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Citizen journalism, participatory journalism or user-generated content it is defined as “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information” (Bowman and Willis 2003:9). So, Twitter could be a tool for citizen journalism?, why?

First step is to define stages in the news production process (Domingo, et al. 2008):

1. Access/Observation: The initial information-gathering stage at which source material for a story is generated, such as eyewitness accounts and audio-visual contributions.
2. Selection/Filtering: The “gatekeeping” stage when decisions are made about what should be reported or published.
3. Processing/Editing: The stage at which a story is created, including the writing and editing of an item for publication.
4. Distribution: The stage at which a story is disseminated or made available for reading and, potentially, discussion.
5. Interpretation: The stage at which a story that has been produced and published is opened up to comment and discussion.

Domingo’s proposal talked about “citizen media”, “citizens blogs”, “citizen stories”, “content hierarchy”, “social networking”, “collective interviews”, “comments”, “forums”, “journalists blogs” and “pools” locating Twitter in the phase of information distribution, but the following article attempts to demonstrate content located on Twitter can be considered widely, reaching more phases in the process defined by Domingo.

Table in Hermida et al. (2011:9)

The concept of user-generated content, or citizen journalism, is contextualized within the content is or will be eventually published in a professional media, whether written (newspaper), spoken (radio) or watched (television), and independently whether it is a traditional or online edition.

Access/Observation Stage

In the access/observation stage which generates the source material of stories an essential tool is Twitter, since it is an ideal place to get all the data needed to generate the story, but where the stories start?, On the streets?, and where people comments what happening on the streets?, mybe in the corner’s pub, but also in Twitter and for journalists and media sure it is easier to read on Twitter.

Historically witnesses reported what they had seen to the newspapers, or media in general, but at least in Spain we have a date when this change, at least for the younger segment of our society,October 30th, 2008, witnesses of the attack by the terrorist group ETA to the Universidad de Navarra began to use social networks to explain what they were going rather than calling or writting to traditional media (Noguera, 2010).

Examples like #iranelection or #15M may further illustrate this trend, where much of the information needed to generate stories in the papers arising directly from Twitter.

The witness can use Twitter to provide information about relevant facts, generating data to be used later by the media, and these data are generated by citizens. Journalists should not go beyond the computer screen.

Selection/Filtering Stage

This stage it’s where the concept of “gatekeeping” enters, which is not only filtering interesting news, but take into account ethical and legal constraints of the information, as well and perhaps the most important, quality, something that Singer (2011) was not overlooked.

Being a gatekeeper, then, is not just about the quantity of what makes news on any given day – hoy many items fits into the pages available in the newspaper or the minutes in the news broadcast – but about its quiality. Journalists feel responsible not simply for how much information they provide to the public but for how good, especially how truthful, that information is. (Singer, J.B.: 2011)

Selection and filtering tools, even if we are brave we can call them automatic gatekeeping tools, like paper.li (http://paper.li/) or The Tweeted Times (http://tweetedtimes.com/); systems able to gathering news from Twitter and selecting those who can be more interesting for each user of the services, ie, these tools automatize the gatekeeping function gathering information from Twitter.

These tools provide a system of selection and filtering, but also quality, using the crowd (other Twitter users) for measuring quality, a concept known as crowsourcing and first used in June 2006 in Wired Magazine (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html), according to that concept and applied to this case, the measurement of quality is a task that would normally be performed by a particular agent, but would performed by a crowd of people taking advantage of collective wisdom or collective intelligence (Howe, 2008).

However, it is necessary to consider quality can be automated using the crowd as a selection tool, but these crowd can not handle legal and ethical constraints, as well as verification of facts. These points Singer (2011) defined as follows:

The other has to do with how well it meets legal and ethical standards. Is it verifiably true, and are we willing to stand behind it once it’s “out there?” Is it one-sided or does it fairly represent diverse views – without unfairly pushing our own? Will it harm innocent people? Is it defamatory or a form of hate speech, or a violation of copyright? (Singer, J.B., 2011)

So user-generated content on Twitter could meet the conditions of “gatekeeping” selection and filtering, but not always take note about ethical and legal constraints, as well as the truth verfication, assuming the content must be treated professionally.

Processing/Editing Stage

This stage includes the writing and editing of history, and according to Domingo et al. (2008) is in this phase we can find citizen blogs or citizen stories, but Twitter and the limited extension and the adaptation of the writing way could not be placed here, unless as indicated by Noguera (2010):

[...] This possibility should be accompanied by the obligation of journalists to learn to optimize the language in Twitter.Micro-blogging is an narrative opportunity, because writing in 140 characters ”can not inflate the false statements to show scholarship of adjectives and adverbs superfluous” (Gallo, 2009). - (Noguera, 2010).

If the story could certainly be generated in 140 characters, obviously it could be generated in this way, but that limitation would leave the news as mere headlines with lack of information.

In citizen journalism apply to this point, it is important to distinguish between messages sent to Twitter as observational data (first phase) and messages with processed information. With that distinction clear, it would be perfectly possible to include user-generated content on Twitter at this stage, although a priori it may sound difficult to be due the simplest of the constraints, the length of the text.

Distribution Stage

This is undoubtedly one of the first characteristics that generated interest by the mass media, viralilty, but there are problems such as maintenance of authorship that are disturbing to the journalistic world of the media.

Dissemination of information on Twitter is generally done by the so-called retweets a powerful ability of Twitter .Retweet is equivalent to an e-mail forwarding, where users submit content created by others (Boyd et al., 2010), although as defined by the platform Twitter “is a new feature that helps people to share information quickly to your fans”. Retweets  still using older forms, but since November 2009 Twitter introduces the new format preventing loss of authorship, but old forms show the following problems:

A: Today is a good day, joy -> original Tweet
B: RT @ A Today is a good day, joy -> easy retweet with authorship
C: RT @ B Today is a good day, joy (via @ A) -> authoring confusing initial
D: RT RT @ B @ A Today is a good day, joy -> initial full authoring
E: RT @ C Today is a good day, joy -> authoring eliminated early
F: RT @ A also makes a good day today, what a joy -> retweet with comment
G: RT @ A day ago 1, k joy -> retweet modified the original text. - (Collado, E., 2011)

Here the concept of citizen journalism plays an important role because it is fundamental for the dissemination of information.

Interpertation Stage

Citizen journalism and Twitter creates a very interesting ecosystem at this stage, the discussion can be generated out of the media, at Twitter or any other social network. Journalists in this stage are forced to look outside of the conversation, losing control over comments and any external content.

References

1. Bowman, Shayne and Chris Willis (2003) We media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information, The Media Center.
2. Boyd, D.; Golder, S.; Lotan, G. (2010): “Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter”, at 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
3. Collado, E. (2011). El microblogging en el periodismo español: Relaciones de los directores de medios en Twitter. EEUU: Lulu Press.
4. Domingo D., Quandt T.,Heinonen A., Paulussen A., Singer J.B  and Vujnovic M. (2008) Participatory journalism practices in the media and beyond: An international comparative study of initiatives in online newspapers. Journalism Practice 2 (3), 326-342.
5. Hermida, A., Domingo, D., Heinonen, A., Paulussen, Singer, J. B.,  S., Quandt, T., et al. (2011). The Active Recipient: Participatory Journalism Through the Lens of the Dewey-Lippmann Debate. International Symposium on Online Journalism 2011. Austin: University of Texas. (http://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2011/papers/Hermida2011.pdf)
6. Howe, J. (2008). “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business“, at Crown Publishing Group (ed.), ISBN: 978-0-307-39621-1, 2008.
7. Noguera, J.M. (2010): “Redes sociales como paradigma periodístico. Medios españoles en Facebook”, at Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, num. 64, pp. 176-186. (http://www.revistalatinacs.org/10/art/891_UCAM/13_JM_Noguera.html)
8. Singer, J. B (2011). Taking Responsibility: Legal and ethical issues in participatory journalism. En J. B. Singer, D. Doming, A. Heinonen, A. Hermida, S. Paulussen, T. Quandt, et al., Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers (pags. 121-138). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.