[Big Brother is Reading your Blog]

The article that i have chosen to respond to is out of the reader, titled:

"Big Brother is Reading your Blog" (Kharif, 2006)

This article mainly goes through and reveals that social networking sites are popular nowadays and is used vastly. It reveals that it is not only teenagers that blog and post personal information online, but the fact that when people post it, are they aware of who is looking at them. The article outlines those potential university tutors, campus police, employers are often viewing what people have posted on their blog, such as MySpace and Facebook. This often preached the privacy of people that blog; this then leads to the issue of ethics. The article reveals that people often do not that care about where they information is going and who has access to it.

The article mentions many different ways around, people being caught posting personal information, techniques such as disguise and fictions, where when they write they add fiction within their blog story to cover up the true identity. Other techniques such as bait and switch, ‘report the creeps’ is also mentioned. The article also constantly reminds readers that there are identity thieves and sexual predators. This once again, shows that ethics and privacy is the main issue. Then resolution was mentioned at the end of the article by revealing new tools such as automatic scanner and new social-networking software which then helps readers to be smarter in protecting their privacy.

[Citizen journalism ]

Citizen journalism comes from United State around 90s last century. It’s an act of non-professionals "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information”, or we can say it’s the first hand information from non-professionals.

Citizen journalists refers to the people who formerly known as audience. "Doing 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. But now, after the appearance of Citizen Journalism, it breaks the limit between disseminator and the audience. Because of the participation and influence, the news from mainstream media becomes more and more impersonal and rational. News is not about the words and facts described by one or more particular media corporations but the “voice” from the public. Online Journalism Review classifies citizen journalism into the following types:

• Audience participation – such as user comments attached to new stories, personal blogs, photos or videos captured from personal devices or even local news written by members of local communities.
  


• Independent news websites
  


• Full-fledged participatory news sites
  


• Collaborative and contributory media sites
  


• “Thin media” such as email newsletters – Mailing lists, email newsletters
  


• Podcasts and other personal broadcast sites