Bias and Partisanship in Citizen Journalism
The Problem
Citizen Journalism is often a benefit to our communities: good citizen journalists are more likely to break stories that big newspapers wouldn’t, whether they are about people from underrepresented communities, or about events and problems from localities that those establishments don’t typically cover. Between many platforms like Youtube, CNN’s iReport initiative, and Wikipedia’s Wikinews, citizen journalists, operating almost entirely on the internet, can cover important stories that mainstream news outlets might consider unglamorous, small, or unlikely to generate the ‘buzz’ that is now necessary in their success.
It is clear that citizen journalism is in general a benefit to society, but it has also had its side effects. Namely, some individuals have taken up the guise of ‘citizen journalism’ without the responsibilities of objectivity, truth, and transparency that go along with it. Some have used it to spread fake news, overtly push an agenda, or push their own ‘brand’. One such offender, YouTube’s Lauren Southern, is a perfect case study for this issue. She is famous and infamous as a right-wing citizen ‘journalist’ who covers issues like Black Lives Matter, LGBT rights, and immigration (with a stance against all of these) by going to the front lines, for lack of a better term. In among her most popular stunts, she went out in a boat, armed with flares, in an attempt to stop refugees from reaching the coasts of Europe. She and others like her have bent the idea of citizen journalism to their will and injected it with spectacle, partisanship, and personality commodification, and in doing so have tarnished its name, and the name of Journalism at large.
In our Re-Imagining Journalism project, we hope to academically outline the issues that have arisen in this age of citizen journalism in the hopes of lessening this system’s negative impacts. The main question we seek to answer is this: How do we lessen the effects of implicit and explicit bias in citizen journalism without gatekeeping?
The Big Idea
Mission Statement
Our solution to the issue of implicit and explicit bias in citizen journalism is a collaboration with Medium, an established journalism platform, in which users/ writers can pay a small fee to subscribe and receive credentials. To receive those credentials, these writers will have to undergo a short online course created by professional journalists. They will be taught journalistic ethical guidelines, writing formats, and ways to battle implicit and explicit bias in their work. In this way, more and more people would know the ethics and mission behind being a journalist, rather than calling themselves citizen journalist without adhering to — or in the very least acknowledging — the responsibilities and standards of the established journalistic community.
Description
Introducing MediumCitizen!
Medium citizen is a collaboration between our team, the Medium platform, The Emerson College Journalism Engagement Lab, and Harvard University’s Project Implicit, which provides tools for citizen journalists to hone their craft and gain necessary skills to reduce the effects of their biases, thus increasing the general public’s trust in their work. These tools would include ethical guidelines, online classes which would award credentials upon completion, and a plug-in which would point out biased language in prospective articles.
For a demo of how these tools would work, enjoy this brief video!
Audience and Impact
This collaboration is for Medium users who frequently post written articles, more importantly, those who consider themselves “citizen journalists”. Especially for these writers who did not go through a ‘traditional’ education on journalism, or other writing-based majors, the lessons involved in Medium Citizen will help them learn and understand the ethics and guidelines for becoming a journalist. This will impact the implicit bias issue in citizen journalists in that knowing the guidelines and rules of being a journalist will help to reduce the notion to be strongly biased in their work. It would also remind current expert, or alternative, journalists of ethics and guidelines they should still continue to follow even when publishing their work on media platforms. Furthermore, with a decrease in implicit bias, local communities will further trust their local citizen journalists.
Statement of Change
We hope that this project will benefit the citizen journalist community and those who rely on them for news. Medium Citizen hopes to raise the bar for citizen journalists in terms of ethics, knowledge of the field, and unbiased writing, which will in turn increase the public’s trust in their work.
Resources:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/journalism-matters-war-on-truth_us_58d2e79be4b02d33b748569f
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-kent/whos-a-journalist-closing_b_4033856.html
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
https://elab.emerson.edu/?_ga=2.66535598.1486277847.1544414238-74194808.1540513960
Ethical Guidelines
Just as The Boston Globe and The New York Times have specific guidelines that their journalists must follow, we are proposing to create a set of ethical guidelines for citizens journalists to follow as well. These citizen journalists are not a part of any news organizations, so these guidelines will be posted online where anyone can access them. These guidelines will be written by expert journalists who have been working in their field for a long period of time. This will help citizen journalists to know and keep in mind the important guidelines of being a good journalist, and will especially help to decrease implicit bias in their writing. This would also encourage readers to trust their local citizen journalist when they know that they abide to certain ethical guidelines.
Nonprofit Classes
We propose to team up with BINJ to create nonprofit journalism classes in which people who choose to participate will be taught the basics of journalistic processes and values. The course will provide insights to the fundamentals of journalism, such as formatting, sourcing, and general guidelines. Though the depth of the courses should not parallel the education provided through traditional journalism programs offered through colleges, the course should ultimately allow for citizen journalists to offer their local communities insightful articles. Participants would be awarded a certificate upon completion of their courses, and therefore, citizen journalists will have even more credential in the eyes of both their readers and the mainstream media. Local communities would trust them more and citizen journalists would publish even more insightful and unbiased articles.
Algorithm
We propose to develop a software to quantify the potential implicit biases held by citizen journalists. This software would use the administration of tests, as well an analysis of the language used in articles, to detect implicit bias. Upon completing tests and having articles analyzed for their language on specific topics, the citizen journalist’s viewpoints and leanings will be displayed by way of a graph. This analysis will be one way to allow members of the community to better understand the perspectives of the journalist, potentially allowing for a more developed sense of trust. There could also be a system for journalists to input works in progress and receive feedback from the algorithm on making their language less biased. Similar technologies, such as Harvard University’s Project Implicit, have been developed to accurately quantify users’ biases that they may or may not be aware of.
Authors:
Tivara Tanudjaja
Angela (Red) Pignatiello
Caroline Marlin
Brenda Garcia Farina
Dylan Hearn
