Jan. 2009: Let's call it "citizen citizenship."
By Clyde Bentley
In a week already overfilled with superlatives, it would be absurd to claim Barack Obama’s inauguration as a victory for citizen journalism.Yet …
The election of a Black man to lead a nation that grew to power denigrating his race is more accurately a sign of the phenomena that spawned citizen journalism, rather than a CJ victory itself. It portends continued change in the fundamental structure of our society.
Citizen journalism already has its mark on electoral history, albeit Korean electoral history. Oh Yean Ho launched OhMyNews in 2000 in a large part to counter the conservative Korean media cartel. The volunteer writers for OhMyNews shook their country out of complacency and are credited with bringing reformer Rho Moo Hyun to office in 2002.
Oh’s mantra was “Every citizen is a reporter.” Obama rose on the renewed American realization that “every person is a citizen.”
Brett L on Flickr
The new technologies and social networking strategies Obama employed captured the imagination of the press and the support of a nation, not so much because of what they are, but what they allowed. They allowed an unlikely candidate to circumvent traditional political expectations and the media gatekeepers who enforce them. It was no surprise to anyone who watched the rise of citizen journalism that he found an audience eager to resurrect the basic concepts upon which American society was founded. Neighbors talking to neighbors. Reliance on self and colleagues instead of “experts.” Defiance of class, past practice and ungrounded policy. Confidence that we all have voices to be heard.
Obama explained this sociological sea change in his inaugural address, noting that America’s challenges and the instruments with which it addresses them may be new…
“But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.”
Whether they tweet a comment, thoughtfully respond to a blog, volunteer in a classroom or simply read the news with critical interest, the citizens who demanded the return to these truths took society into their own hands.
“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”
And journalism.