Citizen Journalism

1. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
CASE STUDY OF THE 2009 L'AQUILA EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY

2. INTRODUCTION
• The media revolution
• The Fourth Estate and Public Sphere
• Case study: The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake
• Uses and Gratifications theory.

3. INTERACTIVITY AND PARTICIPATION
• User–generated content (UGC) is described as: “any form of content
such as video, blogs, discussion […] posts, digital images, audio
files, and other forms of media […] created by consumers or end-
users of an online system or service and is publically [sic] available to
other consumers and end-users” (Rust & Varki, 1996).
• Interactivity transformed the nature of traditional journalism practice
through online news.
• Example: Arabic news provider Al Jazeera.

4. INTERACTIVITY CONTINUED
• Mainstream media have been the only source of news for a long
time and the internet has changed that.
• The Internet has created an interactive media environment in
which ordinary citizens play “an active role in the process of
collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and
information” (Bowman & Willis, 2003, p9).
• This new model has encouraged the development of citizen
journalism.

5. INTERACTIVITY CONTINUED
Five changes in network era:
• Immediacy of news coverage
• Volume and breadth of the news stories.
• The Internet allows disaffected groups and individuals to
communicate with one another
• The lack of “indispensable news and information resource” in the
news coverage.
• Feedback loop and possibility to interact (Allan, 2005)

6. THE FOURTH ESTATE AND THE PUBLIC
SPHERE
The Fourth Estate: Media functions as a watchdog to ensure that
people exercising power are kept in check and held accountable
(Ranjan & Kashyap, 2014).
“The public sphere' means a realm of our social life in which something
approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all
citizens“ (Habermas, Lennox & Lennox, 1974).
"The public sphere as a sphere which mediates between society and
state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer or public
opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere" (Habermas,
Lennox & Lennox, 1974).
Iosifidis (2011) argues that while social media spaces create new public
spheres of both “democratizing and empowering functions”, the

7. THE EXPANSION OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM
• “‘Citizen journalism’ refers to a range
of web-based practices whereby
‘ordinary’ users engage in journalistic
practices” (Goode, 2009).
• Represent their story from the
viewpoint of members in the
community and express their views
and opinions.

8. BLOGOSPHERE
• The blogosphere is a platform where Citizen Journalists can
self-publish their own version of news stories.
• “Simply put, it refers to individuals playing an active role in the
process of collecting, reporting, sorting, analysing and
disseminating news and information – a task once reserved
almost exclusively to the news media.” (Lasica, 2003, p. 71).
• Allows discussion of an event.

9. DISADVANTAGES
• Unreliability
• Spread Rumours and Conspiracy Theories
• Lack of Ethical Awareness
• Fragmentation
• Visibility (Farinosi & Treré, 2014).

10. USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY (UGT)
Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch’s formula:
• 1) To explain how people use media to gratify their needs
• 2) To understand motives for media behaviour
• 3) To identify functions or consequences that follow from
needs, motives and behaviours. (Rubin, 1972, p527)

11. UGT CONTINUED
Five major motivations for blogging:
• Document lives
• Provide commentary and opinions
• Express deeply felt emotions
• Articulate ideas through writing
• Form and maintain community.
“Blogging is an unusually versatile medium, employed for everything from
spontaneous release of emotion to archivable support of group collaboration
and community” (Nardi et al., 2004).

12. 2009 L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE CASE STUDY
• The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake.
• Killed more than 300 people and leaving around 65,000
homeless (Alexander, 2010).

13. L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE CASE STUDY
CONTINUED
• Citizens used social media sites and blogs to give their point of view
about the situation.
• Facebook represented a way to regain contact with the community,
with lost friends and neighbours.
• Ordinary citizens posted videos, pictures, articles, commentary and
reports that shed light on the post-quake situation and to also raise
money for relief efforts as shown below:
www.facebook.com/groups/65820557103/about/ (Farinosi & Treré,
2014).

14. After the disaster, Giovanni, a local citizen, built his own
Facebook page called “Aggregatore Aquilano di Flussi Alternativi”
where he collected and spread underreported information
created by local citizens (Farinosi & Treré, 2014).
www.facebook.com/agaqnews
L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE CASE STUDY
CONTINUED

15. • Activists and civic movements used social media platforms to
organize and report protests and to provide their own
perspectives on the situation.
• Protested against corrupt entrepreneurs and politicians
exploiting the disaster.
• People of the Wheelbarrows movement (see below) (Farinosi &
Treré, 2010)
www.facebook.com/groups/333399523599/about/

16. L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE CASE STUDY
CONTINUED
• The L’Aquila earthquake was exploited for
propagandistic aims by the Berlusconi government.
• Silvio Berlusconi owns three of the seven television
channels broadcasting at a national level, and
controlled another three when he was Prime
Minister.
• Silvio Berlusconi: "homeless victims should
consider themselves to be on a camping weekend.
They have everything they need, they have medical
care, hot food... Of course, their current lodgings
are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a
weekend of camping” (Farinosi & Treré, 2014).

17. L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE CASE STUDY
CONTINUED
• Bad quality of media coverage, more focused on the celebration
of the government’s work than on reporting the real situation
faced by the citizens.
• Feeling marginalized by the mainstream press, local citizens
used social media to provide an alternative version to the one
presented by Italian mainstream media (Farinosi & Treré, 2014).

18. L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE CASE STUDY
CONTINUED
• The Italian film director Sabina Guzzanti made a
documentary called Draquila about the
corruption and political incompetence that
distinguished the aftermath of the disaster
(Alexander, 2010).
• Draquila Video

19. MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS
• The overabundant and distorted mainstream media coverage.
• Desire to document their daily lives.
• The strong will of citizen journalists to share the information
produced with their community in order to reconnect their
social ties (Farinosi & Treré, 2014).

20. MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS CONTINUED
• Need to fulfil a social utility motivation.
• Need to spread information and create social interaction.
• The will to provide an alternative perspective to mainstream
media
• The need to document their lives, express deeply-felt emotions
and form and maintain community (Nardi et al., 2004, Farinosi
& Treré, 2014).

21. SUMMARY
• Digital technologies can provide ordinary people with powerful
tools for the production of independent, alternative and more
democratic information.
• Analysed the motivations that drove citizen journalists from
L’Aquila to produce and spread information.

23. REFERENCES
• Alexander, D. (2010). The L'Aquila Earthquake of 6 April 2009 and Italian Government Policy on Disaster Response. Journal Of
Natural Resources Policy Research, 2(4), 325-342. doi: 10.1080/19390459.2010.511450
• Allan, S. (2005). Journalism (pp. 70-71). Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Bowman, S., & Willis, C. (2003). We media: how audience are shaping the future of news and information. Reston, VA: The Media
Center at the American Press Institute. Retrieved March 6, from http://www.flickertracks.com/blog/images/we media.pdf
• Farinosi, M. and Treré, E. (2014). Challenging mainstream media, documenting real life and sharing with the community: An
analysis of the motivations for producing citizen journalism in a post-disaster city. Global Media and Communication, 10(1),
pp.73-92.
• Farinosi, M. and Treré, E. (2010). Inside the "People of the Wheelbarrows":participation between online and offlinedimension in
the postquake social movement. The Journal of Community Informatics,, 6(3).
• Goode, L. (2009). Social news, citizen journalism and democracy. New Media & Society, 11(8), 1287-1305. doi:
10.1177/1461444809341393
• Habermas, J., Lennox, S., & Lennox, F. (1974). The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964). New German Critique, (3), 49.
doi: 10.2307/487737
• Iosifidis, P. (2011). THE PUBLIC SPHERE, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA. Information, Communication & Society,
14(5), 619-637. doi: 10.1080/1369118x.2010.514356
• Lasica, J. D. (2003). Blogs and journalism need each other. Nieman Reports 57(3), 70–74.
• Nardi, B., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Why we blog. Communications Of The ACM, 47(12), 41. doi:
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• Ranjan, P., & Kashyap, S. (2014). Media as the Fourth Estate of Democracy. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2485908
• Rubin, A. (1972) The Uses and Gratifications Perspective of Media Effects. In Bryant & Zillman (eds.), (2002) Media Effects:
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• Rust, R., & Varki, S. (1996). Rising from the ashes of advertising. Journal Of Business Research, 37(3), 173-181. doi: