In the course of traditional media merging with the internet – leading to a clash or fusion between the structures ‘one-tomany’ with the interactive ‘many-to-many’ – new hybrid genres will emerge in the grey zone between classic journalistic methods and Grassroots Journalism. This makes Citizen Journalism a growing challenge to the parts of the press that defines itself as Democracy’s Watchdog. Making the most of Citizen Journalism and aligning it with the best standards of traditional media with will be a major challenge – to editors, journalists and media users alike – in the coming years.