Lecture 02 | Activities of citizens

Well, when we are taking about civic journalism, at that time citizens are our main concern or focus. Civic journalism does not exist without citizens. And we also must keep in mind the amount of leverage acquired by citizens is dependent upon the advent of modern technologies. Sophisticated technologies have enabled common and previously voiceless citizens to raise their voices with pride. 

Likewise, with a great deal of leverage and facilitated by technology, a great number of people have been engaged in civic journalism. Today we intend to talk about the activities of citizens on the internet. Every common and sane person can talk about the activities of citizens on internet: such as creating, sharing, and commenting on information etc.  But with that I intend talk about the advantages acquired by citizens with the advent of internet technology.

1. The degree of independence from professional media:

So first of all, we should start from the degree of independence we acquire from the professional media. The very word independence smells and seems very intriguing and indeed it is so. The advent of modern technologies has facilitated common person a great deal in providing him his voice for raising his problems and concerns. Previously, people like us were dependent upon the mercy of media in covering us and our issues/problems. But now the situation has completely changed. 

In today's environment of technology, we, laymen, can also raise our voice and show our concerns to whoever we want by writing our blogs, making vlogs, creating a site for raising social issues and share information about our area problems and issues by sharing and commenting on social media. In this way, we civic journalists may also attain the attention of decision-makers by tagging them in the posts.

2. The extent or duration of involvement

Before, we launch on to this topic, let me explain the terms extent and duration. The extent (the degree to which government or authorities concerned are held responsible or are criticized) and the duration (time and space of coverage allotted to civic sources) were previously were in the control of mainstream media. The media used to decide which issue to cover and how much space is to be allotted to which sources.

In the previous media atmosphere, common people always depended upon mainstream media for raising their issue. Previously, we were always looking forward to receiving media attention and coverage in raising our social, political, cultural and other issues. Most of the time those issues were not covered or were overlapped by other more pressing issues. The point is extent and duration was determined by mainstream media. Still mainstream media enjoys this luxury.

Now with the degree of liberty acquired by civic journalists, we as a civic journalist have got control over extent and duration being allotted to us. With exponential growth in the technology every passing day, we can give ourselves the extent and duration as we please. Now if, because of any reason, mainstream media does not give us desired coverage or cut our stance, we as a civic journalist are in position to clear our complete stance and do not depend upon media. In the same way if mainstream media censors our stance because it seems stronger than they can handle, we can relay it on our own blog, vlog or social media handle.  

3. The degree of coordination with others (from individual to mass crowdsourced)

Before the advent of modern technology, we always waited for the right and likeminded people to become acquainted with us for sharing our social and political ideas and thoughts. It was very difficult to find such persons.

Advent of civic journalism facilitated by sophisticated technology has enabled us to find likeminded people on internet and more specifically on social media. Many times we see comment on our friend’s post and send friendship request to comment maker and become his virtual friend. Thus we find a great deal of opportunities on internet to coordinate with many likeminded people across the globe.

4. The level of effort required

Think of a reporter who has a five-kilo heavy camera and five miles to reach his destination for a story. And after completing the story, the reporter has to file it to head office of his organsation. It used to take a whole day and a lot of energy.

And finally, the internet has benefitted us all a great deal by lessening the efforts required to accomplish various tasks. Now, not only a reporter but all the citizens have been greatly benefitted by internet because they have acquired a vast variety of opportunities to express themselves. Availability of devices and internet at lower cost has lessened the efforts required for citizens.

Lecture 01 | Civic Journalism: An overview

Much of the attention to civic journalism has been paid by the scholars of media studies in the start of current century. This focus of study peaked by 2010. Despite of it, it is still a challenge to define civic journalism. Because the definition is somewhat unclear and fluid. Definitely a valid question arises here why the definition of civic journalism is still unclear and fluid.  With the passage of time and advent of modern technologies, the concept of civic journalism is applied to a wide variety of activities. And some times, even most of the times it becomes difficult to distinguish among those activities. In his famous blog PressThink, media critic Jay Rosen states civic journalism as "“When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.”

When we think of civic journalism in the way Rosen has stated we must keep in mind that this context encompasses a wide range of activities such as citizens sharing content on their own, citizens' mobilization for sharing a particular content on a given date, citizens sharing content as part of a project coordinated by professional journalists, sharing of contents by citizens through a site with professional editors filtering content, to linking to content produced by professional journalists, to individual blog posts or personal posts on social media that may only be of interest to a limited audience.

However, a most important part of the definition of citizen journalism is 'the involvement of citizens' in journalism process which is meant to distinguish it from the work done by a professional journalist. 

Civic journalism includes everything and every act of journalism provided it is done by a citizen not by a professional   journalists. For instance, a spontaneous, one-time act based on a citizen’s presence at a newsworthy event, citizen as as a witness of police misconduct/brutality. Or a regular endeavour to disseminate information to general public via a blog, Twitter feed, or other medium. Makin comments on news/news stories, tagging, mentioning others and rating content are perhaps the lowest-stakes ways of participating in the process of civic journalism. 

Rosen, J. (2006, June 27).The people formerly known as the audience. [Blog post]. PressThink. Retrieved from http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

  

Lecture 01 | Management Defined

First of all, we must keep in mind that there is no agreed upon definition of management. Various scholars have defined management in their own terms. Many people may take this variety of definition in negative ways but for me it is good. Indeed very good. Such a variety of definitions and explanations provides our brain food for thought and gives option to think about a topic in different ways. 

Management is not and should not be a new word for any human being living on this planet. In our everyday lives we keep managing. We manage our relations, relationships, friends, time. We learn to manage our priorities in order to accomplish the most necessary tasks. We manage our financial as well as non-financial resources, like time, in order to take maximum benefits from our resources.

Van Fleet and Peterson define management as "Management is a set of activities directed at the efficient and effective utilisation of resources in the pursuit of one or more goals". Megginson, Mosley and Pietri define management as "working with human, financial and physical resources to achieve organisational objectives by performing the planning, organising, leading and controlling function". 

Now, when we look closely at those definitions, we will come to know that ‘set of activities’, effective and efficient utlisation’, ‘resources’ and ‘organizational goals’ are common component used in both definitions. We will discus each of these components separately in detail below.

Firstly, we must keep in mind that management is a ‘set of activities’. It is not an activity but a set of activities where all the available and necessary resources work together and act according to the goals of organisation. They put maximum efforts to achieve goals of their organization.

Secondly, in order to achieve organisational goals, it is imperative to utilise the available and necessary resources. But only availability of resource will not work here. The word ‘utilisation’ is of utmost importance. The management has a crucial responsibility to utilise all those resources effectively and efficiently. Only than a good manager will be able to achieve organizational goals.

Resources are mandatory for every organization. There are three types of resources. Human, physical and financial resources. Human resources refer to the work force employed by an organization. Physical resources refer to the machinery and infrastructure purchased by an organization to facilitate their work force.

Any/every organization has got its goals and objectives to achieve. The goals/objectives can be divided into three categories: short-term; medium-term and; long term. Short-term goals refer to the goals which are to be achieved in a short period of time lets say four or six months. Medium term goals are set to be accomplished in or within a couple of years. And long-term goals may take more than 4 years. Management utilises all its human, physical and financial resources to achieve these goals.

Our next lecture will focus on four function of management which are planning, organising, leading and controlling.

Lecture 06 | Production of Autonomous Information

As already defined repeatedly that social movements are not organisations, yet they need somehow an organisational structure. It enables them to mobilise their limited resources productively and effectively. In this sense organisational structure is an unavoidable and vital necessity for social movements. Most of the social movement and communication scholars have also focused on the social movement organisations and have defined them as "those that gather resources from surrounding environment and allocate the same to achieve social movements goals. 

simultaneously, communication scholars have also focused on the media produced by social movements and movement actors themselves. The media which are supportive toward social movements has also been focal point of research. This refers to the media which is produced by some other organisations but they do support social movements. 

this type of media are given many names such as alternative, radical, autonomous and independent media. these are the most common labels for them. This type of media are “generally small scale and [take] many different forms, that express an alternative vision to hegemonic policies, priorities and perspectives” (Downing, 2001).

The research on alternative media often focuses on the agency of social movement, their communicative practices, integration and overlapping of different actors and fields of action. Those studies also stress on the content, differences in content and the ways in which those media are produced. 

The literature on the content of alternative media shows that their content is often radical and alternative. That is presented in different experimental forms. Moreover, it also shows that alternative media produced by social movements is often rest on social relations and in  social relations in alternative media are less horizontal as compared to the traditional news room.

As there is no doubt that alternative media produces critical and counter-hegemonic. Alternative media is famously known for devoting space to non-media people in their news production and opinion programmes.  This act provides non-media people an opportunity to elaborate their world view. 

In the least but not the last, alternative media are usually distributed via underground channels. They are not part of the commercial distribution system of mass media. Therefore, it constitutes a social counter-sphere for public to nurture and mirror social movement discourse.

Lecture 05 | The cost of Adopting Media Logics

In our last blogpost, we discussed the strategies of movement actors in overcoming asymmetry between the relationship between media and social movement. Social movement actors usually adopt four strategies to overcome  this asymmetry. This lecture continues the same topic and extends it by focusing on impacts when social movement actors adopt media logics. 

After getting frustrated, when movement actors adopt media logics, they always have to pay a cost for it. Adoption to media logics (creating stunts, timing and drama) may most likely succeed movement actors in gaining media coverage, yet it also bears negative consequences for social movements.     

Since we know that social movements are not organisations, they are launched by small groups of people without any substantial resources. Movements have lesser human and nun-human resources. Firstly, too much focus on positive media attention is most likely to drain movement actors' limited resources. At the start and even at the zenith, movement actors do not afford to waste resources on anything else but their objectives. This is the first impact.

Secondly, when movement actors are concentrating more on gaining media attention, they are striving to reach distant audiences. This action is good in the sense they get a better opportunity to reach distant audiences. However, it has a downside for near audiences. Increased concentration on distant audiences is likely to put a shadow on the efforts and activities which movement actors are supposed to take for near audiences. Thus simply we can say that movement direct outreach activities to near audiences are likely to be greatly affected. 

Finally and the most importantly, there is a possibility of greater risk that while focusing too much on media attention, movement actors might get engaged in measuring their movement success in terms of amount of media coverage instead of the outcomes just like changes at policy level or legislation. It is very dangerous. The risk is most likely to divert attention of movement actors from their real objectives to media attention.      

In summary, mainstream media is highly capable of influencing various aspects of social movement. Sometimes, mainstream media leave those influence without letting movement actors to notice it. Most permanently, media influences movement actors' leadership, performances, strategies, framing activities and discourses as well. 

Lecture 04 | Strategies of Movement Actors to Overcome Asymmetry

Here we have seen and discussed that the relationship between mainstream media and social movements is asymmetric one. We have also discussed the possible reasons who cause this asymmetry. In such situation, it becomes a great challenge for movement actors to overcome this imbalance. For it is necessary to do so if movement actors want themselves heard among public and policy-makers. According to Dieter Rucht (2004), a German sociologist, in such circumstances social movement actors usually adapt following different strategies to overcome such asymmetry: 

First, when movement actors see that they are not getting enough media attention they become frustrated with it and in order to overcome that asymmetry, they find new ways of communication. social movement actors abstain from interaction with mainstream media and focus instead on micro-communication. This communication is mainly aimed at the inner circles of social movement such as activists, supporters, and allies. In other words, the audience of such communication is near audience who are part of social movement. 

Second, when movement actors do not get media attention as desired by them, they start attacking mainstream media. Those attacks are not violent or physical but verbal and discursive. Hence mainstream media becomes protest target and is blamed for not paying enough attention to social movement. Major disadvantage of this action is diversion of movement actors from movement to media coverage.

Third, in above-mentioned situation, movement actors create alternative channels of communication in order to bypass mainstream media and reach their audiences.  Via these alternative channels movement actors strive to the reach their near as well as distant audiences, supporters, sympathisers and potential members. Thus they bypass mainstream media and those alternative channels are based on a different types of media logic such as blogs, facebook pages, twitter accounts etc. 

Finally, movement actors get frustrated with media attitude toward their movement and in order to get mainstream media coverage they adapt mainstream media requirements in terms of newsworthiness, timing and drama. This may result in increasing the possibility or likelihood of obtaining media coverage. 

The final strategy has many negative consequences for social movements and movement actors as well. We shall discuss those repercussions in the next lecture. 

Rucht, D. (2004).The quadruple “A”: Media strategies of protest movements since the 1960s. In W. B. H. J. van deDonk, B.D. Loader, P.G.Nixon, &D. Rucht (Eds.), Cyberprotest: Newmedia, citizens and social movements (pp. 25–48). London, UK: Routledge.

Lecture 03 | Relationship between Media and Social Movements

Since protest events are not in resonance with certain amount of newsworthiness in the eyes of media workers and organisations, they do not come with a certain amount of predetermined  newsworthiness. This is how attitude of media towards social movements is often justified by news workers. Studies on social movements show that only one feature is successful in gaining media coverage and that is size of demonstration. More the number of demonstrators/protestors, more coverage is obtained by social movements. Apart from this no other features of help social movements in obtaining media attention.  

Studies throughout the world have indicated towards limited capacity of social movements to influence mass media and gaining coverage. The main reasons behind this attitude of mainstream media towards social movement are: (1) media's selection and descriptive bias while covering protest; (2) news-making routines and journalistic news values; (3) news workers' reliance on dramatic and visible events and ; (4) journalists' reliance on authoritative sources. 

Now we are going to discuss these aspects individually.

Firstly, in the past media was considered to be the mirror of society, however a considerable number of studies showed that media presents news selectively. Descriptive bias refers to media organisation's differing definitions of news in terms of their ideology, political and social leanings. In summary, we can say that media organisation decide what is and what not a news. 

Secondly, news-making routines and journalistic news values play a greater role in determining newsworthiness of a protest event. Firstly, news workers have a set routine which can only be disturbed in case of emergency or a great disaster in a country. If a journalist comes to know another important incident has happened while covering the protest, he will most likely leave protest and cover another event/incident. Secondly, journalistic news values often focus on authoritarian sources for information, magnitude of an incident/event etc. A greater body of studies also show that under-privileged sources are often ignored or given less space and time in the mass media. 

Thirdly, news workers invariably rely on visible or dramatic events and authoritative sources. Since social movements are serious phenomenon, very rarely they produce any dramatic event which may succeed in gaining media attention. 

Finally, as already stated, social movements present an alternative world view which is why movement actors are always against the authorities and no authorities are found in their support or with them. These two are also main reasons behind lack of coverage of social movement by mainstream media. In line with this, an amount of competition between different media organisations also play a greater role in ignoring social movements. 

In summary, the connection or relationship between mainstream media and social movements is often called and considered asymmetrical by media as well as social movements scholars. Activists need to be visible in the mass media and, quite contrarily, mass media do not rely on social movements for production of news.