Burningbird

Please advise us on tips and techniques so that we can avoid being needlessly labelled as "Citizen Journalists".

Thanks.

– Jack Krupansky - *not* a Citizen Journalist

The term blogosphere doesn't bother me so much… It's shorter than typing "the blogging community at large". Depending on who's using it and for what reason, I can deal with it. What I dislike is when a particular community of bloggers (*cough* political bloggers) decide that they're the only blogs that matter and insist on using the word "blogosphere" to describe themselves when they really should be using some other made up term like poliblogger.

I hate the term MSM. Due to some excessive talking about Hugh Hewitt's book Blog, I ended up reading it… This was the first time I ever came across the stupid acronym… and you know what? He never defined it in his book. I got almost halfway through the book when I suddenly realized, I had NO idea what the heck MSM meant. I had to start from the beginning of the book all over again, which really made me mad because the book sucked.

Citizen journalist is a term I haven't heard though… but it sounds equally annoying.

From observing the demographic of bloggers who tend to use these terms on a regular basis, one of the things I've come to realize is that it's mostly an ego trip. I would daresay that most of them would like to be one of the news media's talking heads, but because they know they can't (or won't) be. They resort to attacking the media and using terms that make themselves sound more like the media.

I think blogging does and can play a significant role in politics and keeping the mainstream media more accountable, but I don't think blogging can replace the mainstream media all together.

Jack, I recommend the knee jerk effect–when you hear someone call you this, let your knee jerk and kick them in the butt.

Works nicely.

nikkiana, I've never had any interest in reading the book, "Blog". But it isn't unusual for people not to define MSM when using it — almost like a secret handshake to get you into a club.

"Replace ‘journalist’ with ‘cop’ and you have a vigilante"

Umm, no. First, there is a subtle difference between 'citizen journalism' and 'citizen journalist'.

Vigilantism would be 'citizen justice', I suppose, as in 'judge, jury, and executioner'; notice how ordinarily no one position has a monopoly on dispensing justice, it's really an emergent property of the system, which is what the vigilante gets frustrated with, especially as the US system is mostly optimized for 'the innocent shall not be punished', rather than 'the guilty shall be punished'.

Anyway, cops aren't in the justice business, they are in the law and order business, and there is such a thing as a citizen's arrest, not to mention the many volunteer police departments in the US.

Good points, Michael, and I changed the text to read justice, not cop, and focused specifically on journalist, not journalism.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks of the "blogosphere" as a term for webloggers trapped in an insular world of their own making.

But perhaps instead of an innocuous beachball, it's more akin to the sphere from The Prisoner?

So, having drawn the distinction between journalists and journalism, do you still think 'citizen journalism' is wince-worthy?

The last paragraph is a bit muddled now. I guess I was trying to point out that while 'citizen [professional]' can be creepy, 'citizen [usually professional activity]' is not necessarily so.

There *is* no one-person professional equivalent to a vigilante. What's truly, truly bad about a vigilante isn't so much the 'citizen' part, it's the fact that they've decided that one person (or in the case of a mob, each person) *should* conflate the roles of judge, jury, and executioner (not to mention dispensing with the role of advocate, whether pro or con). Having that conflation happen in the person of a private individual rather than be ing officially sanctioned makes it worse, but not much.

I think you need to re-examine how you're framing this, or at least replace 'vigilante' with 'vigilantism'. I know it doesn't roll as trippingly off the tongue, and I'm sorry if I seem to be picking nits.

For an audience which would get the joke, I tend to malaprop it to "bogosphere".

MSM is like "counter-culture". Counter to what? And what's "culture" anyway? It's really shorthand for "not-us". But note, even though it can be hard to define, sometimes there really is some sort of "us", to some useful level of granularity - it's very easy to take a stance that a gross granularity is wrong just because it's not a fine granularity.

And "citizen-journalist" is like "The People" (are dictators not people?). Except many people talking most demagogically about "The People" tend not to be "little people" :-(.

Shelley — you are right, this all reflects a polarizing attitude.

I have argued that the conservative movement has been able to slyly merge in the public consciousness "elite media" with "mainstream media"– and then corporatizes it as "the MSM" (sounds a lot like MSN, no?) I then pointed out that liberals ought to simply refer to media they don't like as "corporate media." (see Read Me, Not Them: Rage Against the Elite and Mainstream Media) Steve Lovelady of the Columbia Journalism Review/Daily subsequently pushed this last point as well.

As for "citizen journalists," it's long overdue for repatriation elsewhere. The Poynter Institute's Steve Outing used it as the unifying theme for his "eleven layers" assemblage last week. He actually floated it in a preview piece first, and then some actual professional journalists expressed that they were a bit taken a back. Outing stuck with it anyways and then acknowledged post facto that maybe the term wasn't the best. But by then the usual suspects had passed on the link all around the net, touting it as some more deep thought. see It goes to eleven: stacking on the clutter of "citizen journalism" analysis.

I do think there is a unifying theme of sorts to many of the developments we are seeing; I happen to call it constructive media.

I don't dig 'citizen journalism' either. It's just not right. Especially when you are trying to give a volunteer the title 'Senior Citizen Editor' - well… ya know.

The phrase "citizen journalist" is a piece of self-aggrandizing cant, but the concept is worth preserving. What were Tom Paine & James Madison if not citizen journalists?

"What were Tom Paine & James Madison if not citizen journalists?"

Political pundits. Elite media members (for the time). Policy wonks? Think-tank members?

Is Michael Moore a "citizen journalist"? (he's somewhat analogous to Tom Paine, who was less of a journalist than a polemicist, not really the same thing).

"Everything is miscellaneous."

Categories are so 20th century.

It's true that labels fall short of capturing complex and evolving concepts. And they fare even worse when using them for gathering multiple concepts into a single distinction. I've struggled with the ones named in your post too. While "citizen journalist" tries to capture the ideas of journalists (by training and/or education) using the web to publish their work outside the mediation of corporate media structures (e.g., Rebecca MacKinnon, Chris Nolan), amateur columnists, and the abstraction of an editor from the publishing process. My real objection is in how the term is used to morph advocacy into journalism.

I doubt that blogosphere will stand over time. Although, that beach ball vision with trapped faces will likely show up in a future nightmare. Thanks! The term is rapidly loosing it's meaning with the rise of podcasts, photo sharing (flickr) and video sharing. Labels like prosumer (producer/consumer) and populist media are gaining traction over what I consider a narrow view invention of everything is a blog.

The newest example of an A-list contrivance is the "syndosphere" which supposedly is inclusive of any site publishing a syndication feed. Just in case, you needed another cause for queasiness.

By the way, what's wrong with the servicable English of "chattering class(es)"?

I have little problem with 'blogosphere'. Assuming the best, which is never smart perhaps, it is used by most as a play on the various ecospheres (Biosphere, Hydrosphere, Lithosphere, etc) that surround our blue marble, and support life in their thin, interpenetrated layers. None could thrive without the support of the layer lower down, nor could they survive without the protection of the layers 'higher up'.

It encapsulates and hints neatly at both the technical and the handwaveresque, and does it succinctly. It may not be particularly euphonious, but it's efficient, and richly metaphorical, if you squint at it the right way.

So there.

Sorry, I forgot the other implied connection which cements the word as a clever play on ideas for me, the linkage to the idea of the 'logosphere', logos of course being THE WORD (and all the old testamenty 'writing/speaking oneself into existence' a la Dr Weinberger that that brings in). De.licio.us!

logos: " The word "logos" in Greek has an extraordinary range of meanings — the heart of which is both "meaning" and "reckoning". Hence, it may refer to a "word" or a "thought" or a spoken phrase or an idea or that which conveys something which, to the hearer, is meaningful and, thus, can move them. It can be an accounting or a story, a tale, narrative, or fable. It can refer to a theory, a rule of law or of conduct, a scientific hypothesis or lawful observation regarding reality or nature. Within the individual it can refer to a mental argument or a pondering of the reasons for/against. Thus, it also means thinking or the faculty of reason. More generally, it may refer to speech, talk, spoken stories or tales, and, even, rumors or everyday conversation. There is often a connotative sense of a deepened reality which is referenced by "logos". Hence, for example, the gospel of John in the Christian Bible begins with the phrase "in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" — and "logos" is the word used for "Word" in all three places ("en arche ein ho logos kai ho logos ein pros ton theon kai theon ein ho logos"). "

How perfect is that, huh?

Spheres are balls. So blogospheres are about blogs which are a load of balls ;-) For example, a vogonic poem about exploring the blogosphere is here:-
http://home.egge.net/~savory/vogonpoem.htm

I want to add "community" to that list. Just because I am nearsighted does not make me a member of the "nearsighted community." I can't do "blogging community" either.

I fought "blogosphere" as long as I could, but during the brief window of time in which I was famous, using it was an easy way to make reporters laugh. It confirms that bloggers are weird shut-ins who live in a dorky virtual world of our own making.

Reporters laugh…wince.

Sometimes I think we're a trained seal show being watched by the walrus, who occasionally tip us with a juicy fish.

At least Stavros explanation adds a hint of dignity to the term. That and Stu's loads of balls.

Perhaps we can settle for 'chattering class' in place of 'community', Sheila. And in place of blogosphere. I could live with 'chattering class'.

I failed at Chattering Class. Prof told me I was being too freakin' substantive. Ruined my GPA, the bastard.