QotW9: STOMP - An Ideal Platform of Citizen Journalism in Singapore?

The advent of the Internet has marked an important transition in our society, especially the power to people, which is seen increasingly in the rise of “citizen journalism” or “citizen media” across the world where ordinary citizens have began to take active parts in capturing, analyzing, and distributing news and information (Wikipedia, 2007). In fact, according to Bowman and Willis (2004) in their seminal report “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information”, the main purpose of “citizen journalism” is to provide “accurate, independent, reliable, and relevant information” and more importantly, to fill up the gap of information that mainstream media has not covered.

“Singapore Seen – You generate the content. You write the report. You take the photos. You shoot the videos. Email, MMS, or SMS at 75557,” The Strait Times’s call out to Singaporean’s participation in STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile Print) with its aim to create a new platform for expression, interaction, and exchange of information not only between the press and the readers but also among readers themselves in the country. (STOMP, 2007). Could STOMP be an ideal form of citizen journalism for Singapore?

In my opinion, STOMP is currently not an ideal platform of citizen journalism for Singapore but a medium that provides Singapore residents, mainly youths a greater opportunity to interact not only with the mainstream media, Singapore Press Holding (SPH) but also other individuals in Singapore. The two underlying reasons are that these individuals cannot edit or preview their articles before submission and more importantly, they still have great limitations in their editorial decision, which are often decided mostly by the professional editors of SPH in such confined topics “Singapore Seen, ST Foodies Club, ST Digital Club, or English as it is Spoken”. Some of the main national issues are often left out such as politics. In fact, to encourage individual’s participation, STOMP has incorporated both feedback and rating mechanisms where readers can leave comment on and rate posted articles on STOMP. The top five articles will be posted in the front page of STOMP. However, a great issue arises here, would a simple “a top-five award” can maintain Singapore resident’s contributions to STOMP in the future while citizen journalists have started to set up a grass-root level of citizen news network, which is seen in a great example today of OhmyNews International.

OhmyNews International (OMNI) is a large network of citizen journalism, which started in South Korea by Oh Yeon Ho in 2004 as an “open source style of news reporting” with the main motto “every citizen is a reporter” (Wikipedia, 2007). A great feature of OMNI is that there is no staff reporter but only two full time editors from South Korean and the U.S. working 24-hour. In fact, OMNI’s operations are built on the cooperation of amateur reporters and citizen reporters who work in media industry based on a rigorous editing, fact checking, and a strict code of conduct that citizen reporters must follow. Besides, another important characteristic of OMNI is its “cybercash”, which has been a great encouragement for participation in OhmyNews (OhmyNews, 2007). Citizen reporters are recognized for their contribution of news clips to OMNI not only through their names but also through payments in accordance to the section where their article are published. For instance, an article that is published on the OhmyNew’s main page will receive 20,000 Korean won.

To improve its operation, first of all, STOMP should open up editorial decision for its readers to provide them greater freedom in exploring their interest. Secondly, STOMP’s editors can collaborate with citizen reporters in editing their articles to enhance their experience in journalism, which may result in great satisfaction and contributions to STOMP. Finally, STOMP can incorporate some awards for their citizen journalists through monetary award, point’s accumulations, or “best of the month” on Strait Times newspaper, which may not only provide a great experience for Singaporean citizen journalists but also enhance their contribution to STOMP.

References

OhmyNewsInternational. (2007). Cybercash. Retrieved 23:00 March 30, 2007 from

http://english.ohmynews.com/reporter_room/qa_board/qaboard_list.asp?div_code=54

Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. (2007). About us. Retrieved March 29, 2007 from http://www.stomp.com.sg/about/about.html

Wikipedia. (2007). Citizen Journalism. Retreived 19:00 March 29, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism#_note-wemedia

Wikipedia (2007). OhmyNews International. Retrieved 20:00 March 30, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OhmyNews_International

QotW7: Tweets, tweets, tweets - "What are you doing?"

Since of our first step into the world, community plays a significant part in our lives especially our development and maturation through exchanging our experiences with others in the community (Fernback & Thompson, 1995). It helps us not only define our individuality and identity in society but also form our own personal, cultural values and perceptions of things around us such as our family, our school, or our church. In fact, with development of the Internet today, online community has become an essential part of our lives besides our existing offline social networks as it expands our knowledge and perception of the world through our interaction with people from different parts of Earth. Concerning with Twitter, a current networking site developed by Obvious Corporation in San Francisco in March, 2006 inviting people to answer the question “What are you doing?”, in my opinion, Twitter, in fact, is a growing virtual community where members can freely exchange information on their daily activities with others from all over the world (Twitter, 2007).

Simply with just a free existing email account, anyone can register with a pseudonym in Twitter to invite friends to join or connect with existing members. Users send short messages to their friends about what they are doing or what they are thinking through the web, instant messaging (IM), or mobile phone (txt). Each message is limited only to 140 characters without limit on number of messages that user can send. In fact, these messages will be posted automatically in a chronological order in both users’ and their friends’ personal web pages. Besides, users can also specify whether they want to limit their networks of friends or expand those to the public and obtain updated messages from their friends through the web, mobile phone, or instant messaging.

Pic. 1. Updating from "mobile phone"

Pic. 2. Twitter's phone sheets

Pic. 3. Updating from "web"

Pic. 4. Updating from "Instant Messaging"

According to Fernback and Thompson (1995) “online community is a social relationship forged in cyberspace through repeated contact within a special boundary or place (a conference or a chatline) that is symbolically delineated by topic of interest”. Everyday, hundred of messages are posted on Twitter from users’ shared random moments in their lives, thoughts, to news events provided by BBC or Google Corporation. For instance, here is a sample log of particular posted message on Twitter.

Although these updated messages in Twitter may seem to be trivial post of “what we are doing”, they carry specific category such as status-related “eating some dark chocolate”, link sharing “Twitter on WSJ”, public responses “@joshrt”, and announcements “Vilsack dropped out…” (Rickrey, 2007). In addition, these messages also convey a great “sense of common interest” shared among members, forming friends, sharing links, and exchanging information not only on their daily activities but also on news events happening around them (Wellman & Gullia, 1996). In fact, two greatest motivations in the development of Twitter include its diversity in messages from the freedom of posts and utilities, the mash up of blogging, instant messaging, and mobile phone tools fostering a strong bond among users in Twitter as users can update and view posted messages easily wherever they are. However, there is a lack of management on Twitter leading to a great problem that current Twitter users are encountering, a flood of content on the site as users have focused more on the quantity rather than the quality of their messages. In spite of this efficiency, Twitter’s growth has continued significantly. Though people have said that Twitter is completely useless and they don’t want all this information. “We check in later, and they are complete addicts,” said Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s founder in Obvious Corporation on Wall Street Journal Online March 16, 2007.

Not only for users, Twitter is also online community among developers according Dorsey (2006) providing developers opportunities to be creative with the services and products built around Twitter through using “the combination of a real-time device-independent platform paired with an open API”. Moreover, to enhance users’ experience on the site, Twitter has also set up a Twitter Fan Wiki where both users and developers exchange ideas, opinions, and feature requests on Twitter to build up a better a community.

Despite the inefficiency in its overwhelming of information, Twitter has actually become a part of our daily routine providing us opportunities to keep in touch and more importantly, to share our moments, our ideas, and our opinions not only in our lives but also in society instantly with our friends and people from the other side of the world.

References

Codel, E. (2006, December 5). LunchMeet: Twitter is the obvious choice. Retrieved 10:00 March 16, 2007 from http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1607/lunchmeet-twitter-is-the-obvious-choice

Fernback, J. & Thompson, B. (1995, May). Virtual communities : abort, retry, failure? Retrieved 21:00 March 14, 2007 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Lavallee, A. (2007, March 16). Friends swap twitters, and frustration - New real-time messaging services overwhelm some users with mundane updates from friends. Retrieved 18:00 March 16, 2007 from http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117373145818634482-ZwdoPQ0PqPrcFMDHDZLz_P6osnI_20080315.html

Obvious. (2007). Twitter – About us. Retrieved 22:00 March 15, 2007 from http://twitter.com/help/aboutus

Rey, R. (2007, February 23). To twitter or not to twitter. Retrieved 22:00 March, 16, 2007 from http://www.rickrey.com/blog/2007/02/to-twitter-or-not-to-twitter/

Wellman, B. & Gulia, M. (1996, April). Net sufers don’t ride alone: virtual communities as communities. Retrieved 21:00 March 15, 2007 from http://www.acm.org/~ccp/references/wellman/wellman.html

QotW6: Have We Actually Lost Our "Right to Privacy"?

Hewlett Packard’s executives pretexting to obtain its board member’s private phone records and hiring private investigators to spy on its employees and managers in 2005 have raised a major concern in society today, “privacy”, our right to be left alone (Sullivan, 2006). Everyday, we trade our privacy for a benefit we receive in a service like handing over our name, address, and telephone number for a car prize in real life or our email account to set up our blog in the virtual community. Nevertheless, with the emergence of the Internet and personal digital gadget today like camera phone and digital camera, privacy loss has become a major threat as we may not know when we have surrendered our own privacy. Have we actually lost our right privacy nowadays?

In fact, according to Sullivan (2006), it is so simple to lose our privacy in this era of “sousveillance” – “watching from below” where ordinary citizen has become the watcher besides the surveillance of “Big Brothers”, our government or big corporations (Wikipedia, 2007). In another words, Rosen (2004) highlighted that we are actually living in the world of “Omnipticon” where people start to scrutinize each other although nobody knows who is observing or being observed at any particular moment.

What is about privacy online since we can remain anonymous? Indeed, as we move into the virtual world, the loss of privacy has become even higher due to the ease in the invasion of online piracy. For example, people may not realize that once they launch the Internet Explorer, not only their personal information but also their online activities are recorded immediately by someone on the server, which is seen the example on i312 Information in Cyberspace how a person’s IP address and web browsers can be tracked down from the web. Have we lost in this trade off between our privacy and benefits from the services in the virtual world or have we underestimated the level of our privacy as Rosen (2004) has noted in his article, “The Naked Crowd”, Americans today focuses so much in creating their identity through self revelation or revealing details of their personal lives in the public that they have actually forgotten their own privacy beginning to reach their end.

Though the loss of privacy online may seem to be inevitable, we actually can minimize it through determining how much personal information we should reveal to the public. A great illustration for online privacy negotiation can be seen in the typical example of my participation in a Vietnamese food recipe forum (http://www.amthuc.com/). To gain access to the food recipe database and exchange information with other people in the forum on this site, I have used my free yahoo account and create a pseudonym (labellena) to set up my account there. Moreover, I also tried not to reveal my personal information on the web by disclosing only my gender and occupation on the web since all of my activity here are recorded automatically and available for other members’ view in my personal profile like the date and time when I first joined the community, the total number of pages that I have viewed on the web, my total posts in the discussion about Vietnamese restaurants, my favorite recipes online, and finally the total points that I have earned on the web. To maintain my identity, I use a comic character for my signature in my posts. In addition in preserving my privacy, I exchange messages with other members through the online message box located on the web. Besides, I only reveal my identity in reciprocity to members who have sent information about their real identity to exchange contacts in real life and who are my school mates in Vietnam.

In my opinion, although we seem to lose certain aspect in protecting our privacy in this era of digital technology, we have not lost our right to privacy. Indeed, we can still preserve our privacy online by determining how much exposure of our lives we want in the virtual community. More importantly, we should try to utilize best the advantages of the digital technologies offline positively to contribute and coordinate our efforts in making this world a better place.

Reference

Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The naked crowd: America’s culture of self-revelation spells the end of piracy and the promotion of a smothering conformity. Retrieved 21:00, March 8, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm

Sullivan, B. (2006, October 17). Privay lost: does any body care? It’s vanishing, but there is no consensus on what it is or what should be done. Retrieved 18:00, March 8, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Wikipedia (2007). Sousveillance. Retrieved 10:00, March 9, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

http://www.amthuc.com


Images

Korean Progressive Network 'Jinbonet'. (2003). Right to Privacy. Retrieved 21:00, March 9, 2007 from http://rights.jinbo.net/english/privacy.html

Consumeraffairs. (2007). Retrieved 21:30, March 9, 2007 from http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/images/privacy.jpg