Democratic journalism is a term describing a phenomenon where news stories are ranked by a vote among the stories' readers. This phenomenon has been brought about largely due to the creation of social networking sites such as

Digg Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...

and

Newsvine Newsvine was a community-powered, collaborative journalism online newspaper which drew content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press. Users could write articles, "seed" links to external conte ...

. The effect of democratic journalism is that it promotes news based on the popular opinion of the majority, or the "

wisdom of the crowd The wisdom of the crowd is the collective opinion of a diverse independent group of individuals rather than that of a single expert. This process, while not new to the Information Age, has been pushed into the mainstream spotlight by social infor ...

". This differs from more traditional approaches, such as the one commonly used in the newspaper industry, where an editor would decide whether to print a particular news story. Some authors look at democratic journalism as taking in rights to free speech, assembly, human rights, the rule of law and other mechanisms to check abuses. It also takes in civic consciousness and social solidarity. Journalism then has a clear link with democracy, and is shaped accordingly. This would also have different meanings in First, Second and Third World nations. The democratic role of journalism should transcend excessive commercialism, sensationalism, and manipulation by media elites.Grave New World? Democratic Journalism Enters the Global Twenty-first Century. Berger, G. Journalism Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, 1 February 2000 , pp. 81-99(19) Published by Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Problems

A common problem faced by democratic journalism is the unreliability and bias of the voting system used, which may not reflect the actual opinions of the majority. Many of the mediums which help enable democratic journalism suffer from problems such as gaming,

bias Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group ...

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

, and lack of professional review. However, other approaches will also suffer from many of these problems. In order to get a set of news stories, at some point, something must decide one story's rank over another using some criteria. A different approach at making such a selection simply changes the source of the bias.

References

{{reflist Citizen journalism Citizen media Types of journalism

Problems

See also

References