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Berkman Center Study of Citizen Media Workshop Wiki
September 28, 2007
Citizen journalism promises democratized news, giving everyone with a computer and an internet connection access to not only follow â but to shape â the news agenda and the ways in which we understand our world.
After years of excitement, hard work and substantial investment, has citizen journalism (call it what you will - social media, citizen media, etc.) delivered on its promise? Has power shifted from the center to the edge? Has the conversation become more informed and inspired? Who is participating and how can we measure the impact of this new form of media? In what ways have professionals and amateurs interacted? We will perform a critical analysis of where citizen media has delivered, where it has fallen short, and how we as a community can help it to do better.
The purpose of the workshop is to help shape the research agenda that will guide the project over the course of the coming year. The format will be seminar-style, but the day will be broken up into sessions. The two dozen participants are made up of representatives from MacArthur and Berkman, bloggers, journalists, media scholars, and representatives from traditional media, technology and new media companies.
Weâve planned a larger public conference that will take place in early 2008 in the Bay Area. This larger event will address questions and introduce research that result from the fall meeting. The conference will on evaluate the effectiveness of citizen media and explore the ways in which traditional and new journalism approaches will overlap in a digital age. In addition to the conferences and meetings, we plan to produce white papers, case studies, and various forms of multimedia throughout the year to highlight our findings as they come. The meeting will be immediately followed by a seminar that mirrors the September meeting, in which a smaller group can reflect upon the proceedings and plot a course forward. We aim to attract old and new media producers, academics, entrepreneurs and media consumers to create a more in depth dialogue of the benefits and drawbacks of the current media landscape.
The conference and related research will further our understanding of the changing media environment. Specific outcomes from the project will include a white paper on the state of citizen journalism, a bibliography of current research about the field, a glossary of terms associated with participatory media, and a final summary paper, all of which will be shared freely with Creative Commons licensing on a multimedia conference website.