Citizen Media: The Days of OUR Online Lives

Clouds In My Coffee productions and Blogspot.com are proud to present a new award-winning series entitled “Citizen Media: the Days of OUR Online Lives” that will air weekly on popular platform Blogger.com.

The long awaited doccie-drama will centre on one university student’s struggle to come to terms with the virtual concept of citizen media. Each week, she will be faced with new challenges ranging from issues around hyper-local citizen media to citizen media regulation and ethics, user-generated content sites as the way of the future and the role of citizen media in a South African context.

All of the obstacles the main character, Digitella will have thrust upon her over the coming weeks will lead her on a path to self-discovery where she will hopefully find her place within this much contested idea of citizen media.

Director and screenwriter, MEG is reluctant to give away too much about the show. “What I can tell you, is that our leading lady will be confronted with many heated debates. One that I am most looking forward to is the climactic debate over whether or not citizen media may be regarded as journalism.” MEG says that citizen media is often labeled as citizen journalism, but that the two are actually separate terms. Digitella will have to grapple with the differences between these two terms with specific regard to what we can define as journalism in the pilot episode which airs next week Wednesday.

MEG broadly describes citizen media as forms of content that are produced by private citizens who are not professional journalists . The mass media often have social, political and, especially, economic affiliations and often do not report on real citizen issues . Citizens are now able to produce their own news and information in the form of blogs, vodcasts, vlogs, podcasts and digital storytelling.

MEG says that she got the idea for the show after she stumbled across the term citizen media while studying online journalism at Rhodes University. “It’s difficult to pin-point when exactly citizen media came into being, but it definitely thrived with the growth of the Internet in the early 1990s,” she says. The Internet has made it possible, through blogs and user-generated content sites, for citizens to produce, analyse and disseminate news and information .

But, MEG says, there is more to citizen media than simply producing news and information. It is about community and building communities and citizen media sites rank high on value and impact. Digitella will also be touching on these issues throughout the drama’s run.

When questioned on the importance of questioning citizen media and its role in online communities, MEG said, “Let’s face it, this is a hot topic and will hopefully draw users. I mean everyone logging into the show has the potential to be a citizen media worker. The issues that our main character will have to interrogate are issues that everyone accessing the Internet should be grappling with. Users can learn from our protagonist and draw their own conclusions about citizen media from her experiences.”

MEG has noted that in 2006 there were 500 citizen media sites, and studies have shown that these sites are increasing in popularity . This is why MEG is firm in her belief that “Citizen Media: The Days of OUR Online Lives” will be a success with users.

Digitella will be supported in her quest by a number of recurrent guest stars and cameos namely Jan Schaffer , Wikipedia.org , We Media , and The Poynter Institute .

Be sure to log in next week for the premiere of “Citizen Media: The Days of OUR Online Lives”.

“Citizen Media”. Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_media

“Citizen Media”. Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_media

Bowman, S. and Willis, C. "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information." 2003, The Media Center at the American Press Institute.

Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? The Rise and Prospects of Hyperlocal Journalism. 2007.

Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? The Rise and Prospects of Hyperlocal Journalism. 2007.
www.wikipedia.org

http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php

http://www.poynter.org/