I love babble

Why Citizen Journalism is Important

First of all, let me introduce the web site I work for, rabble.ca.  rabble is a good example of a media organization that incorporates citizen journalism.  We are a multi-media web site and we are entirely online.  We have a news and opinion section, a decent-sized network of podcasts, and a book review section.  We’ve just recently added a video section called rabbletv, and we launched our first blog during the election – and hopefully that blog will be the first of many to come.

But the section I am most intimately involved with, and the one I’m going to focus on the most today, is our discussion forum, babble.

I’m going to talk a bit about myself and my own experiences with citizen journalism, because I think it will help me to illustrate how important citizen journalism is, and the way it can transform a passive audience into an engaged, active, and interactive one.

I first got involved with rabble in 2001, as a participant on babble, not as a moderator.  I’d heard about it through Judy Rebick’s column that she did at the time on the CBC web site, and the first thing that grabbed me on rabble was its discussion forum. 

At the time, I was a university student at Queen’s in Kingston.  I was a mature student with a very young child, newly separated.  So, as a single mother and a full time student, I was pretty busy, and wasn’t really involved in anything political or activist in nature.

So up until I first found rabble, I would say that I was a passive audience.  I read mainstream news web sites, I watched the news on TV, I read the papers when I had a moment to spare, and the information was all flowing in one direction – from the media to me, the audience.

Then I started reading babble, and thought, wow, look at all these interesting and intelligent people.  They were talking about current events, politics, and activism.  These were ordinary people out there who thought like I did.  So I started posting along with them right away.  It was a fabulous outlet for a somewhat isolated single mom.

But one thing I want to make clear is this: we weren’t just posting our opinions or giving feedback.  That’s an important distinction.  There have always been ways to “talk back” to the media.  Letters to the editor, phone-in radio talk shows – I mean, I remember when I was six years old, hearing Cross Country Check Up on the radio at my grandmother’s place when I went to visit her.  Feedback is nothing new.

But with traditional media, the information flows one way – from media to audience.  And then there is audience feedback, which also flows one way.  But you never feel like they intersect, you know?  It’s very separate.  You can give feedback to traditional media, but you can’t really engage them.  And your feedback is labeled very clearly and put off to the side as “what our readers think.”  It’s not taken seriously.

But babble is different.  It’s not a feedback mechanism.  It’s not a letters to the editor section for the site.  It’s not even a phone-in show where you talk to the host for ten seconds and then he hangs up on you.  It’s a place where the readers connect with each other over time.  And they build a community.  It’s truly interactive media.

Now you might think, what does a bunch of people sitting around at their computers gabbing at each other have to do with media?  Well, babble is one of the most read sections of the site, and for good reason.  Babblers don’t just talk about the news with each other.  We report news, too, and then we deconstruct it.  I consider us to be citizen reporters, and citizen pundits.  We’re citizen journalists on babble, and I’m going to give you an example of that.

On September 11th, 2001, when the planes hit the towers in New York, babble became an information clearing house for 24 hours straight.  The web sites of the major networks were jammed at the time and no one could get any information if they weren’t near a television.

But babble was different that day.  We had an army of babblers posting updates from tons of sources.  We had “straight news” threads where babblers posted factual updates with their sources.  Citizen reporters.  We had “speculation” threads where we talked about who might have done this and what the impact would be.  Citizen pundits.  We had “reaction” threads where we talked about our feelings about the whole thing – we were scared, sad, cynical, angry – you name it, we felt it.  Human interest.  We had “information” threads where we could ask questions and get information on phone numbers to call in order to help, like Red Cross, or billeting people from grounded planes, etc.  Public service announcements.

And you know what rabble did?  They stuck our threads at the very top of the front page of the site so that readers of rabble could get the very latest, breaking news, reported by the babblers – the citizen journalists – of the site.  It was incredible. 

Every once in a while I look at those old threads.  They’re social history artifacts.  It wasn’t just news - it was the human reaction of an entire community.

So anyhow, that’s just one example.  Elections are another example.  Many babblers are politically active and work on election campaigns, and you often read the “inside scoop” from them about what’s happening at the riding level in various campaigns. 

For instance, remember Dana Larsen, the NDP candidate who had to resign because of those pot legalization activist videos during this election?  Well, what you probably don’t know about Dana is that he has been a babbler for years.  And so we got to hear, first-hand, his side of the story and his explanation.  He posted his reaction to the whole situation on babble while he was still saying “no comment” to the mainstream media about it.  Why?  Because we’re a community on babble, and he’s part of it and he wanted us to know what happened.  He cared what we thought, and we cared about what was happening to him, too.  And we know that in a three second soundbite world, if you want to get a complex idea across, babble is a good place to do that.  Mainstream media?  Not so much, right?

So, back to me, and I’ll wrap up with this.  When I found rabble and babble, I was not politically active.  I started posting on babble, became part of the community, and discovered a whole bunch of people who were at various levels of active engagement.  And I became inspired. 

At first, I became inspired by babble to post my opinion and put it out there, something that many people find difficult.  Then I became inspired to write an article about a racial profiling incident that happened in my community.  It wasn’t published by rabble, but it was published by another site that I’d heard about on babble.  I’ve written a good number of articles since then for rabble.

Then I became inspired by politically engaged babblers to join a political party and volunteer my time on three different election campaigns in Toronto in 2003 – provincial, federal, and municipal.

Then I learned about Proportional Representation on babble, and became inspired by some Fair Vote Canada members on babble to join the organization myself.  Eventually, I became very active in this organization, and ended up being a riding captain for two downtown Toronto ridings during the 2007 Ontario Vote for MMP campaign.

I learned what a podcast was from rabble, and when I tentatively volunteered to help out in the background of rabble radio, maybe helping with writing or something, Wayne MacPhail, the executive producer, said heck no, I’m getting you a mic and you’re downloading a sound editing program and you’re going to start producing segments for us.  And that led to doing my very own podcast for a few months.

When rabbletv started, I learned how to do simple videos and edit them myself, with lots of encouragement from the producers.

This is what is so important about media that incorporates citizen journalism.  They engage their audience and turn them into active participants in our media and in our society.  We learn about stuff, we get involved, and then we report on it ourselves and draw others in to do the same.

This is citizen journalism, and it’s at the very heart of media democracy.