Online Participatory Journalism in Kazakhstan

Participatory journalism, and particularly how participatory journalism is practiced online, has been one of our key interests in the course so far. You will remember the definition offered in the We Media report:

• “Participatory journalism: The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.” (We Media, pg. 9)

The We Media report is concerned with looking at how New Information Technologies can be used to promote participatory journalism online. In other words, its authors argue that NITs are making it possible for the audience to take an active role in the process of creating news rather than simply receiving news produced by professional news organizations. They further argue that the new media ecosystem enabled by NITs is changing the nature of journalism and democratizing the process of creating news.

We Media looks at how a number of different online technologies (discussion groups, user-generated content, weblogs, collaborative publishing, RSS syndication, and so on) help users provide commentary, filter and sort news, check facts, engage in grassroots reporting, and other news oriented tasks.

There are many examples throughout the report showing this process in action at various websites. However, the sites in the report are mostly based in the United States and are exclusively in English. This makes sense for the report, which is concerned with presenting a recent phenomenon in the context of the practice of journalism in the U.S.

The problem for us, though, is that this presentation is too limited. It doesn’t tell us about the potential for online participatory journalism outside of the U.S. And particularly, it tells us nothing about online participatory journalism in this region.

We have looked a bit at online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, primarily by exploring the neweurasia.net websites. However, this tells us only about the neweurasia (English language) sites, and not much about how people are using NITs here. For one thing, this is just one set of sites, and although there are a number of people writing for the neweurasia sites from this region, others are located far away. For another thing, Kazakhstan’s dominant languages are Russian and Kazakh, and sites in English cannot fully represent the experiences of people here.

Our task now is to discover whether there is something we might call online participatory journalism being practiced in Kazakhstan, and to try to develop an initial profile of that practice. We will begin this process by working in groups and creating profiles of a few weblogs. (Each group will examine one weblog. Post your profile as a comment on this entry by 1 pm Friday, 2 Nov. and be prepared to present it in class that day.)

1. ru.kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, neweurasia’s Russian-language weblog on Kazakhstan
2. kz.kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, neweurasia’s Kazakh-language weblog on Kazakhstan
3. adam-kesher.livejournal.com, Adam Kesher’s Russian-language Livejournal site
4. Askar Shushekov’s Media Support Center site (rus)

Provide the following information about the site you are profiling:

1. Site name and URL
2. Language(s) used on the site
3. Who authors the site? Is it a group weblog? Individual weblog? Are full names available? First names? Pseudonyms?
4. Where is/are the author(s) located?
5. How long has the site been active? How active is the site? (How many entries per week, on average?)
6. Does the site allow users to comment? If so, are there many comments? Or few comments?
7. Does the site provide an RSS feed?
8. What community does this site connect with? Look at links in entries, at the blogroll, and at the comments section: What are the sources of information the site uses? What sites does the author consider important?
9. Overall content: What kind of topics are addressed at the site? Are they personal? News oriented?
10. Impressions: Is the site engaging in participatory journalism in the sense described in the We Media report? What qualities does it have (or lack) that make you see the site as an example of online participatory journalism?
11. What else of interest do you observe about the site?

Quiz Reminder

Remember that our quiz is coming up on Wednesday 17 October, and will be held in room 131 Valikhanov, rather than our regular lab.

The quiz will cover readings (including this weblog) and course discussions, lectures and activities.

Format will combine multiple choice, fill-in, and matching.

To review, look over the course weblog, especially the material tagged with the Concepts and Terms category, and look over the course readings, which you can find (again) following the link for Required Readings in the sidebar. Ask me if you have any questions.

On Monday in class there will be opportunity for review, which will continue for as much of the class period that you have questions.

‘Pedia vs. ‘Tannica, Head to Head and Toe to Toe

Before this term I hadn’t looked at the Encyclopedia Britannica website for some time, and when I did I was surprised to find how much the site seems to mimic some aspects of the Wikipedia site.

• Both sites feature a relatively sparse layout with seemingly little attention paid to graphic design;
• Both sites offer user interactivity on their opening pages: Wikipedia with its standard interactive tabs and discussion features; Britannica with links to blogs, forums, and other seemingly participatory features;
• Both sites prominently display links to new and featured information, news, and so on.

As I recall, in the past Britannica has not had so many apparently interactive features, and I wonder whether this design is in part an attempt to adopt some of the elements that have made Wikipedia popular. If so, I think the folks at ‘tannica are missing the point: it’s Wikipedia’s openness (in contrast to Britannica’s still-closed system) that makes it popular. Consider a few comparisons:

• Anyone with access to the internet and some relatively simple skills can become a contributor to Wikipedia; in contrast, Britannica is a closed system of experts. Even Britannica’s weblogs (almost by definition an open medium) are written by a select group of experts. (They do, however, seem to allow general readers to comment on the ‘blogs.)
• Wikipedia content is available for free, both to read and to republish; most Britannica content requires a paid subscription for full access, and none is available for free republication.

Depending upon your perspective, you might see either of these characteristics as a point in favor of either encyclopedia. In fact, discussions about whether Wikipedia is a reliable resource are focused on its “wide open” character as opposed to Britannica’s closed system of experts.

Most of us are accustomed to systems of expertise in which we rely on people in authority to provide reliable information. Think of how schools work, governments, hospitals, and so on. This is the model that Britannica relies on (check out their authors, board members, and so on.)

The expert model has to be closed, because it assumes that expertise is something rare and that potential experts must be evaluated and confirmed as experts prior to participating.

This is a model with proven success (though it isn’t always successful). And if we consider the Wikipedia model simply to be opening the floodgates, for example, to allow anyone to enter a hospital, a university, or another expert institution and to begin acting like an expert, then perhaps we should be skeptical.

But that isn’t exactly what Wikipedia does. Yes, anyone can sign up to contribute at Wikipedia, and the process tries not to constrain contributors much. But what this project relies on is a large community of users who, working online, not only write and edit entries, but they evaluate and discuss entries, they consider the strengths and weaknesses of material, and they have systems to control people who abuse their freedom on the site.

Some examples:

• At the front end of many articles (such as the open source article) are announcements about suggestions on how to improve the article.
• The discussion page of each article is used, well, to discuss changes, proposed changes, and other issues related to the article’s content.
• The history page provides a list of changes and a way to revert edited articles to a previous state.

These are just a few of the mechanisms that Wikipedia uses to allow members of the community to work to improve the site. But perhaps the most important element of the Wikipedia system is this: they rely on a community of users who focus on one major goal: to produce a reliable, authoritative online encyclopedia. In the end, Wikipedia can only work if the majority of people in the community work toward that goal in good faith.

Open Production and Closed Production

In the last class we discussed collaborative and open source production, and we introduced Wikipedia and compared it to standard academic encylcopedias such as Encyclopedia Britannica. I want to make the comparison a bit more explicit.

Both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica are examples of collaborative production. They are publications that are created through the cooperative efforts of many people. Similarly, in both cases these group efforts aim to produce something similar: an encyclopedia–a publication that is intended to provide authoritative information on a wide range of topics.

Both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica are also available online. Keep this in mind, because it indicates that the use of internet technology is not the determining factor in the fundamental characteristics of each project. Part of what it means to refer to the internet as a socio-technical network is that the character of the network (the things it allows us to do, for example) depends both on what the technology makes possible and on the social arrangements (the decisions people make) about how to use the technology, or how to allow others to use the technology. Both these projects use the internet, but the project organizers have made different decisions about what they should allow people to do with their projects while using the internet.

What we will focus on today is how each of these projects is an example of an open or closed production model.

In general, an open production model has the following characteristics:

• Fewer barriers to participation in the production process;
• Access to materials produced is relatively unrestricted

In contrast, a closed production model has these characteristics:

• More barriers to participation in the production process;
• Access to materials produced is more restricted

Today we will examine Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica and try to gather specific examples that indicate how each process might be following one or another of these models. We will also try to see how each project attempts to demonstrate how its chosen production model helps to produce an authoritative, credible resource.

We will work in four groups, two looking at Wikipedia, the other two at Britannica. For the purposes of this exercise, the Wikipedia group should look particularly at About Wikipedia and the Britannica group at About Britannica (and associated links), though each group should also explore their respective sites further.

On your individual weblogs, write a brief entry this week (due at the beginning of Friday’s class) in which you consider, using at least a few specific examples a) how your assigned site is an example of an open or closed process, and b) how the project’s process might produce an authoritative, credible resource.

We will examine the sites today and have our discussion on this issue on Friday.

Some questions to consider:

• How do you get access to information at the site? Are there restrictions on access?
• Who produces information? How is participation in this process restricted?
• Are there different rules for different types of information?
• How does the project try to ensure the information produced is accurate/authoritative/credible?
• Britannica blog
• Open Britannica
• Britannica Board, terms of use,

Collaborative and Open Source Production

 

Collaborative Production and Open Source Production are important concepts for understanding new information technologies and their relation to social networks. For our purposes, we can understand these as closely related terms describing social arrangements through which groups of people work together in order to create something.

Collaborative Production can refer to any creative process in which several people (or more) cooperate. In a new information technology environment, the term takes on special importance because NITs reduce the limitations of collaboration. Interactive networks allow more people to work together. They can communicate instantly, and they do not necessarily require face-to-face interaction. Digitization allows for the creation of multiple copies (or multiple versions) of documents and other file types. In short, NITs can create new opportunities for expanded collaboration among more people than an “old media” environment can enable.

The term open source is often used to refer to a method for creating and improving software, but has been applied more broadly to any kind of collaborative production process that attempts to keep restrictions on participation as limited as possible.

Today we will have a quick introduction to these concepts and we will look at one of the best-known examples of online collaborative production, Wikipedia.

For this week, please:

• Explore the Wikipedia site;
• Read About Wikipedia;
• Read the Wikipedia article on Open Source;
• Read the Wikipedia article on Wikis

NITs, Journalism and Community

In the course so far we have looked at several readings that address New Information Technologies in relation to journalism and to community. This is a very popular/controversial topic, both within online communities and in the journalism profession (which is its own community). There are many reasons for this, including:

1. Mainstream news organizations are losing audience–fewer people read newspapers, watch television news, or listen to radio news.
2. More people are turning to the internet as a source of information, community-building, and entertainment.
3. News industries are looking for ways to use the internet to remain relevant to audiences.
4. Online, people look for more opportunities to interact and “have a voice.”
5. Tension among journalism professionals and NIT news amateurs.

Some ideas we will consider today:

• Gatekeeper: When applied to media, the gatekeeper role is one of filtering information for the audience. This can have both positive effects (ensuring only the most reliable information gets to the audience) and negative effects (preventing people from getting useful or important information).
•  Professional Journalism (values, standards, division of labor) vs. Amateur/Participatory Journalism.
• Audience: People who “receive” information. Thinking of people who use media as an audience suggests communication goes primarily one way, that there are limited opportunities for interactivity, and that there is a clear hierarchy in media communication.
• Conversation: If we think of media communication as a conversation (a discussion among people), then we tend to focus on how the communication promotes opportunity for people to become part of the conversation.
• Credibility: Authority, believability. Something that we look for in news information sources.
• Community as a shared place and enterprise
• Community around a newspaper vs. community around a website
• Some examples (news and otherwise) of community online:
• neweurasia.net
• The New York Times
• OhMyNews
• The Guardian
• Baristanet
• Craig’s List
• ebay
• YouTube
• hi5

Weblogs as Community Conversations

Today in class we will begin the process of building community around your group project sites.

First, though, I want to point out an entry by journalism instructor Mindy McAdams discussing the idea that weblogs are conversations, and also refer back to Kairzhan’s entry on community.

Part of the reason I mention McAdams’s entry is the idea itself: you should try to envision your group weblog as part of a larger conversation. This conversation includes your groupmates, of course. But it should also include other participants: people writing weblogs that may address your interests; people who write the news; people you talk to, and so on.

As McAdam’s suggests, however, the weblog “conversation” is not quite the same as conversations you might have in the physical world, and you will have to get used to the difference. Notice, from this entry, how she participates in the conversation on the issue: she draws from several different sources (weblog entries and comments, as well as her experience in face-to-face interactions), citing and linking as necessary. The links she uses provide online connections to support the more important element of her entry: dealing with, drawing from, and responding to other people’s ideas.

McAdams writes a very popular weblog. I think it’s popular because she approaches it as a well-informed participant in a community conversation, and because she uses the technical tools available to her in ways that promote the conversation, allowing others to find her work online. In part through her weblog, she is a very visible member of a community of people interested in online journalism.

Now getting back to Kairzhan’s post, he discusses many kinds of communities and subcommunities. But what is most important to me here is his advice for people who want to develop their communities of friends: “People, be outgoing. Be optimists, use every opportinities in your life. Be polite and interesting and you will have a lot of friends like do I ))))”

This is good advice to keep in mind, not just for building friendships, but for developing a community of people who engage in conversation with your weblog. Look for opportunities to interact with others, online or off. Write at your own weblog, but make sure you write sometimes about what others are writing, and do it sincerely.

The reasons this works online are both social (people will be more interested in what you have to say) and technical (larger numbers of meaningful links makes it more likely your site will be found). If you can apply these principles to your weblog, you will likely see results that show people are interested in having a conversation with you.

First steps:

1. Make sure your group weblog is set up to receive unmoderated comments and trackback “pings”
2. Locate at least a few weblogs that interest you and subscribe to them using Bloglines or Google blog search. Read them regularly. If you read something that is really of interest to you there, leave a comment at that site or write an entry at your site discussing what’s said at the other site. (Avoid doing both at the same time, or you may be seen as doing too much self-promotion.) You can also find sites by following links at the sites you are reading.
3. Remember you can use our course weblogs for #2 (it’s fine to have conversations with classmates), but do not limit yourself to these. Look for other sources as well, and don’t limit yourself only to weblogs.
4. Build a blogroll of sites that you see as part of the “conversations” you want to be involved in (draw on those from #2 above).

Some reflections on community

Draft in progress….

Looking over what some students have written about their communities, I see that we tend to see different groupings as communities:

Ivan writes about his work as a community. He works with many different kinds of people, but all focused on one goal–publishing a magazine. As he puts it: this community “gives me an opportunity to talk and communicate with these different people. Each of them has their own opinion that I have to consider. It’s like move back and force and talk to people in order to create a one single magazine page.“

Kairzhan has discussed several levels of community, best friends, neighbors, study mates, and so on. He even mentions online community. Even within a group of friends, he sees “sub-communities”:

“(I)n communitie of my Best friends I have a lot of Sub-communities. I have a Sub-communitie of friends who I do know from school, they are the Best ))) I have a Sub-communitie of friends from KIMEP, they are the minority. Also I have a communitie of friends from KBTU, a lot of friends. And I have a small Sub-communitie of friends from my yard. Sometimes I do connect two or more Sub-communities, but they are still prefer to be independent. I connect them only on football match, or some anniversary.”
Alua writes about family, friends, and KIMEP community. Gulnara (like me) is part of the KIMEP Times community. It makes me curious about how we might see each as similar or different.

Required Reading for Friday 5 October

For Friday’s class, please read two short articles from Nieman Reports about online community and journalism. Be sure to visit the “related web links” in each story:

• Community Building on the Web: Implications for Journalism, by Craig Newmark
• The Challenge of Community Building, by Gary Kebbel

Nieman Reports is Harvard University’s quarterly journal about issues in journalism. In their Winter 2006 issue, Goodbye Gutenberg (from which the assigned readings come), they look at challenges and opportunities facing journalism in the new information technology era. You may wish to browse this issue, or other issues.

Discussing Community Within a Community

 

Today in class we will continue our discussion of community. Begin by visiting some other students’ sites (you can use the Links page to get there or, if you have subscribed to individual course sites using Bloglines, use your account there to check) and seeing what they have written about community. Then, at your own site, post an entry considering what you have learned reading their entries. (Be sure to post a link to the entries you discuss so the site gets “pinged.”) Some things you might consider (you might think of others):

• What do communities have in common, or how are they different?
• How formal or informal are they?
• How do we as individuals relate to our community(ies)?
• Are communities of equal importance?
• How do online and offline communities compare?

Or just respond to what the person wrote…