A Huge Step in Citizen Journalism: Liveblogging Experience

Eric Chiu

As an armchair political junkie, I’m fond of pontificating endlessly about events both current and international, but it’s not often that I get the chance to actually do this through an actual legitimate organization.

Thanks to journalism professor Bonnie Bucqueroux, graduate student Robin Blom and the Detroit News, I got the chance to blog about the CNN/Youtube Republican Debate, along with 19 other student bloggers, on detnews.com.

As any self-respecting blogger can attest, being able to blog and get readers is a combination impossible to turn down. Delivering a healthy amount of commentary for readers, cracking jokes about 80s television  and getting comments back from said readers saying things not entirely appropriate for online print, it was a nice change of pace to actually be involved in the debate, as opposed to doing the raving soapbox shtick that’s synonymous with most bloggers. This being said, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the CNN/Youtube debates are indicative of where politics is heading towards.

Professor Bucqueroux is fond of the phrase “democratization of information” in her JRN 108 classes, and it’s the best way to describe what’s happening in American politics now; the traditional barriers that restricted most from actively participating in the political process beyond just voting are getting broken down, with tools like social networking, blogs and open media sharing rewriting the flow of information between the consumer and producer. As the debate showed, the accessibility of information makes it a magnifier for candidates.

While candidates like Ron Paul, who’ve made the most out of the netroots, knew what to say to get the crowd motivated (even if those chances didn’t come often), others from a more sterilized background like frontrunner Mitt Romney fared badly; the ability of the blogosphere to enhance or deflate a story has been well documented, and for Romney, it definitely looks to be towards the latter.

Where the field goes from here is anybody’s guess though; despite what Time might put on their cover, the online citizen journalism movement is still very much in its infancy. Declaring online citizen journalism to be the most influence thing in politics next to the hole-punch ballet may be premature, but its benefits are apparent. It definitely increases youth political awareness, as the once-daunting barriers in politics quickly get broken down. More importantly, it revives the long dormant “democratic” part of the U.S.’s democratic government. With the increasing homogenization that American politics has undergone in the past century, it’s made politics a whirlwind of information indecipherable to the mainstream; breaking down these barriers allows these groups to reenter the political process.

The issues behind the debate are certainly understandable; in this brave new world, where does the democratic process belong in it? If the liveblogging experiment was any indication though, we’re definitely on the right track.