week 5 – blogs as citizen journalism

This week’s questions:
- What’s the difference between”personal” journalism and “news”? What’s an “act of journalism”?
- Newspapers go hyper-local (what’s that?)
- Technologies: Newsvine

Recap:

• What are “tags” (folksonomy) and Wikis? How do they enable social media to later the relationship between media outlet and audience?
• Resources: Tips for Tagging YouTube Clips, What Are Tags and Why Are They So Important For Web Publishers?

Let’s watch Robin Good. Note the difference between tags that are ‘concepts’ and tags that are ‘descriptive’

Today – Student-led reading discussion:
* (1 – Kendra) Carroll, B. (2004). Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere. In L.J. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs.
* (2 – Faith) Outing, S. (2005, June 13). The 11 layers of citizen journalism. PoynterOnline.
* (3 – Whitney B) Yeon-Jung, Y. (2003, Sept. 17). OhMyNews Makes Every Citizen A Reporter. Japan Media Review.

Tip: Using the “more” tag

Comments
What are they? How do we manage them? (DfB, p168-169) And let’s practice!

From the syllabus:

Peer Interaction (60 points, 15% of the grade)
Social media such as blogs differ from traditional media in their facilitation of interaction. For five of our 10 weeks together, we will practice this two-way conversation. Each week, three students will have one extra reading reflection. Students will provide comments on these posts (five students per post, randomly assigned each Tuesday), and the post author will interact with his or her readers through this medium.

• Post Author (max 20 points) – Reflect on the ideas in the extra reading, relate to the course readings, relate to personal experience. Post assessed on creativity, how well it meets journalistic standards (grammar, punctuation, spelling, style), how well it integrates course material, voice. Interaction with class members assessed on relevance, timeliness, courtesy.
• Post Comments (max 40 points, 8 points per week) – Respond to the ideas in the reflection. Comments assessed on relevance, integration of course material/personal experience, timeliness, courtesy, voice.

Read:

• Advice for Writing A Great Blog Comment
• How NOT to leave comments
• Writing Tips To Get More Comments
  (which of these are we already doing as part of the weekly assignments?)

(a) We’ll start with last week’s three reading posts:

• Dube, J. (2008, Mar 27). Creating A Primary Place For Citizens Online. Poynter Online: Web Tips.
  Real politics made for real people (Jessica)
  Respondents: Faith, Khair, NicoleC, WhitneyB, Lorin
• Rosen, J. (2004, Mar 25). What Is Journalism? And What Can Weblogs Do About It? PressThink.
  The ‘public beta’ without the ‘right spirits’ (Lorin)
  Respondents: Jason, KC, Sammi, WhitneyC, Sammi
• Glaser, M. (2005, Sept. 13). NOLA.com blogs and forums help save lives after Katrina. Online Journalism Review.
  Blogging because lives depend on it (Samantha)
  Respondents: Kendra, NicoleB, Sara, Jessica, Kathy

(b) And more practice:

• Select at least one of this week’s responses (listed below – not the same person you replied to above, please). Based on the discussion questions or your thoughts about the readings or anything else that seems relevant — comment on the post.

(c) And even more practice!

• Post a comment on this blog post: What have been your biggest “ah-ha” moments so far this quarter? What would you really really like to know more about before June comes around?

Comments Due: End of class today
Authors: Reply to comments by Thursday 11.30 am

For Thursday:

• More on link posts
• Work on VoteAbsentee.us
• Explore Newsvine
• ScribeFire

Cogent Reflections For Your Consideration

• Faith
• Jason
• Jessica
• Kendra
• Khair
• KC
• Lorin
• NicoleB
• NicoleC
• Sammi
• Sara
• WhitneyB
• WhitneyT