Citizen Journalism & The Rise of the Silent Majority

Citizen Journalism is in my opinion by far the biggest on line revolution that has taken place the last few years and is substantially influencing our off line citizenship and civic engagement. While the purists claimed the World Wide Web had lost its original intent to become what some of us call the Internet of Things I think it is important to remind us of Jay Rosen simple definition of Citizen Journalism: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another."

When regular guys like me or you have the opportunity to write, publish and engage with an unlimited audience with almost no editorial constraints I suppose it is the illustration of the democratization of power in action. 

Bebee.com, WordPress, LinkedIn, About Me and other platform like Lulu have made sure any of us can be a voice or simply express his/hers opinions to others, in fine we have become ``clicktivists`without sometimes knowing it.

There is a major shift in power indeed in how we share, consume or build terms of references,when Eric Liu talks about Power Literacy for example he says far too many Americans are illiterate in power — what it is, how it operates and why some people have it. As a result, those few who do understand power wield disproportionate influence over everyone else. “We need to make civics sexy as it was during the American Revolution or the Civil Rights Movement``

Today we can make it happen again, the beginning of this century is as exciting as was the start of the previous one, at that time a lot was invented such as television, radio or aviation. New charters were introduced and marked by these major shifts, the take-off of aviation at the beginning of the 20th century, brought adventure, reckless energy and delirious optimism to those who were tired, fed up or simply adventurous enough to embrace new paths of transportation.

This gave us previously unknown heroes such as Charles Lindbergh. Others too became pioneers and symbols of the democratization of transportation. There was a palpable and sheer sense of collective exploration where large crowds gathered to watch pilots with only a handful of flying hours teaching others how to be on the world center stage too.

Today is similar in the sense that like our recent ancestors we can actually choose too, we can allow, we can create and we can refuse. Experienced writers, newspapers and other media power houses have become lazy, churnalism, manipulation and lousy publications have become the norm probably due to commercial constraints for the most part, at the same time the same media power houses have become very wary of people like you and me committing articles or expressing thoughts, they know their Titanic platforms are sinking slowly with no sign of rescue therefore they fault our lack of creativity, they despise our grammar or mock our educational background but it does not matter we were not born to follow or pay for content.

What is happening is big in my book, Bebee.com move to offer a publishing platform to millions of users is a strong vote of confidence in its users and publishers, we have seen multiple examples of influential information hackers that have shown that democracy matters more than ever, the citizen journalists are global in shifting the power from localized items to cross boarder expressions of ideas, this is true for business, ideas sharing and civic engagement.

So Write! Write!! Write!!! Write about you like, about what you dislike about makes you want to be in the thick of the action, what makes you mad , don’t worry about those who may say your style or narrative is not good enough keep writing but be prepared to be challenged by the elite be prepared to thank those who will send you hatred mails because they don’t LIKE.

I personally thank the individual who sent me an unequivocal & very graphic opinion about my positions on Migration in Ireland, merci you made it worthwhile and reinforced my determination.

So don’t give up!! Keep writing whether one, two or ten thousand people read your blogs or articles on bebee,LinkedIn, WordPress or smaller platforms, it does not matter, from now on you are in charge

YOUR OPINION MATTERS

Modified version of an article previously posted on a different platform