Whilst writing a piece on Kennedy Gihanda (a beggar turned lawyer) the other day, a thought kicked up dust and my misconceptions about citizen journalism as it blew by. The reason? Those who’d read it considered it their primary news source, their first had account of his story.

My column was read, in its digital form, and it was translated into cold hard fact by those who read it. Had I the foresight to embellish a few bits of the story to make my point heard in the piece, then perhaps what I’m about tell you would resonate far more profoundly. You would have had to reevaluate your ability to process a “fact” and thus my suggestion that “citizen journalism itself, poses the greatest threat to ‘factual’ accounts of newsworthy events”.

Humans are adept at picking out inconsistencies. For example should a westerner would walk into a doctors office and find the the doctor wasn’t male. That the good doctor was wearing casual clothes, had nailed her framed MA History degree to the wall and had a tattoo of a dragon peeking out of her strappy t-shirt the westerner would be out of there. So fast in fact that perhaps even the terminal illness, gluttony, which the Westerner had acquired would be forgotten and replaced with a sudden desire to simply flee.

Furthermore, imagine a bank which had as its slogan “we break all the rules”. You would find it would be the proverbial broken bank rambling about yesteryear whilst huffing glue in the gutter, imagining clientele who were more receptive to a bank who took banking less seriously.

We are prone to our acceptance of norms, of rules which govern our expectations of those institutions which have an immediate impact on our lives. The media, a self regulating body, perhaps in South Africa a regulated - self - regulating body is no different. We, the audience have been socialized to accept that our news stems from sources external to our immediate conversations, sources which we assume have first hand accounts of the news to document and substantiate the information which they provide us. This information is not objective, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that even the most rationale, or logical among us have an objective eye. We simply cannot. Our thoughts and perspectives are “phrased by our social capital” and within the locale or bounds of our habitus i.e. a set of dispositions which generate practices and perceptions accrued through the process of maturation and an on going process of value - assimilation.

Social media experts promote the notion of a decentralized news media, suggesting that the cognitive potential of a shared and interactive news media completely out weighs that of a regulated and more centralized reporting body. Such efforts appear at least at a superficial level to promote sharing of information and are thus perceived of as the future of media, journalism and fact distribution. Stripped of the liberalistic notions of knowledge sharing, such information ought to be critically evaluated. My question, which I’ve yet to resolve, is by whom? Who would regulate the shared information, to ensure that, what we interpret as fact is indeed fact. As I’ve suggested for those who read my blog on Kennedy Gihanda, the information was first hand and factual and as I only scraped the surface of already available news not all that new, nor all that factual.

The obvious answer to my question, should I invoke the voice of a ‘new’ media journalist would be that the audience will keep the integrity of the so called ‘news’ we receive online in check. The audience will either endorse a particular news media site with readership or not and thus this shall act as a regulating force.

This does beg a few glaringly obvious questions.

1. To what extent is the audience able to filter fact from fiction?
2. To what extent should news media incorporate the principles of “citizen journalism”?
3. Who shall regulate the ethical principles governing citizen journalism?
4. Who shall ensure the credibility of the news / fact which we assimilate online?
5. To what extent shall opinionated blogging supersede the value of real investigative journalism?
6. Will journalism as a paid vocation end as we know it and be replaced by journalist bloggers blogging for the likes of Thought Leader?
7. Should journalists move over to the online medium, how will they earn their keep? Will advertising on personal blogging platforms fund new media journalism, or will traditional news media sites move online and retain their advertising clientele as a means of paying for their freelancers?

I have my own opinions on each of the points above, but would far rather here yours. Please leave your thoughts, comments etc.