Amateur Journalism: Modern Tool for Dissemination

Internet collaboration is a new tool for making more information available to users. At the same time, this collaboration, or as it is known "crowdsoucing", is content produced by individuals who are less than experts on what they write about. Yet, these crowsourcing sites are becoming more prevalent, rivaling major media companies. The seduction lies in the ability of crowsourcing sites to provide information not commonly offered by conventional outlets and/or cheaper or even free. Events not covered my major media outlets are easily found online by the public. While these reports many times can lack journalistic expertise or carry an agenda (which media doesn't), they serve to present information ignored by or misrepresented in major media outlets.

I completely disagree with Mr. Carr's statement that we overly celebrate amateurs over professionals. Amateurs are writing about things that the public is interested about and professionals many times neglect, not to mention that amateur writing is almost universally free. For instance, websites are created with the purpose of driving traffic to the information the writer(s) provide. They rely on internet search engine demand to identify the information people want to read or know about. If there wasn't demand, there wouldn't be good reason to develop a website loaded with time-consuming research and writing. The bottom line is...if they don't obtain traffic, they don't cash on the advertising they generate income from.

However, the information we are given is not "professional grade", for the most part. Yet, many bloggers and amateur journalists spent time and effort devising their articles. It is the consumer who must decide if they are satisfied with the information they are given. If you're an informed consumer, like me, you usually search other websites for accuracy or the "other" point of view. Moreover, you may even ask authors for a source or reference.

Nonetheless, the internet world has far-reaching advantages. Information can be easily accessed even while events are taking place. I'm sure many read my ranting twitter about getting more media coverage for a strike at a university in Puerto Rico. Well, "conventional" media in the island either ignores the events or presents it favoring the government's agenda when broadcasting "news." The internet has been the major vehicle for disseminating the repression and abuse suffered by the students. Sites such as indymedia.org, facebook, and twitter have served to share information about the "other" side of the strike's "perspective." Fortunately, after much searching and "news" posting we were able to get an international media outlet to cover the events and present information gathered by "amateurs." Accordant with Balkan's point, people are expressing themselves more easily through the use of these technological tools. In the case of the student strike, if it hadn't been for these amateur journalists we wouldn't have gained wide-spread support for the strike or we would've had a harder time doing so since major media outlets were ignoring or misrepresenting information.

Finally, it is our duty as informed consumers to read online information knowing that we must validate its accuracy. We have many options to obtain our information from and validate it. Amateur journalism provides a great tool by helping disseminate, otherwise, inaccessible information. This enables social movements and the like to gain momentum. They can keep us much more informed even if they provide partial coverage or do not offer "professional grade" reporting. In the end, we must always take everything with a grain of salt and find ways to validate what we read online.