Monday 9 November 2009

Citizen Journalism


, CEO of Pelago made a very interesting case for Citizen Journalism in his web post. He said:

"The first was the trend toward perfect information, or simply access to exactly the right information at the right time in the right form. This is an incredibly exciting trend, because it represents a shift of power to the individual, who will become literally enlightened in virtually every context. This trend was and is visible everywhere on the Web. With the advent of the Web, massive amounts of content suddenly became “finger-tippy.” Not only is more content becoming available, but the manner in which it is organized is evolving."

In Nigeria, Citizen Journalism is directly changing democracy and indirectly improving the lives of people. So many things in the society has been taken for granted or ignored because of the poor media coverage and the easily influenced legal system- but since media houses opened their pages and air space to citizens to make input using mobile phones, video cameras, tape recorders and other multimedia gadget to capture life in their area, so many societal ills and vices that were swept under the carpet has been unearthed and the culprit brought to book. These included police brutality, ritual killings, poor health care and amenities, etc that were supposedly on paper eradicated. The citizens have been equipped with some power to bring back in some way a level of "fear of the law." Government officials and people with power have become a little more cautious than before because anybody walking by may have a hidden camera in her/his sun shade or something more high tech to expose their "hidden acts."


pictures from:
venturebeat.com/.../uploads/2008/01/kenya3.png
static.flickr.com/109/253165306_860e67cfbc.jpg

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