NDSA:Citizen Journalism

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At Risk Content: Citizen Journalism

Historical Value

Technologies such as social media and blogging platforms, increasing prevalence of cellular phones equipped with still and video cameras, and apps allowing easy ways to publish to the web, have enabled citizens to report breaking news and provide on-the-street accounts of events unfolding around the world. Citizen Journalism has has played an increasing role in the reporting of major global events such as the Arab Spring, the Japanese Earthquake, and Occupy movements. A study in 2010 found that citizen journalism complements professional journalism {http://digitaljournal.com/article/292589} . Citizen journalism content is not disseminated through traditional publishing, so NDSA members have faced challenges in identification, selection and preservation of content, as well as technological challenges in capturing content posted via popular social media services.

Recognized Opportunities

Social media and blogging platforms don’t readily allow via technical infrastructure ways for content creators to easily download and save their own content. Terms of service on social media sites often restrict copying for preservation by libraries and archives, even if content creators are amenable to preservation. NDSA can work to reach out to content creators and publishing platform creators to raise awareness of preservation requirements, and to engage stakeholders in selection of important content for preservation.

Target Audiences

These audiences share multiple levels of local, state, national, and international interests in this content:

• Local communities: public libraries and historical societies; local newspaper publishers; genealogical societies; county and local governments; NGO's, high school educators
• State-wide communities: Academic researchers; lay historians; university students and professors; archives
• National and International communities: Trending researchers; political scholars; economic analysts

Educating Stakeholders

The NDSA seeks to communicate the need for preservation of citizen journalism content to stakeholders through multiple venues:

• Content creators: Online campaign to bring awareness to importance of preservation; targeted messages. Blogger conventions [idea from citizen journalism meeting?]
• Publishing platforms: Build and promote easy-to-use plugins and tools that allow opt-in for preservation or better ways of personal archiving and instructions for delivery to preservation organizations (Wordpress, Tumblr, etc.)
• Funders: J-lab and Knight Foundation
• Journalism schools
• Local governments
• High school educators
• Public libraries and historical societies: Educate and partner with public libraries on citizen journalism preservation (local organizations select, NDSA members collect); workshop presentations at district library association meetings; conference calls with public library directors.
• Historical researchers, professors, and students: Connect at journalism and historical association meetings and conferences; panel presentations at archivist society conferences; vendor booths, brochures, and flyers about digital preservation at relevant conferences.

Obstacles and Risk Factors

Possible risk factors and obstacles in citizen journalism preservation include:

• Identification and selection challenges -- determining what content to preserve when the content is published in non-traditional ways (and typically not by major publishers) may be a challenge.
• Technological challenges in preserving social media content with current crawler and access tools
• Rights policies are unclear -- preserving organizations may need to seek explicit permission from content creators or have them opt-in to preservation.
• Funding for digital preservation may not be readily available.
• Standards: There are many different and varied digital preservation strategies which makes it more difficult to provide education to stakeholders
• Awareness: Different levels of understanding among citizen journalists about the importance of preservation

Actionable Items

• Define the term "citizen journalism" as it relates to selection of content for preservation
• Identify potential partners to help in selection of content
• Raise awareness about the need for preservation, with a focus on content creators and publishers (perhaps similar to personal digital archiving messages?)