Book Review: Citizen Journalism: Valuable, Useless or Dangerous?, edited by Melissa Wall

Citizen Journalism: Valuable, Useless or Dangerous? Melissa Wall, ed. New York: International Debate Education Association, 2012. 180 pp. $24.95 pbk.Recently, many newspapers and other media institutions have lost credibility and dis- appeared or downsized, reducing the number of journalists on traditional payrolls. At the same time, social media, blogs, and other Internet-related entities have multiplied and have sought to fill the resulting news vacuum. "Amateur" or citizen journalists have found many new outlets for their photos and stories.This thin volume provides an overview of how and why citizen journalism has devel- oped and has covered particular events and issues in at least ten nations and regions. Seventeen scholars from around the world authored or co-authored chapters. Melissa Wall, a professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge, served as editor.The overall picture is very mixed. Citizen journalists have provided real-time descriptions of events and subcultures seldom if ever covered adequately by tradi- tional media. However, the absence of journalistic background, editing, and quality control have often led to biased, inaccurate, low-quality pieces.Positive contributions to the public sphere include the following:* Reports of ruthless seizure of land by a local government in northern Taiwan. Traditional media had ignored the seizure, but reporting on a television service inviting citizen input called PeoPo triggered mass protests and eventually led to changes in the relevant law. PeoPo was a creation of Taiwan's Public Television Service established to challenge and enhance the basically free but sensational- istic and often irresponsible commercial media on the island.* Coverage of the 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza with citizen input encouraged by Al Jazeera, one of the few media institutions with access to the area. Investigative pieces revealed what life was like in Gaza in ways not really consistent with much western emphasis on objectivity and brevity.* Blogs by U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan during the war in that country. These bloggers revealed a great deal about military life and its subculture. Some critics felt citizen journalists would be free to question official reports that the U.S. troops were contributing in a positive way to democratization, to winning hearts and minds. However, intensive study of forty-eight soldier blogs indicated they served more of a guard-dog function, supporting the official line, than a watchdog role challenging it.* Cell-phone transmissions by young people in a poor South African community, Grahamstown, showed what life was like among the poor and mostly unem- ployed young people there. Under a program established in part by the Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies, many of these reports appeared in newspapers and on television. Students received training in telling stories and other activities, yielding a better understanding of journalism overall.* Training camps for young journalists in Taiwan under auspices of the Public Television Service there. Students from twelve different schools of journalism participated, contributing many stories that appeared in traditional media.* Social-media portrayal of a young Iranian woman, Neda Agha Soltan, being shot and killed during a crackdown on protests against the allegedly rigged 2009 re- election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The image of Neda lying in a pool of blood soon went viral on the Internet, helping to make her an iconic martyr. CNN and other traditional media quickly circulated the story. …