‘Righting Wrongs: Citizen Journalism and Miscarriages of Justice’, in S. Allan and E. Thorsen (eds.) Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives, Volume Two, London: Peter Lang. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
This chapter demonstrates the agenda-setting power of citizen journalism in a context of miscarriages of justice. Our empirical analysis focuses on the interaction of media, political and judicial forces following the death of newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, shortly after being struck by a police officer at the G20 Protests in London 2009. We examine the rise of citizen journalism as a key challenge to those institutions that traditionally have been able to control the information environment. We then illustrate how the intervention of citizen journalism, above all else, established the news agenda around the Tomlinson case, disrupted the traditional flows of communication power, and was transformative in the Tomlinson family's search for justice.
This is not justice": Ian Tomlinson, institutional failure and the press politics of outrage
British Journal of Criminology, 2012
This article contributes to research on the sociology of scandal and the role of national newspapers and, more particularly, newspaper editorials in setting the agenda for public debate around police accountability and miscarriages of justice. In previous work we analysed how citizen journalism shaped news coverage of the policing of the G20 Summit, London 2009, and the death of Ian Tomlinson (Greer and Mclaughlin 2010). In this article, we consider the next stage of the Ian Tomlinson case. Our empirical focus is the controversy surrounding the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decision not to prosecute the police officer, filmed by citizen journalists, striking Tomlinson shortly before he collapsed and died. We illustrate how the press’ relentless agenda-setting around ‘institutional failure’, initially targeted at the Metropolitan Police Service, expanded to implicate a network of criminal justice institutions. The Tomlinson case offers insights into the shifting nature of contemporary relations between the British press and institutional power. It is a paradigmatic example of a politically ambitious form of ‘attack journalism’, the scope of which extends beyond the criminal justice system. In a volatile information-communications marketplace, journalistic distrust of institutional power is generating a ‘press politics of outrage’, characterised by ‘scandal amplification’.
Citizen journalism and the rise of Mass Self-Communication: Reporting the London bombings
Global Media Journal, 2007
This article offers a case study of citizen journalism in the network society. Manuel Castells' (2007) discussion of 'mass self-communication' informs its examination of the spontaneous actions of ordinary people compelled to adopt the role of a journalist in order to bear witness to what was happening during the London bombings of July 2005. Identified and critiqued are a number of the ways in which the social phenomenon of citizen journalism registered its public significance. Specifically singled out for analysis is how the eyewitness reporting of ordinary Londoners caught up in the explosions, recast the conventions of the mainstream news coverage. This process was made possible via their use of digital technologies to bring to bear alternative information, perspectives and ideological critique in a time of national crisis.
The rise of citizen journalism and how it affects traditional media
This paper looks at how citizen journalism is shifting the power from traditional media and its influence on the general public. This paper also particularly focuses on the Occupy Wall Street movement, which incidentally sparked similar Occupy movements around the world.
Irish Communication Review, 2020
The relationship between Social Media and Legacy Media has been of much interest to scholars. This paper investigates an interesting, contentious and politicised court case where the heretofore monopoly of professional journalism, court reporting, was challenged by citizen journalists. The case concerned a 2014 sit down protest in Jobstown, Tallaght, a working-class suburb of Dublin, where a gonverment minister, Joan Burton TD, was blocked in her car for several hours by local protesters. A number of protesters, many months after the incident, were arrested and charged with false imprisonment.
Rethinking Activist Journalism when Freedom of Press is Under Threat
Today, self-censorship and government pressure dominate the media, preventing fair and balanced coverage, and special interests are driving investment in Turkeyʼs not-very-profitable media sector. During and after Gezi protests, social media became very crucial for both the journalists and the audience in Turkey. While mainstream media outlets ignored the stories of police attacks against the peaceful protests due to their coorporate purposes, the breaking news was disseminated by journalists (some of them anonymously) throughsocial media accounts. It is observed that they adopted some journalistic standards to their Twitter posts and played an important role to the news sharing during the events. As a result, the research showed that the question of how journalism can be compatible with activism is not clear even if they took a side like activists. Activist journalism is seen as the outcome of increased pressure on media and unadopted ethical codes.
British Journal of Criminology, 2010
This article explores the rise of 'citizen journalism' and considers its implications for the policing and news media reporting of public protests in the twenty-first century. Our research focuses on the use and impact of multi-media technologies during the 2009 G20 Summit Protests in London and evaluates their role in shaping the subsequent representation of 'protest as news'. The classic concepts of 'inferential structure' (Lang and Lang 1955) and 'hierarchy of credibility' (Becker 1967) are re-situated within the context of the 24-7 news mediasphere to analyse the transition in news media focus at G20 from 'protester violence' to 'police violence'. This transition is understood in terms of three key issues: the capacity of technologically empowered citizen journalists to produce information that challenges the 'official' version of events; the inclination of professional and citizen journalists to actively seek out and use that information; and the existence of an information-communications marketplace that sustains the commodification and mass consumption of adversarial, anti-establishment news.
This article explores the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and considers its implications for the policing and news media reporting of public protests in the 21st Century. Our research focuses on the use and impact of multi-media technologies during the 2009 G20 Summit Protests in London, and evaluates their role in shaping the subsequent representation of ‘protest as news’. The classic concepts of ‘inferential structure’ (Lang and Lang, 1955) and ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Becker, 1967) are re-situated within the context of the 24-7 news mediasphere to analyse the transition in news media focus at G20 from ‘protester violence’ to ‘police violence’. This transition is understood in terms of three key issues: the capacity of technologically empowered citizen journalists to produce information that challenges the ‘official’ version of events; the inclination of professional and citizen journalists to actively seek out and use that information; and the existence of an information-communications marketplace that sustains the commodification and mass consumption of adversarial, anti-establishment news.
Since it emerged early this century, citizen journalist and its related terms have been increasingly contested among groups including professional journalists, academics, and citizens. This paper advances a new and clearer typology of the participant groups in this contest and analyses the discursive constructs they use to advance and argue their positions. It argues that the linked terms citizen journalist and citizen journalism are multivalent discursive constructs, and that recognising the various contexts in which they are deployed is essential to understanding the ways in which changes to relationships between media participants are occurring and being resisted. The paper develops a model for five participant groups and uses it to review the discursive constructions of 'citizen journalist' and 'citizen journalism'. Data is deployed from literature and case studies to characterise each participant group, summarise the ways they identify themselves and are identified by others, and foreground the discursive assumptions in their various assertions.