Citizen Journalism

We discussed citizen journalism briefly today in class, and I thought this was a good example.

http://www.yourhub.com/

Yourhub.com is an example of citizen journalism that's owned by a corporation. In Denver, it's associated with the Rocky Mountain News, but it appears in other states as well. The idea behind yourhub.com is to get citizens involved and informed of community issues; the regions are very localized and it is mainly an online publication, though there is a weekly printed insert in the Rocky. Anyone who registers can post, and by posting online, citizens give rights to the publication to possibly be published in print. This concept of citizen journalism sort of reaches for the idea of a public sphere, but ultimately fails because there are some filters and control (though much less is controlled for than in an official publication).

Facebook and politics

From my presentation I told how many politicians have used Facebook as a tool to promote their presidential campaigns. I thought it was a really interesting way of having a public sphere where Facebook members can make their own groups about politicians and respond to the different types of content on certain candidate sites. Facebook members can post on walls, view photos, watch Youtube videos, read notes, and view other content from candidates. Here's an article from CNN that talks about how influential Facebook has become for the presidential elections.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/08/facebook.vote/index.html

In my presentation I also showed some of the candidate profiles on Facebook such as:

Barack Obama
http://www.facebook.com/barackobama?ref=s

Hillary Clinton
http://www.facebook.com/hillaryclinton?ref=s

and some other profiles such as

Mitt Romney
http://www.facebook.com/mittromney?ref=s

John McCain
http://www.facebook.com/johnmccain?ref=s