1. Master Thesis Proposal
CITIZEN JOURNALISM:
HOW USER-GENERATED CONTENT CHANGES
THE SYSTEM OF NEWS MEDIA
Interactive Media and Knowledge Environment
IFI7117 Master Seminar I
Tatjana Pavlenko

2. WHAT IS CITIZEN JOURNALISM?
• How does it differ from the other types of journalism (e.g.
traditional, public)?
• When was it launched?
• What are the reasons of its appearing?

3. WHAT IS
USER-GENERATED
CONTENT?
• How are users generating the content (which tools, media
forms do they use)?
• What are the main values of user-generated content?
• What’s the difference between information provided by
professionals (journalists, editors) and amateurs (users,
experts, pundits)?

4. WHAT ARE NEWS MEDIA?
• What is news?
• Which traditional news media exist?
• Is Internet a news medium? Why?

5. NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES are based on
affect
JOURNALISTS serve
produce takes part in produces
TRADITIONAL PUBLIC
USER-
USER-GENERATED CONTENT
JOURNALISM JOURNALISM
lead to is created in
are using
CITIZEN
Old OLD MEDIA FORMS JOURNALISM NEW MEDIA FORMS
Media
such as such as
Technologies
needs
Newspapers Blogs
is using
Magazines Videoblogs
are based on TV programs Social networks
NEWS
Radio programs… Wikis…
are published in

6. PUBLIC JOURNALISM
Public movement against the
failures of professional
journalism
• An effort to treat elections
during US presidential
campaign in 1988 caused a
movement called Public
journalism
• The core concept is that
journalists and their Public journalism
audiences are not spectators
in political and social
involves audience into
processes. They are making news…
participants

7. CITIZEN JOURNALISM
Has three prerequisites:
Public movement against the
failures of professional journalism
(Public journalism)
Media technology development
(Internet, Web 2.0, different
multimedia frameworks)
Lots of world events lots of
news to be told
Citizen journalism is not a planned
movement as Public journalism.
It appeared occasionally
…so does
Citizen journalists feel compelled to CITIZEN JOURNALISM
practice journalism because they
believe that professional journalists
are not doing their jobs

8. USER-GENERATED
CONTENT
• Users are both producers
and readers of their content
• Web 2.0 users don’t merely
read, they interact
• Using Web 2.0 as an
individual news medium
• While journalist is just a
reporter or an interpretive
reporter, blogger is an
expert (journalists have “My readers know more than I do”
been taught the covering, (Dan Gillmor, “We Media”)
not the topic)
• Online media are not static “People Formerly Known as the
Audience” (Jay Rosen)

9. CORE IDEAS
• Modern technologies have changed the system of news media because,
in addition to Print, Radio and TV, a new medium has appeared –
the Internet
• The Internet is a news medium in the sense that all web sites need to post
new information to keep visitors coming back
• Citizen journalism is allowed by technology but is not caused by it
• Is citizen journalism – blogging, open-source newsgathering, wikis,
informational “mash-ups” and citizen journalism sites –
transforming the nature of news?
• Revolution of newsgathering.
• Traditional journalism competes with citizen journalism but is much more
stable and organized
• Traditional journalism starts using the same media tools
• Traditional journalism can finally win its audience back
• On the other hand, user-generated content is so wide-ranging, that it can
become the only necessary news medium

10. A RESEARCH STRATEGY
• Provide theoretical background
• Form the empirical base
• Find out how successful citizen journalism is
(questionnaires, interviews, experiments)
• Try to make some predictions