03.18.2010 at 1:20 pm | Have your say »

Citizen journalism not a threat – Larsen

Managing editor of the Global Voices Ms. Solana Larsen said citizen journalism is not the competitor of the professional journalism in the world.

Ms. Solana Larsen, Managing Editor of the Global Voices is presenting her keynote paper in the 3rd international media conference in Berlin

“I think the new form of journalism (citizen journalism) is helpful for each other,” she said in her keynote speech Thursday at the third international media conference on community journalism in Berlin, Germany.

The International Institute for Journalism (IIJ) of InWent and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) have jointly organised the conference titled “At a tipping point: Community voices create the difference, how mutual journalism innovate the news.”

The conference aims at exploring opportunities available in the new media for both traditional and citizens’ newspapers.

Participants, attended the conference, came from different countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States of America.

Ms. Larsen in her keynote speech cited several examples of using citizen-generated contents at her online platform and said it had created new arena of journalism to express opinions of the general people.

Example of using citizen-generated content

“The local citizen usually try to highlight their local problems through our website—Global Voices.”

The Global Voices, an online platform where the general people, bloggers, twitters and other social media users can write and sent their contents on any issues for the betterment of the community people and society.

Citing another example of Madagascar Ms. Larsen said that there was a breakthrough moment  “when one of the bloggers met a young woman who’s baby was in desperate need of an operation and decided to use her blog for fundraising. They raised the money, and were able to help.”

She said: “I think the bloggers has changed the media not only nationally but also internationally. Because, the people in the world can easily see what is happening outside his country though the blog or other online platforms.”

Ms. Larsen said the Global Voices usually wants to express the voice of the general people instead of proving it as the platform of journalism. “It a platform of expression of speech of the people.”

Citizen Journalism works during the censorship on internet

The Global Voice Managing Editor said internet censorship is a problem some countries in the world like Iran. “The citizen journalism through different social media like blogs had created new opportunities to express the opinion of the people even during the internet censorship by the government.”

Global voices has a cooperation with the BBC. “I’d like to share with you an experience from the past two weeks where I’ve been working with BBC News website editors in London. The goal of our project was to explore how citizen media could help inform their foreign news coverage and vice versa. We added links to Global Voices directly from BBC news stories when it could help add context and we also published free standing stories.”

She invited people in the conference to discussion on the newly emerging journalism arena – citizen journalism.

The International Media Conference of InWent started three years ago. The first one held in 2008 was based on the theme: “Online Journalism: Opportunities and Challenges for Press Freedom” while last year’s forum addressed how new media can be used during election times under the topic: “Elections Time: Harnessing the Power of New Media.”

You can download the PDF of the presentation here:
IIJ-Conference-Keynote-Solana Larsen-CC
(CC by – Creative Commons License / Attribution)

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