Internet & Journalism
Internet communication had shifted from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.
What is Web 2.0 then?
For those of you who are still unaware of its definition. It is basically a set of applications and technologies that allows users to create, edit and distribute content; share preferences, bookmarks, and online personas; participate in virtual lives; and build online communities.
Thus, with this shift, the work of reporting news now not only belong to the professional journalists. There is now a term called the Citizen Journalism, in which normal citizens like us are also able to report the news online just like that of a journalist. It was said that the intention of this is to provide independent, reliable , accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.
In my opinion, how accurate, reliable and relevant can information from non-journalists be, and to what extent would one be able to accept a piece of news that was reported by normal citizens like us?
STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile Print), is the interactive site of Singapore Straits Times that accepts reader-submitted news stories. This is suppose to a citizen journalism site created for Singaporeans. However, in my opinion, it is not very successful, as STOMP seems more like a gossip site, rather than one which reports relevant and accurate news.
Is STOMP 'Citizen Journalism'?
http://singaporemedia.blogspot.com/2006/07/is-stomp-citizen-journalism.html
The above link is a blog post created by a current associate professor at NTU, who is also journalist. She, too, criticized about STOMP being not good enough to be qualified as a citizen journalism, as it is unable to separate journalism posts from gossip. Furthermore, a commentor on her blog post also mentioned that Straits Times is perhaps just merely trying a little to hard to advertise STOMP.
In addition, although Wikipedia is not a citizen journalism site, it functions almost like one as it is also involves a Web 2.0 process. In which, citizens can post information on the website, and it is supposed to be rather accurate. However, it might not be the case. This is because Singapore's famous blogger, Xiaxue, once found news about her on Wikipedia, saying that she had met with a car accident in Texas, and died. Contrastingly, she is still much alive and kicking. Therefore, this goes to prove that when it comes to news reported by non-journalists, the credibility could be rather low.
Hence, in my point of view, there is still a long way to go for Singapore to have a more professional citizen journalism site. Furthermore, I would still prefer the work from a true journalist, as being nurtured in the profession, they should be subjected to provide citizens with a more accurate, and reliable and relevant news coverage. Therefore, I feel that journalists still have not truly lost their monopoly.
What is Web 2.0 then?
For those of you who are still unaware of its definition. It is basically a set of applications and technologies that allows users to create, edit and distribute content; share preferences, bookmarks, and online personas; participate in virtual lives; and build online communities.
Thus, with this shift, the work of reporting news now not only belong to the professional journalists. There is now a term called the Citizen Journalism, in which normal citizens like us are also able to report the news online just like that of a journalist. It was said that the intention of this is to provide independent, reliable , accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.
In my opinion, how accurate, reliable and relevant can information from non-journalists be, and to what extent would one be able to accept a piece of news that was reported by normal citizens like us?
STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile Print), is the interactive site of Singapore Straits Times that accepts reader-submitted news stories. This is suppose to a citizen journalism site created for Singaporeans. However, in my opinion, it is not very successful, as STOMP seems more like a gossip site, rather than one which reports relevant and accurate news.
Is STOMP 'Citizen Journalism'?
http://singaporemedia.blogspot.com/2006/07/is-stomp-citizen-journalism.html
The above link is a blog post created by a current associate professor at NTU, who is also journalist. She, too, criticized about STOMP being not good enough to be qualified as a citizen journalism, as it is unable to separate journalism posts from gossip. Furthermore, a commentor on her blog post also mentioned that Straits Times is perhaps just merely trying a little to hard to advertise STOMP.
In addition, although Wikipedia is not a citizen journalism site, it functions almost like one as it is also involves a Web 2.0 process. In which, citizens can post information on the website, and it is supposed to be rather accurate. However, it might not be the case. This is because Singapore's famous blogger, Xiaxue, once found news about her on Wikipedia, saying that she had met with a car accident in Texas, and died. Contrastingly, she is still much alive and kicking. Therefore, this goes to prove that when it comes to news reported by non-journalists, the credibility could be rather low.
Hence, in my point of view, there is still a long way to go for Singapore to have a more professional citizen journalism site. Furthermore, I would still prefer the work from a true journalist, as being nurtured in the profession, they should be subjected to provide citizens with a more accurate, and reliable and relevant news coverage. Therefore, I feel that journalists still have not truly lost their monopoly.
posted by Claresta at
8:09 PM
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