In a globalised
world it becomes increasingly hard to ignore the influx of content and
information that is being piled into cyberspace regarding anything about
everything. However one of the most difficult new changes to the content of the
Internet to push aside, is the continuous newsfeed from almost every part of
the globe, connecting one side of the world’s disasters to the other via text,
pictures and video.
This new exposure
to countries, people, places and things is forcing the world to be more
involved in the affairs of distant or not so distant places and increases the
availability of information about, previously unknown, disasters, news and
topics. But how has this sudden exposure come to be? Through citizen journalism
aided by the globalization of new media.
Citizen
journalism is neatly defined by Jay Rosen of PressThink as;
“When the people formerly known as the
audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one
another” (Rosen, 2008) .
The audience,
being the people with first hand access to the information of the event, have a
plethora of tools at their disposal to circulate the information they have
captured and then with the help of the World Wide Web have the means to
distribute this content to every connected user.
I have termed this
new form of connectivity between citizens and states, Participatory Diplomacy.
In a globalised world everyone can be a journalist and with diplomacy being the
art of strengthening relations between two parties (mostly referred to states)
then the relations created through citizen journalism create Participatory
Diplomacy.
It is true that
in recent years the world has seen a shift from the historical means of
journalism to a contemporary form of journalism that through the use of new
media and the interconnectivity of the Internet, allows the every day Joe to be
the author of the top newsfeed in the world. This contemporary form of journalism
has increased the world’s accessibility to information that would other wise be
missed, as news-sharing is now as simple as taking a photo and uploading it
from a mobile phone or tweeting an event as it happens.
Taking the
notorious Twitter as an example, and how it has been used in the past as a
political tool, it is possible to see how the role of participatory diplomacy
is necessary in connecting the world when the world’s historical forms of
journalism are halted. In the recent events in Iran with the elections, Iranian
citizens were forced to find other form of media in order to report to the
Iranian population and also the outside world of the incidents taking place, as
the Iranian government had restricted news articles from circulating and whited-out
newspapers as protests started to break out (The Times of India, 2010) .
Twitter was then
actually called upon by the U.S state department to delay the network upgrade
that was scheduled during this time so as to protect the Iranian citizens
rights and to assist in communication of the events being tweeted protesting
against the Iranian elections (Grossman, 2009) .
Not only has the
events in Iran been affected by the use of citizen journalism but also such
events as those being Tweeted right this moment to the website Breaking Tweets (Breaking
Tweets, 2010) .
When one navigates to this website there are a range of categories under
which Tweets are organized. For example the most recent Tweet under the heading
Terrorism is:
“Voice of America reports, Afghan officials
say suicide bombers targeted four different parts of the southern city of
Kandahar, killing at least 30 people and wounding 46 others. Authorities
say they now have the situation under control” (Breaking Tweets, 2010).
Evidentially, it
has become almost a necessity to have a medium or mediums (let’s not forget
Facebook), to allow for people to share content online and engage in citizen
journalism or participatory diplomacy. Why? Because the world has become more
globalised and with the means to become more connected to those distance places
or in Iran’s case to those seemingly unconnected places, people can participate,
engage and benefit from the sharing of content that is made possible through
new media.
The world is now exposed;
it is up to the people to fill its gaps.
Bibliography
Breaking Tweets. (2010, November). Catergory Archive for Terrorism.
Retrieved 2010, from Breaking Tweets:
http://www.breakingtweets.com/category/politics/terrorism/#tb
Grossman, L. (2009, June 17). Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the
Movement . Retrieved 2010, from Times:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html
Rosen, J. (2008, July 14). A Most Useful Definition of Citizen
Journalism. Retrieved from PressThink:
http://archive.pressthink.org/2008/07/14/a_most_useful_d.html
The Times of India. (2010, May 21).
After Facebook and Youtube, Pakistan
blocks Twitter. Retrieved November 2, 2010, from The Times of India:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/After-Facebook-and-Youtube-Pakistan-blocks-Twitter/articleshow/5957939.cms
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