SOCIAL MEDIA

MOVEMENTS & CITIZEN

JOURNALISM

GÜZEY ŞIKMAN
“The great thing about social media
was how it gave a voice to
voiceless people.”
- Jon Ronson, Journalist
 The Evolution of News & Technology

The history of journalism, or the development of the gathering and transmitting of

news spans the growth of technology and trade, marked by the advent of specialized
techniques for gathering and disseminating information on a regular basis that has
caused, as one history of journalism surmises, the steady increase of the scope of
news available to us and the speed with which it is transmitted.

Before the printing press was invented, word of mouth was the primary source of
news. This transmission of news was highly unreliable, and died out with the invention
of the printing press. Newspapers (and to a lesser extent magazines) have always
been the primary medium of journalists since the 18th century, radio and television
in the 20th century, and the Internet in the 21st century especially with the
introduction of social media platforms.
 Definitions
Internet, Social Media and Citizen Journalism

Citizen Journalism
The concept of citizen journalism (also
known as "public", "participatory",
"democratic", "guerrilla" or "street"
journalism) is based upon public citizens
"playing an active role in the process of
collecting, reporting, analyzing, and
disseminating news and information."
Definitions
Internet
A global computer network
providing a variety of information
and communication facilities,
consisting of interconnected
networks using standardized
communication protocols.
Social Media
Websites and applications that
enable users to create and share
content or to participate in social
networking.
• Users are content generators
 Citizen Journalism & Internet

There may not be a causal relationship between “citizen journalism” and

the Internet but there is a highly positive correlation between the rise in
use and popularity of the concept and Internet usage.

Mark Glaser (2016), a prominent figure in promoting the concept of citizen

journalism, emphasizes the role of modern communication technologies in
making citizens news producers individually or collectively.

Benkler (2006) also points to the networked nature of new

communication tools, stating that they had the capacity to provide millions
of citizens with the ability to express their own views.

As Rosen (2006) states, massive numbers of citizens who happened to be

called “audiences” would become media producers and some of that
would lead to news making.
 Most Used Social Network Sites
(in relation with social movements - 2011)

Facebook Twitter Youtube

 The 4 Affordances of Social Network Sites

Persistence refers to the ephemeral and lasting nature of content. Whilst our daily
conversations in the “physical world” are ephemeral, with advanced technologies
and recording setups that are made common, they can be lasting.

Replicability on the other hand refers to the idea that the information can be
duplicated meaning the original can be impossible to be identified among duplicates as
bits can be manipulated into duplication and dissemination on a wide scale.

Scalability refers basically to the greatness, as in size, of potential visibility of

content in networked publics (things becoming viral, being disseminated and being
viewed by masses, thus reaching tremendous levels of visibility).

Searchability refers to the access towards the content if desired, meaning the
content in networked publics can be accessed through search.
The Emergence of Citizen
Journalism in Social Media

With the introduction of Social Network Sites and

their 4 affordances, people who had access to the
means and are willing to use them for social
purposes like constructing their own social
networks and thus their virtual identities, began to
reflect the things happening around them via their
utilization of visual and/or text elements, since they
are indeed a part of who they are if not factors that
shape their views and personalities. Some even
evaluated this action as social responsibility and
continued on producing these kinds of contents,
thus making them citizen journalists.
Tim Pool (@Timcast)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFlKKOKenw
Citizen Journalism & Social Movements

“Ewalt, Ohl, and Pfister (2013) argue that the year

2011 was a peak year in witnessing the rise of
public protests. While Time Magazine named the
“Protester” as its annual “Person of the
Year” (Anderson, 2011), global uprisings from the
Arab Spring to the Occupy movement in the US
were happening. Although the peak year might
have passed, protests with high 4 visibility –
thanks to the Internet – continued to occur from
Turkey’s Gezi Park protests of 2013 to Hong
Kong and to Venezuelan protests.”
 Triggered Citizen Journalism

Social media empowered citizen journalism

led to the OhMyNews project in South Korea
(Kim and Hamilton, 2006). The September 11
attacks in the US triggered citizen blogs,
and 2001 was a highlight for blogging-
based citizen journalism. The tsunami disaster
in Indonesia in 2004 was highly covered by
citizens. From the Iranian elections in 2009 to
the Arab Spring, citizens continued to play
critical journalistic roles.
A Wikipedia entry sums up some of the breaking news that was first reported
by social media:

A rebellion in Egypt (Facebook),

A plane accident on the Hudson River (Twitter),
The announcement of a British royal wedding (Twitter),
The murder of protesters in Bahrain (YouTube),
The death of Whitney Houston (Twitter),
A raid at the compound where Osama bin Laden was hiding (Twitter).

All social media but particularly Twitter has gradually challenged news
agendas. Ordinary citizens can shape Twitter trending topics and thus news
agenda (Kwak et al, 2010) and Twitter can be seen as microphone for the
masses (Murthy, 2011).
Citizen Journalism & Gezi Protests

The Gezi Protests were a turning point in giving a

wider public legitimacy not only to citizen
journalism practices but also to political usage of
social media. An explosion of social media usage
(Tufekci quoted in Matias, 2014) went hand in
hand with building a public sphere in the context of
protests (Sezer et al, 2014) while Demirhan (2014)
specifically demonstrates how Twitter was used
as a political participation tool and how it
became an alternative media source. In framing
strategies, Arda (2014) focused on how images
went viral while Emre et al. (2014) highlighted
humor and social media as a type of protest.
“Speaking of citizen journalism practices, an ideal form of it was embodied in
the work of @140Journos team. A group of college students who lived in
Istanbul started the team and their basic tools for dissemination were Twitter
and Soundcloud.

The group found fame as they reported from the OdaTV trial in one of their
early news making cases. Individual citizens, such as Serhatcan Yurdam
(@syurdam), would also be actually involved in news making.

He embedded his Storify stories into his blog (yurttasgazeteci.com) and he

used Instagram for faster photo dissemination. He would once be
interviewed by the Guardian.”

- Erkan Saka
“Some professional journalists also adopted citizen journalism practices. Serdar
Akinan (@serdarakinan) was one of the earliest to do so.

After he was fired from his columnist position at Akşam daily due to his critical
stance, he gradually moved to citizen journalism.

This would lead to an online news site, Vagus TV with a video-news focus a few
months before the Gezi protests began.”

- Erkan Saka
CITIZEN
JOURNALISM & MEDIA
SOCIAL

vs
MAINSTREAM
JOURNALISM & MEDIA
MAINSTREAM
Egyptian
Revolution
The role of social media in the Egyptian Revolution
In June 2010, Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive
and online activist for Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed
ElBaradei, created an Arabic Facebook page called “We Are
All Khaled Said” in order to protest the death of a 28-year-old
Egyptian citizen whose death he learned of on the social
network.
With the political status quo and resulting
reaction of suppressed revolt on behalf of the
p e o p l e , t h ro u g h t h e h e l p of S N S ’s 4
Affordances, within 3 days after the page is
created, the number of subscribers to it reached
over 100,000 and this number continued to
increase until the point at which it was ranked
#1 in terms of its subscribers compared to any
other Arabic page on Facebook.
Following this, on 14 January 2011, Ghonim posts: “Today is the 14th . . .
January 25 is Police Day and it’s a national holiday . . . If 100,000 take to the
streets, no one can stop us . . . I wonder if we can??” Although the April 6
Youth Movement was the first to call for protests to take place on 25 January
2011, the Movement’s leadership worked closely with Ghonim to promote the
event online (Lim, 2012, p. 242). On 25 January, the Egyptian people indeed
took to the streets, initiating 18 days of protests which culminated in the
resignation of their President. This posting is therefore most likely to
illustrate the ways in which the interactions between the page owner and
his followers contributed concretely to the revolution.
CITIZEN
JOURNALISM & MEDIA
SOCIAL

vs
MAINSTREAM
JOURNALISM & MEDIA
MAINSTREAM
In Conclusion,
Overall, it is possible for us to arrive to the conclusion of citizen
journalism along with its utilization of social media can contribute to
political and social movements. However, given the lack of direct
evidence, it would be incorrect to assume that they are the cause to
such movements.

Furthermore, it is also possible to deduct that, the need for citizen

journalism and social media in this context, emerges when mainstream
media and mainstream journalism fail to conduct their true objectives.
Further Reading
Recommended articles and research

Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and

fragility of networked protest. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press. (Read Chapter 6.)

Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction.

London, UK: SAGE Publications. (Read Chapter 8.)

Boyd, D. (2010). Social Network Sites as Networked

Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications. In Z.
Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self (pp. 39-58). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Further Watching
Recommended visuals

Let’s Design Social Media That Drives Real Change

By Wael Ghonim

https://www.ted.com/talks/wael_ghonim_let_s_design_social_media_that_drives_real_change
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Thanks!
Any questions?

Güzey Şıkman, 21502602

Multimedia Journalism Presentation