Citizen Journalism

                 What is Citizen Journalism? And what kind of affect has the internet had on it? Citizen journalism can be defined as journalism that has been provided by ordinary citizens. The internet has had a profound effect on citizen journalism from blogs and vlogs to entire sites dedicated to any topic you wish all written by normal people.  I regularly watch news channels on youtube such as The Young Turks (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks) that report and discuss topics some news channels don’t or won’t cover, also pointing out flaws in mainstream broadcasts.

Why should I care about citizen journalism? Why shouldn’t I care about citizen journalism?  In a world where mainstream media such as FOX News and CNN has turned to opinion for ratings(and whatever other underlying reasons)  rather than reporting facts has made  many people turn to alternative  sources. I feel as though citizen journalism has come to the forefront recently for many reasons first being lied to by The United States lying about their reasons for going to war for the better part of a decade and the financial collapse in 2008 have cause a wide spread distrust in large governments and larger cooperation and the news media they control. Citizen journalism online has become the voice of a new generation whether it be the youtube videos, pod cast and, live streams of the occupy movement, to cell phone videos capturing crocked cops (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lP-1Wti3Vs) the internet is now to our society what the printing press was to the French to help free there people from the chains of a cruel monarchy.

What are the some of the problems in citizen journalism? Well first off you don’t have to do any fact checking and you don’t have the money for a lot of that if you’re working independently as a citizen journalist. A great example of this would be the movie zeitgeist a documentary outlining the problems with American society. It was found after some research that the creator Peter Joseph (while citing his sources) distorted some the facts for his own benefit. Just because you’re a journalist doesn’t mean you’re a good one if you are going to depend on this kind of media check for yourself.

Overall I believe that citizen journalism has helped our society over the past decade to undercover some rotten truths and the internet provided a voice for everyone who wishes to make there opion known. So keep blogging and vlogging so the world will become a better place.

My Social Media Diet

     This last Monday and Tuesday I subjected myself to a two day social media diet. No facebook no youtube no nothing. This was a huge step for me as an IT student. The diet called for no web browsing which in my case was just not possible because I’m taking two online courses right now. My plan to avoid social media was simple keep myself busy by doing homework and helping a local kid record a song for college application. Although this seemed an easy task, I found myself on youtube watching videos for my social media class. I wasn’t quite sure if instant messaging was part of y diet or not since my girlfriend lives out of town I spent a lot of time talking to her on BBM and had a video call with her on skype.  I avoided facebook(where I usually spend a lot of time looking at stupid pictures) and youtube(where I usually watch most of my TV) by playing videogames offline.  Overall I think I could function quite well without most social media by using conventional means telephone text messages and books. Well I normally rely on youtube for recording tutorials for my recording I could easily buy a book on the subject (but what’s the fun in that) luckily it didn’t come to that.  Although social media does make my life quite abit easier when it comes to my social life so far it does not affect my professional life quite yet. But I do feel I should abstain from facebook and youtube quite bit more than I do.