De pasivo a activo

Hasta ahora, si pensábamos en el periodismo, pensábamos en periódicos, televisión y radio. En unas decenas de profesionales instruidos académicamente para ser capaces de ocupar su puesto e informarnos de lo que ocurre a nuestro alrededor. Un par de activos en medio de un centenar de pasivos. Sin embargo, en la última década, este término ha cruzado las fronteras.

 Nos encontramos con canales cada vez más manipulados por el gobierno, periódicos que escriben sobre lo que les conviene e interlocutores que deben ponerse un esparadrapo en la boca más veces de las deseadas.

 Quizás, este sea uno de los motivos por los cuales, cada vez más ciudadanos, opinan que varias mentes piensan mejor que una y que la diversidad de opinión es fundamental. Todos sabemos que la visión de un conflicto desde el exterior, difiere mucho a aquella mirada que parte de las propias vivencias, sobretodo en un mundo lleno de desigualdades y censura en los países menos afortunados. ¿Qué podemos hacer ante esto? ¿Cómo nos informamos acerca de lo ocurre en Palestina cuando el traslúcido velo de la represión nos permite ver menos de la mitad?

  Al parecer, Internet tiene la solución: el periodismo ciudadano. Esta nueva clase de periodismo, criticada por algunos y aclamada por otros, pone del revés los roles tradicionales dentro de esta ciencia. Los ciudadanos, aquellos que siempre han ocupado el lugar del espectador, pasan de ser informados a informar. Con el periodismo ciudadano, son ellos (y no las empresas de comunicación) quienes recogen, analizan y difunden la información de forma independiente. Probablemente, un concepto como éste hubiera resultado descabellado décadas atrás, pero con las nuevas plataformas sociales, se ha convertido en una realidad.

Además, en una época marcada por la crisis financiera que azota a gran parte del mundo, muchos periodistas han sido despedidos. Sin embargo, eso no ha hecho que su vocación desaparezca. Por ello, han tenido la necesidad de buscar otras alternativas mediante las cuales puedan ejercer su profesión vocacional.

Para algunos, utilizar el término ‘periodismo’ dentro de este ámbito no resulta adecuado. Hay quienes no consideran periodista a una persona que escribe en su blog las noticias más cercanas a ella; ya sea una huelga ocurrida en su ciudad, la labor de una ONG en la cual trabaja o la vida de un español en China. 

Aunque según mi punto de vista, ¿por qué no iba a serlo? El periodismo ciudadano tiene una ventaja de la cual carecen los medios tradicionales: muestra la información desde dentro. La experiencia personal es una cualidad que apela la atención de quien te lee, y considero que podemos sentirnos afortunados por poder informarnos, de primera mano, de la situación de la mujer en Siria o de la censura del gobierno chino. Gracias a él, somos conscientes de los hechos que están ocurriendo tanto en nuestro país como en otros más lejanos (en todos los sentidos de la palabra) aquellos sobre los cuales no nos informa la mainstream media; ya sea porque no los consideran de vital importancia o porque no le convienen. Porque, al fin y al cabo, desde hace unos años, en los intereses se basa el periodismo tal y como lo hemos conocido hasta ahora. El periodismo ciudadano, por el contrario, no tiene fines económicos ni intereses políticos de por medio. Tan sólo se trata de la opinión de diferentes personas, como tú y como yo, que tienen la necesidad de transmitir al mundo su punto de vista; sin beneficios económicos.

 En definitiva, considero que nos encontramos ante una nueva era del periodismo, que no tiene por qué ser mejor o peor que la anterior, ni debe dejar de lado a los medios de comunicación ya existentes. Una nueva era que nos da la oportunidad de contemplar un amplio abanico de opiniones, que nos permite involucrarnos en el periodismo y no ser un mero espectador. Un periodismo en el cual los ciudadanos dejan su sillón para salir a la calle con cámara fotográfica y libreta en mano.

Collective Intelligence

In the last few years, the concepts 'the commons', 'crowdsourcing' and 'crowdfunding' have adquired a new meaning thanks to the social media. On the Internet we can find many pages with the objective of collecting money and people in order to support different projects that want to change our world for better.
On this prezi presentation is explained the meanings of these words with some examples and videos, really enjoyable

PRACTISE 10 on Prezi

At my class of Communication and Citizen Participation, I have had to research into these sites, which make an important job in our society. One of them is the NGO 'Hazlo Posible' (http://www.hazloposible.org/). This organization tries to motivate (in an innovative way) the social interaction and participation in solidarity causes using the new technologies. You should take a look to its page http://microdonaciones.hazloposible.org/, where you can get information about their different projects of crowdsourcing in which you are able to colaborate.

I hope you found it usefull and interesting!

The BOBs

The 2nd April the voting for the Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards, The Bobs, has begun. Since 2004, these annual awards champion the best blogs of the internet sphere. They aimed to show that his new form of communication was worthy of being taken seriously. 

There are 17 different categories which are awarded: Best Blog, Best Use of Technology for Social Good, Best Social Activism Campaign, Special Topic Award Education and Culture, Best Video Channel, Reporters Without Borders and other language-specific categories. 

The goal of this last category is to choose the best blog in 11 contest languages: best blog Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. 

In each category, there are two different winners. On the one hand, the user winner, which is the blog more voted by the internet users. And, on the other hand, the jury winner, which is choosen by qualified jury (formed by bloggers, journalists...)

I would like to highlight the category called Reporters Without Borders. 

Reporters Without Borders is a non-governmental organization that fights for freedom of the press and freedom of information. It defends journalists and media asistants imprisoned or persecuted for doing their job, fights against censorship and helps (on a financial way) journalists in difficulty. It pays special attetion to those journalists who work in war or conflictive places. Some of these journalists show this point of view through a blog, which sometimes can be really dangerous, that is why I consider it is an important category.

Last year, the winners in this category where:

Jury winner: juarezenlasombra.blogspot.com/. A girl who reports on the situationj of a city in northern Mexico that suffers on the situation of a city in northern Mexico that suffers from the grip of crime. She talks to victims, the futile work of the police and shines a light on th cartels brutality by publishing the therrible ways they work.

User Winer: novayagazeta.livejournal.com/. The collective blog of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper's editorial team. The paper, for which murdered journalists.

KONY 2012: GOOD INTENTIONS OR SCAM?

Before opening this blog, I was thinking about what I could write, how it should be. I confess that I have too many interests, but I felt insecure. I do not know if I am prepared to write about global problems such as the Arab Spring, because I am not there; I keep informed thanks to activists, bloggers or correspondents from these countries. But then I thought:  what about journalists who do not live in an Arab country, for example, and write articles related to this type of issues?  They use their own sources and achieve great results. Well, maybe one day I will be able to do the same. Until this happens, I will try to find my way in the fourth power.

One of the issues that have caught my attention during the last month is KONY 2012. It is a film and campaign by Invisible Children (an NGO) that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, with the goal of stopping all the crimes that he is committing. But, who is Joseph Kony and who makes him “famous” through this campaign?

All of the answers are in his video. Kony is the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan guerrilla group. He has been kidnapping and killing children since twenty years ago and nobody have done something. With this video, Invisible Children wants the world to know who is Joseph Kony with the goal of fighting against them because, as the video says: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea”

The creator of this film is Jason Russell, one of the main leaders of “Invisible Children”. He is a man from the United States who states to be horrified when he met a child called Jacob, a victim of Kony’s group. Due to it, he decided to make the world aware of the situation. Jason Russell encourages us in the video to plaster the streets the night of April 20^th with photographs and information about Joseph Kony in order to inform all of the population.

Fighting for a common cause, ending with a dangerous and cruel terrorist… Well, a world in which a project like this succeeds is a world worth living in, but it is not as wonderful as it seems. Nowadays, political interests are behind everything. In the last two weeks, the campaign has received too many critics which declare that the video oversimplifies the conflict. People has put on Youtube other videos trying to explain why Kony 2012 is a scam with the unique goal of promoting war and collecting money in order to send USA’s troops to Uganda . And what will they achieve with this? The answer is simple: barrels of oil valued in billions of dollars. The access of these soldiers would allow the access to these sources of oil.  The majority part of the benefits that came from this campaign, are used in people awareness instead of helping to Africa.

Besides, it is known that Joseph Kony, although he had born in Uganda (1961) now he is hiding out of this country. So that, it does not make sense that the United States send their troops there. Uganda’s Government is against this campaign, as the prime minister of Uganda declares in this video:

And one of the most important facts: nobody really knows if Joseph Kony continues alive so, how can a NGO start a campaign to punish a man who maybe is death? There are a lot of gaps in this question which only can be solved by the own organization.

This situation has driven Jason Russell crazy. Thursday morning, the co-founder of Invisible Children has been arrested in San Diego for getting drunk, vandalizing cars and masturbating in public. His family has justified these acts with the pressure that he is suffering because of the critics that the campaign is receiving.

KONY 2012 has opened a discussion between good intentions and scam campaigns with war purposes. After knowing all of this information, we should ask ourselves the following question: What are the real objectives of KONY 2012?