Today, the pattern of all sorts of news and information consumption has significantly changed. Terry Flew, states that “new ways of consuming media, explicitly contest the social legitimacy of media power” (Flew, 143), which I believe is true.
Citizen journalism provides user-generated content of news and information or simply anything that might be interested and worth knowing by public. Of course, the choice of ‘gatewatching’ is still in the public’s hands, choosing from this vast variety of sources; as Axel Bruns believes as the process of highlight news, of publicizing rather than publishing information (Bruns, 74). These citizen journalists guide public to a whole new level of information and knowledge retrieving and has transformed news and information distribution from a hierarchical, top-down model with high barriers to entry to a more decentralised and networked model (Flew, 146).
The Skeptical Hypochondriac site provides personal health stories with topics ranging from nutrition and health care to psychology and social trends as well as current health news. Dave Pell, a blogger or citizen journalist, created this health blog seeing as there are no go-to blog on the subject of personal health. Dave incorporates traditional news with the use of wittiness and humor as well as providing readers interesting facts and news on different health topics, such as Best and Worst Fast Food and Supermarket Items or Virus Hunting and Epidemic Spreading. Dave greatly demonstrates the role as a citizen journalist, collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information. He captivates audience with non-bias, quality information from a different point of view when being a ‘produser’ allows him the freedom of opinion and expression. As mentioned before, with the variety of choices there are for public to ‘gatewatch’ today, Dave Pell’s personal health site definitely captures his readers’ attention by showing his reliability and consistency of posts and his style of writing.
Axel Bruns also discusses the produsage principle of Common Property, Individual Rewards, which refers to the sharing of information can benefit both public (community) who receives information and the individual (blogger) who contributes (2007). This communal resource allows Dave Pell to build his status, credibility and reputation while sustaining the produsage of news and information for his readers; and with a space to make comments is yet to come, readers will find themselves becoming involved in contributing by sharing and critiquing the information.
Mainstream news media are now facing the threat of online citizen journalism, knowing that these citizen journalists strives to meet the needs of audience today by providing specific news in a open, free and different perspective. They sure will share and tell all news that is available in the world, rather than what the mainstream journalists want us to see today.
Note: Only one citizen journalist blog site was reviewed in this post, the following sites demonstrates different ways to deliver health news and information.
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond From Production to Produsage. The key characteristics of produsage, P. Lang, 9-15. New York (accessed 30 April 2009).
Flew, T. 2008. New Media: An Introduction. Citizen Journalism. Oxford University Press, 143-167 Hong Kong (accessed 1 May 2009).
Pell, D. 2009. The Skeptical Hypochondriac. http://skepticalhypochondriac.com (accessed 2 May 2009).
crystal leung 
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