Comment: Justifying Citizen Journalists

Hi Arun,

Thanks for taking time time to write in. Here’s the response I posted on CJR.org:

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Arun,

Thanks for taking the time to write — and for extending the conversation to your readers.

To be clear, in the comment you refer to, I was not talking about (or, indeed, criticizing) citizen journalism overall; to me, citizen journalism’s value, as a means of both increasing and democratizing information, is a point so obvious that it can be taken for granted. Perhaps I should have clarified my general affinity for citizen journalism in this case, though, particularly since, yes, I voiced doubts about Twitter in my post.

But: doubts about Twitter, the particular platform. Not doubts about citizen journalism as a general practice. I deeply respect the work that you and your citizen-journalist colleagues did in gathering information about the Mumbai attacks — often, I know, at great risk to yourselves — and wrote nothing to indicate otherwise in my comment. So, regarding your own comment — “In her haste to diss Citizen Journalists, I think Ms Garber; a staff writer for your elite Journalism Review provides clear justification for the necessity of Citizen Journalists” — that’s a snappy way to conclude an argument, I grant you, but I’m afraid it’s not an accurate one.

Also, timestamps. You’re right that I referenced a sampling of your tweets in my post without noting their timing or, indeed, their larger context. I was, I regret to say, taking the “comments” platform of the News Meeting feature too literally — treating it as a vehicle for thinking-out-loud rather than for more rigorous analysis — and was therefore being too cavalier about what I wrote. I didn’t mean to imply, in my comment, that you were personally responsible for rumor-mongering; in referencing your tweets, I simply meant to point out how those little nuggets of information and speculation, taken out of context, can easily foster rumors. But I realize, re-reading the comment I posted, that it came across as blaming you, in particular — which is especially regrettable given that your Twitter coverage of the attacks was, overall, praiseworthy. So I apologize for that.

But I stand by the point that Twitter, in general — as a platform that, by nature, trades on immediacy and brevity — can easily give way to a kind of digital game of Telephone. As someone who’s watched rumors spread like wildfire through the media — and particularly through online media platforms — I wonder whether the speed-uber-alles ethos Twitter in many ways promulgates compromises the obvious value of democratized reporting. That’s not to ignore the fact that mainstream reports don’t engage in erroneous information-spreading, as well — see Jack Shafer’s excellent analysis of the bad intelligence that found its way into early reports about Mumbai — but it is to say that Twitter, as great as it can be as a platform for disseminating information, is also particularly apt to be (mis)used. What I left unsaid in my comment above, but what I’ll say now, is that I’d love to find a way to mitigate that potential misuse to ensure that the information journalists gather from Twitter contains as much wheat, and as little chaff, as possible.

So, then, back to the original question: Twitter, the platform, and how journalists can and should use it. And, I have to say, even after reading all the comments above — most of which seem to have come from Twitter aficionados — I still have some questions about its overall utility as a resource for breaking news. Twitter’s great, sure, at documenting the comings and goings — physically, mentally, both at once — of a single person, be that person a friend or a celebrity or something in between. And that’s by design. Twitter was initially intended as basically a personal platform for communication, Facebook “updates” made more mobile. But it’s recently exploded beyond its initial use to become a mechanism for information dissemination on a broader scale, moving past the realm of social utility and toward that of journalistic utility. I think that’s largely to the good…but I also wonder whether what makes Twitter an asset when it comes to autobiographical narrative can become a liability when it comes to journalism. The depth and breadth of information Twitter provides about a person whose doings you’re interested in can be great — I’d happily read every last update on Nick Kristof’s new Twitter feed, for example — but for a journalist who’s trying to piece together a suprapersonal narrative about particular events, it can be exceedingly difficult to find the salient pieces of information amid all the tweeted noise.

And that difficulty was in some ways illustrated — and in some ways exacerbated — in a situation like the Mumbai attacks, in which information and immediacy were both at a premium. Exacerbated because, while Twitter affords its users the ability to post discrete pieces of information as soon as they’re known, in whatever form they’re known, “mainstream” journalists (or whatever your preferred term for that particular breed may be) have no such luxury. And given the sheer volume of information Twitter hosts — as the Times article noted, at the height of the chaos in Mumbai, tweets tagged “mumbai” were being posted to Twitter at the rate of one per second — sifting through all the stream-of-consciousness, “OMG what just happened” tweets to find the real information (nevermind the obvious next step: verifying that information) takes time — the resource most obviously limited in deadline reporting.

In other words: my questions about Twitter aren’t philosophical in nature; they’re logistical. (And they’re questions, more than outright criticisms; if someone can show me how my doubts are completely off-base and how Twitter truly is The Future of Journalism, I’ll happily drink the Kool-Aid.) The search and aggregation features on Twitter, as they’re programmed now, are simply not well suited to the kind of quick sorting and sense-making journalists are required to do in a breaking-news situation. Commenters above have pointed out the wider value of Twitter to journalists — building networks, finding and keeping up with sources, etc. — and I think those are completely valid (provided, of course, that any information exchanged on Twitter is verified elsewhere). But when I wrote the comment that you responded to, Arun, I also had in mind — and was, myself, tangentially responding to — the many, many, many, many, many, many articles published immediately after the Mumbai attacks that extolled the glories of Twitter as The Next New Thing for journalism, many of them under the seeming assumption that new equals better.

I don’t think such glowing assessments are wrong, per se, so much as they’re premature. Twitter is basically in its beta form right now, its gawky, adolescent stage. But, though I think the platform has some developing still to do, I’m fairly confident it will grow into its body — that its features will expand to make it more viable and useful as a resource for journalism. That Twitter, in other words, won’t just expand, but that it will evolve.

Anyhow. By way of putting out of its misery what has to be one of the longest comments in the history of comments sections (sorry! Proust had his madeleines; I, apparently, have my microblogging platforms)…just one more thought. While I’ve been fascinated by the comments posted above (including, Arun, your reaction to my own comment), I also think that many of them illustrate a fundamental problem in our discourse: the assumption that citizen journalism and the so-called “professional” or “legacy” media are separate entities — and therefore, given today’s hypercompetitive media environment, that they’re at odds with each other. But that old adage about assumptions makes sense here. Because, when it comes to journalism, it’s not citizen versus mainstream; it’s citizen and mainstream. The real question isn’t whether the forms of media will interact, but how they’ll do so — and how all of us who care about the quality of our journalism will foster the relationship.

From Arun:
Hi Megan: Sorry for the delay in replying to your comment. You are very gracious and I thank you for the broad overview of the issues around citizen journalism. I agree completely with what you have laid out here. Well said. See, as a bystander shooting pics and posting them, I could never have considered the issues as you have so well done. And proves what you have concluded with: it’s not citizen versus mainstream; it’s citizen and mainstream.

We are all enriched by this exchange! Thank you!

Dear Arun,
You have done a courageous job.
You have conveyed us the pain, anger and helplessness felt by the people there in Mumbain in those critical and terrifying moments.
I am very happy about you because you are not trying to sell the povery, misery and suffering of India. Of course, it is a part of us.
You are giving an optimistic and pleasant outlook about India.
Carry on the wonderful job you are doing!
JMCM

I followed your accounts from day one and found they gave me a more compelling story of what was happening than the official news coverage, particularly that first day. Any statement taken out of context can be twisted into an entirely different shape. “Official” journalist do this all the time as do politicians who use sound bites of their opponents.
I am glad there is the NY Times article about your efforts to balance Ms. Garber’s critique.
Well done, Arun.