"National Problems: European Solutions?

Next 15th to 17th of October, the European Youth Media along with the European Parliament host the European Youth Media Days 2013 (EYMD) under the title; "National Problems, European solutions? Is the EU´s grass still greener?"

My workshop there is called "#EU- European policies online, is the EU keeping up eith the present times?" We need to know and analyze how the EP is communicating, what´s the strategy behind and what are they doing to improve the conncetion with people.

I believe this topic has a lot in common with the globalization movemetn. The social media has given us the opportunity to share and being in touch with everybody in the globe without barriers and this is a positive thing. However, it is necessary to regulate the web somehow and its contents, giving people alternatives, in the way everybody will be prepresented. Pluralism on the social media is important. Also, reaching people through Internet.

I would like to mention here the anti-globalization movements that took place in Seattle in 1999. This movement grew in importance thanks to the social media.

Nowadays, along with the economic crisis, the uncertainty about if the EU is going forward towards a more political intregation, or backwards towards a more national independence (instead of interdependence) is an important questions itself. I believe in the European Union, but it is visible that its primiry ideas has been distorted. We cannot fail again as it happened in the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. We need to work together to get out of this situation, to fight back stronger than ever and this initiatives (as well as the European Initiative for Media Pluralism) help to reach an agreement. The EU needs to provide alternatives to youth Europeans to gather together and maybe to make real the idea of the United States of Europe.

Defenders of... what?

Is the media an instrument for the government and big corporations to achieve their personal interest or is it really a powerful weapon to unmask them? The sad truth is that the media has become, a part from a few exceptions I will mention later, a easy tool for big conglomerates to get profit. The only interest here is: money, and on the bottom of the scale: look for the truth or merely inform.

Shadows of liberty, a documentary directed by Jean-Philippe Tremblay, exhibits the crisis in the US media through history. There are many scandals of goverment and large companies that, as Friedman said in the documentary (if I remember correctly) , if a news does not appear in the mainstream media as The New York Times, The Guardian... is like it has never happened. So, how can we (the journalists) keep the integrity of our professional values if there are contradictory interest behind? Where are people like Woodward and Bernstein nowadays? Oh right! they are refugees in an embassy to flight against the White House... (I will leave aside this lastest example since it is a hard to speak case, and everybody has their own opinion. But as one section Shadows of liberty alludes related to similar subjects in the past: "kill the messenger").

Returning to the docuemtnary, I would like to congratulate Tremblay and his team for brighing to light those hidden interests of big conglomerates and defending the truth of the facts even at the prospect of losing your jobs, because people and ideas like yours makes me believe again in the profession I chose to study.

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”  

Malcolm X

Reorienting journalism towards alternative media

Nowadays, traditional practices of journalism have to deal with different forms to reach their audience. New technologies are expanding the possibilities to produce and find free information online, what makes media organization more competitive. Newspapers are threatened by Internet along with the possibility that citizens can give feedback and discuss the news without the control of private or public media institutions.

To understand better this phenomena, pros and cons and consequences, it is necessary to define these new trends of journalism. For that purpose, Stephen Lacy, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and a professor in the Michigan State University Department of Communication and School of Journalism, contributed in this project giving an explanation about what the purpose of citizen sites are and how it does affect the profession of journalism. Lacy explains that,

“Some citizen sites (blogs) are primarily expressions of opinion. A smaller number of citizen sites are news sites, which tend to have the same fact-based approach as commercial news organizations. The difference comes from availability of resources and knowledge of journalism. Our research indicates that citizen site tend to complement not substitute for commercial news organizations. Over time, it is possible that citizen sites might evolve into commercial sites.”

Therefore, based on experts opinions and review of prior literature, it is possible to explain alternative media as a way where citizens become an active audience producing and distributing news content online. However, some questions come into mind where thinking about this phenomena, “Is it a threatened or a complement of professional journalism?” one answer could be that alternative media news-sites can construct a reality that appears to oppose the conventions and representations of the mainstream media.

We know that Internet offers many alternatives for citizens to get knowledge about the world, specially in terms of news web sites, however their interests might not be the same topics as the ones mainstream media news-sites transmit. People delve into the net to know what it is going on in the world within a wider perspective. Therefore, the main interests behind this research project are to know how these alternative news-sites (blogs, independent news sites...) can change or challenge the way citizen are informed.

It is significant to observe how the audience react to the government restrictions of press, and what and how the profession of journalism can change due to the inclusion of the audience as major players in the process of production and dissemination of “news”. There are many differences of freedom of press among countries and since the governments try to control the information published, citizens would need to go beyond media-center protocols and compare, verify and check information in other websites to create a complete picture of the story. Besides, citizens become more than an active audience but producers of information, storytellers, etc with a more important role to play in the information online world.

There are some others key elements that need to be taken into account when talking about online news: access of technology, knowledge about current events or personal motivation can affect the results of why citizen journalism can be more valuable in some countries than others. Naturally, citizens have a word to say in this aspect. Therefore, through surveys conducted among the target group researches will know which factors are seen as more relevant than others where consume information online. Respondents will give the answer and the results will be analyzed in order to compare the freedom situation of news sites in those two countries.

This phenomena could give a new perspective about under what circumstances journalism is developed, what it is the role of governments and what alternatives the journalistic profession has. These can change the way we, the audience, look at journalism only as professional practice or also an activity where everybody can contribute one way or another. The challenge appears whether citizen are well prepare to act as journalists without the respective academic formation.

However, the most important question that really affects journalism is, how can journalism get rid of economic and political pressures from government and media companies?. Only then, we will appreciate a real change in journalistic practices.