THE 2008 GOLDEN SCISSORS of cyber -championship.

This is the article by Clothilde Le Coz

"Most of the world's authoritarian regimes are trying to control what their citizens read and do online".

Overall winner :China

Citizen journalism allowed people to express themselves through different type of media. However, the Chinese communist party have deployed huge human and financial resources to prevent the freedom of expression online. Moreover, news websites have been put under the editorial supervision of propaganda bodies at national and local level. I think this is because internet becoming the biggest internet market in the world and also it attracts more and more foreign companies. For example, in 2008 in China was the Olympic games, the Chinese government opened the web for 6 weeks and then they closed it. From my point of view this is because the government wants to keep control of news and also information, which can be really important for the country, but it is still very strict, because in our days using the internet its already part of our life, even for searching information we are using internet also you can share your topic with people. 

Best Crackdown: IRAN 

Internet is playing great part in the Iranian society. Why its like that? This is the big question for me today. Lets see what is happened in Iran, 2006, from this year all websites have had to register with the authorities and access providers have to ensure that "banned" content is not published by their servers. Also, the net remains the vehicle of social expression and allows women to demand their rights. 

Online journalists who post articles on women's magazines are regularly brought before the Tehran court for questioning . That can be because the freedom of speech and also religious principles, they are trying to avoid different type of activities which make cause of trouble relates to the muslim religion. For example in 2007 arrested a score of male and female bloggers because of their online activities. 

Best Filtering: Saudi Arabia

Unlike China or Iran, the Saudi filters make it clear that the authorities censor the Web. As everybody know many websites dealing with social life, nearly 400,000 Web pages are blocked in the kingdom because of their "immoral" content, for example homosexuality or women's rights. I think this is because the religion as everybody know that Saudi Arabia is a muslim country and it even more strict than other countries, also in such a muslim countries gils are not allowed to having sex before marriage, so internet give kind of opportunity to look at the porno pictures etc . Great example of one of the Foud al-Farhan, who is blogger, he was arrested and taken to prison in 2007 for having posted a commentary on the advantages and disadvantages of being Muslim. Thats interesting because its difficult to  protect the society from using internet due to some advantages and also disadvantages make cause the problems. So, What do you think? 

 

Citizen journalism is a public or participatory journalism or democratic journalism, and also is the act of non-professionals "playing an active role in the process of reporting, collecting, analyzing and disseminating information and news".

Citizen Journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which are practiced by professional journalists. Citizen Journalism is a form of citizen media as well as user generated content. Moreover,the idea of citizen journalism is that people without professionals skills can do the same job as professionals. Another important point is that citizen journalism can use the tools of modern technology and distribution all over the world. For example, they might write some important articles on the blog or in the online forum. Or they might snap a digital photo of some event in the city and also they can post it online. Or they might have some newsworthy video and also they can post it online, good example of this is YouTube. 

There are several types of citizen journalism in media: 1. Audience participation ( such users comments add to the news, news stories, personal blogs, videos or photos or local news written by residents of a community. 2. Independent news and websites information. 3. Other kind of "media" (mailing lists, email newsletter). and 4. Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast). New theorist in media Terry Flew argued that there are three main elements " critical to the rise of citizen journalism and citizen media": distributed content, open publishing and collaborative editing.

According to Jay Rosen, Citizen journalism " the people formerly known as the audience ," who "were the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened  in isolation from one another-and who today are not in a situation like that. The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, more able, less predictable. Doing a citizen journalism right means crafting a crew of correspondents who are typically excluded from or misrepresented by local television news: low-income women, minorities and youth- the very demographic and lifestyle groups who have little access to the media and that advertisers don't want "says Robert Huesca, an associate professor of communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Public Journalism is now being explored via new media such as the use of mobile phones. Mobile phones have the transform and places the power of reporting in the hands of the public.