Citizen Journalism as Conceptual Practice

Postcolonial Archives and Embodied Political Acts of New Media

Bolette B. Blaagaard

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786601094
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Citizen Journalism as Conceptual Practice provides a conceptualization of citizen journalism as a political practice developed through analyses of an historical and postcolonial case. Arguing that citizen journalism is first and foremost situated, embodied and political rather than networked and technology-based, the book offers a grounded analysis of the colonial newspaper, The Herald, published in St. Croix (Virgin Islands) 1915-25 by a descendant of enslaved people and independently of the colonial ruler, Denmark. The analysis is informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to knowledge production and formulates a critical reading of citizens’ and subjects’ mediated political engagements then as well as now. The book discusses current approaches to citizen journalism before turning to The Herald, which is then read against the grain in an attempt to show the embodied politics of colonial history and cultural forms of citizen engagement as these politics evolve in this particular case of journalism

1

Shifting Perspectives

Understanding Citizen Journalism through a ‘Politics of Location’

Theory – the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees – theory can be a dew that rises from the earth and collects in the rain cloud and returns to earth over and over. But if it doesn’t smell of the earth, it isn’t good for the earth.

—Adrienne Rich, ‘Notes towards a Politics of Location’, 213–14

In 1984, Adrienne Rich wrote ‘Notes towards a Politics of Location’, in which she argues for a grounded approach to theoretical work. Behind its lyrical wording, the above quote suggests an understanding of knowledge production that takes both its starting point and raison d’être in a grounded cartographic reading of particular circumstances. These particular circumstances give life to concepts, which in turn allow for a new understanding of the practice that served as the initial starting point. Similarly, in his work on cinema, Deleuze argues, ‘A theory about cinema is not “about” cinema but about the concepts that cinema generates’ (Deleuze 1989, 280). Inspired by Rich and Deleuze, I argue in this book that citizen journalism is not about citizen journalism but about citizens and journalism as well as about how these concepts and practices formulate and generate political practices of subjectivity formation. Deleuze sees cinema as a practice of knowledge production on par with philosophical knowledge production, though generated through different events and understandings. I do not argue that citizen journalism is a philosophy but rather that looking at citizen journalism as a particular practice of knowledge production with a historical presence allows us to understand more about its role in society and about subjects’ political practices and agency. In arguing this, I furthermore draw upon philosophy of subjectivity, postcolonial theory, theories of citizenship and theories of political acts in order to take a new perspective on citizen journalism. This enables me to move beyond binary positions often evoked in empirical discussions about citizen journalism, such as the amateur producer of news versus the professional journalist, the importance of technological developments versus cultural determinism and the particular versus universal expressions. In other words, I wish to move to a position situated outside the dichotomies established by previous studies and long-held beliefs regarding an opposition between the practices of citizen journalism and professional journalism, which remain determining factors and points of reference. I wish to question the role and meaning of the ‘citizen’ and the mnemonic processes, positions and substance of ‘journalism’ when discussing citizen journalism.

In order to shift perspective on citizen journalism from a focus on journalistic practice to a focus on processes of subjectivity, I consider the case of a colonial newspaper which was published in St. Croix between 1915 and 1925 by a descendant of enslaved people in this colony within the Danish West Indies. I read this newspaper, The Herald, to develop my perspective for three reasons: First, as a case of colonial citizens’ communication through a journalistic medium, it challenges the perceived boundaries of the nation-state on which professional journalism and the idea of the citizen are predicated. This is further amplified by the precarity experienced by the populations of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas, when these islands were sold to the United States in 1917. Despite expectations to the contrary, the sale did not immediately result in US citizenship for the islands’ inhabitants but instead initiated a new struggle for civil rights, one that continues in the US Virgin Islands to this day. Second, the historical location of the case releases us from the digital saturation of debates on citizen journalism long enough to refocus on the material, actual public and its embodied and situated space. Debates about digital expressions and participation have suggested a particular kind of democratisation through digital media through an expansion of the public sphere. The space of the postcolonial, however, demonstrates the limits of the public sphere as a concept and highlights the need for an analysis of power. Finally, the particular circumstances surrounding The Herald are important. The Herald invites a close reading of its ten years of publication and archived storage, which represents a counter-reading of both journalism history and Danish (colonial) history. The founder and editor of the paper, David Hamilton Jackson, was a descendant of enslaved people, who agitated for the rights of the islands’ labourers to better wages and shorter working weeks. I argue that the racialized political conditions on the islands (as well as in interaction with Denmark and the United States’ mainland) allow us to revisit our reading of the journalistic practice of Jackson and his peers in a manner that underscores their call for equal rights and social awareness as crucial to the practice of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism can be regarded as a conceptual practice not just because of its mechanics but also because of its grounding and meaning-making ability. By deconstructing the relationships between citizen journalism, the journalistically understood and amplified public sphere, and the nationally and politico-legally bound idea of the citizen, I highlight the importance of The Herald and Jackson’s journalistic political and embodied practice. The Herald of St. Croix, 1915–1925, thus allows me to answer – in my view – far more interesting questions than ‘What is citizen journalism?’: ‘How may we understand the concept of the citizen in citizen journalism?’ ‘From which kinds of politics and social community may this citizen’s journalism arise?’ ‘What kinds of politics can it create?’

The relationship between the colonial groundings of citizen journalism and the theoretical implications of a politics of location generates questions of subjectivity formation and political agency. This book thus has three interlinked theoretical aims: (1) It aims to bring about a new reading of citizen journalism that focusses on the practice of producing political citizenship and subjectivity formations. I therefore understand practice as actively producing material subjectivities. (2) It aims to analytically argue that our understanding of citizen journalistic subjectivity formation is enhanced through (post)colonial perspectives and positions but that these perspectives and positions are hard-earned modalities of constant learning. (3) Finally, this book aims to shed new light on the relationship between journalism – understood in broad terms rather than in terms of a profession – and subjectivity, with special emphasis on ethical and political accountability. In short, this book argues that citizen journalism, if understood as a political process of subjectivity, has the capacity for social change that encompasses another (concept of the) public and citizenship based on new ethico-political relations and new grounded experiences.

Whereas chapter 2 will delve deeper into issues of citizenship and public participation, this first chapter further develops my approach to citizen journalism and focusses on the relationship between theories inspired by Deleuze and the colonial groundings of citizen journalism. After a short introduction to scholarship in the field under the heading ‘What Is Citizen Journalism?’, I shift towards an understanding of citizen journalism as necessarily historically and geographically situated, embodied in countercultural positions and political beyond the participatory. The chapter continues by returning to the Deleuzian inspiration in the section ‘Deleuze on Conceptual Personae and Practice: A Politics of Location’, in which I discuss my use of concept and conceptual practice, including theorisation of the Deleuzian and Guattarian conceptual personae and practice. This approach is then reworked through engagement with Rosi Braidotti’s analytical idea and approach to politics of location, which is, moreover, inspired by the work of Rich. These two methodological groundings – of the conceptual practice and of politics of location – mark a shift in philosophical thinking that emphasises multiplicity and multilayered analyses in contrast to approaches structured around binary, teleological and typological categorisations. The chapter proceeds by juxtaposing the perspectives of conceptual practice and politics of location with work by postcolonial scholars on the political and representational asymmetry of the voices and bodies of (post)colonial peoples and sites. In the section ‘Spivak and Onwards: Postcolonial Reflections’, I address the interactions between Deleuze and postcolonial theory, and in the section ‘Braidotti on the Deterritorialization of Identity’, I extend my proposed application of the intersections between Deleuzian and postcolonial theories on citizen journalism. Postcolonial theories and readings have received little attention in Deleuzian thought, despite the two traditions’ shared critique of universalism and Eurocentrism, their similar methods, and their focus on defamiliarization and disrupting the given (Braidotti 2011). The chapter argues, however, for the importance of a postcolonial reading of citizen journalism from a longue durée perspective, combined with grounded reading against the grain, in order to conceptualise citizen journalism in a manner that permits a fuller understanding of this shifting and developing field. Gayatri Spivak (1988) denounced Foucault and Deleuze for failing to acknowledge the political and representational asymmetries in their work on otherness and subjectivity. In this chapter, I discuss Spivak’s quarrel with certain aspects of poststructuralist thinking and argue for a necessary and fruitful collaboration between these theoretical frameworks.

What Is Citizen Journalism?

In this book, I move from the current conceptualisation of citizen journalism as a practice that is opposed to professional journalism and driven by technological developments. These conceptualisations of citizen journalism are often developed through empirical investigations within media and journalism studies and focus on the implications of citizen journalism for professional journalism. The term ‘citizen journalism’ is presented as having its origins with the tsunami that washed over Southeast Asia in 2004 (Allan 2009, 2011), when bystanders shot and disseminated footage of the disaster that they recorded on their mobile devices. Citizen journalism is sometimes said to have entered the mental and global stage, if not the vocabulary, as early as the 1990s, when internet user participation started generating gossip and alternative news online (Rojas and Kim 2008, Friedland and Kim 2009). In the scholarship, citizen journalism covers such diverse practices as blogging; recording and disseminating mobile phone footage and images; and spreading and sharing debates through online platforms, networks or mainstream news sites. These diverse usages broaden the scope and frameworks of citizen journalism, yet the eclectic and changeable nature of the empirical data being examined blurs the term’s theoretical focus. By examining the conceptual practice or processes of understanding that are produced through citizen journalism, I argue for a shift in perspectives. I begin by briefly outlining dominant perspectives. I do not attempt exhaustive coverage of either journalism studies or citizen journalism (for an overview of the latter, see Wall 2015) but instead present a few points of reference that will guide this book’s argument. In the following, I identify two major axes around which many debates concerning different definitions of citizen journalism revolve: participation and technology.

Although the origins and usage of ‘citizen journalism’ remain unclear, the term is now a staple in companions to and encyclopaedias of journalism (Sterling 2009), social movements studies (Downing 2011), political science (Kaid and Holtz-Bacha 2008) and citizen media (Pérez-González, Blaagaard and Baker forthcoming 2019). The range of fields within which the term is present is indicative of its interdisciplinary use and political reach. In these companion and encyclopaedia entries, citizen journalism is often connected to the practices of civic journalism and participatory journalism (see also Singer et al. 2011), which focus on the civic involvement of professional journalism in communities and hark back to the classic texts on public engagement through the press by John Dewey and Walter Lippmann (see also Allan 2012). Dewey and Lippmann had opposing views on how journalism should engage with and inform the public, and it is often argued that Dewey’s emphasis on journalism taking its cue from the people and community has gained credibility in today’s online debates. Lippmann’s warning about the falling quality and lack of independence in journalistic work and the resultant lack of trust in media representations is, however, likewise pertinent and is frequently deployed in discussions concerning citizen journalism’s impact on professional journalism. This discourse grants an ambiguous role to citizen journalism as both a certifier of authentic truth dealt by the non-partisan bystander and citizen participant and as a threat to the journalistic ideal of objectivity and independence. The focus on the participating bystander or citizen is further elaborated upon when citizen journalism is theorised as ‘witnessing’ (Allan 2013, Frosh and Pinchevski 2011). Allan uses the term ‘citizen witnessing’ to offer an alternative perspective to professional journalism’s public service and understands technological developments as enabling new journalistic democratic cultures (Allan 2013, 20–21). In contrast, Frosh and Pinchevski regard media witnessing as a perpetual self-affirmation in which the audience is both addressee and producer, continually reflecting itself and witnessing its own shared world (2011, 11–12). The concept of the witness moreover introduces the physicality and affectivity of the body. The witness is presented as the ultimate citizen journalist: the alternative, embodied eyes on a newsworthy situation. The witness gives a partial look – if not a partisan look – at the news and political events on a global scale, but this is precisely what is attractive about these citizens’ reports: their ‘authenticity’ as opposed to the ‘objectivity’ of journalistic reports (Blaagaard 2013, Wahl-Jørgensen 2012). The concepts of the witness and testimony provide fertile ground for thinking about the value and documentation of ‘the truth’ in journalists’ and citizens’ engagements alike. The relationship between the witness’s memory and the recorded and documented (historical) truth is framed not only by the archive but also, as I argue in chapter 3, by the newspaper. Moreover, both collective memory and national forgetfulness are pivotal to understanding citizenship and rights claims. Leaving aside for the present the intricate interweaving of memory, journalistic witnessing and citizenship, suffice it say that citizen journalism may be understood as a practice that stands in relation to professional journalism, either as a critique of professional journalism’s inability to capture the hearts and minds of everyday people or as a means of entering into the public arena and engaging with the public discussion that is framed and interpreted by the professional journalistic institutions. As such, citizen journalism simultaneously serves as an alternative to and as a developing position within the public arena governed by journalistic institutions and news media logic. Citizen journalism is thus presented as a natural movement towards universal participation, supported by a free press. It is the next and inevitable step in social and democratic development, yet it is also ambiguous and problematic, as evidenced by studies of state and corporate surveillance and control (Tufekci 2014, Dencik, Hintz and Cable 2016). The understanding of citizen journalism as a development of participation in the public sphere may simultaneously support a narrative in which the affectivity and authenticity of citizen journalism prove vexing.¹

Citizen journalism’s participatory position within a public sphere, as advanced by some journalism and social media scholarship, is made possible through technology. Another axis of debate that emerges out of readings concerning the term ‘citizen journalism’ thus involves the influence of digitalisation and technology. Citizen journalism’s connection to technology is not limited to the rise of the internet but can be traced back to earlier technological developments. Gillmor (2004) suggests that the liberation from the postal service stamp tax in the nineteenth-century United States and the subsequent proliferation of the journalistic market may represent a forerunner of citizen journalism. Not only did cheaper paper production, availability of the printing press and lower taxes enable a surge in publication of pamphlets and journals, but telegraph technology helped spread local and specific news between distant regions, thereby virtually bringing together the individual states and supporting an imagined community (Schudson 2003, Carey 1992, Gonzales and Torres 2011, Anderson 1991) of a unified (and) United States. Telegraphed reports were paid for by the word, resulting in reports that were short and to the point. This, Carey (1992) believes, further limited bias in the language of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century journalistic reports. Technology may thus historically be seen as supporting objectivity by helping to regulate human biases expressed through florid adjectives and long opinion pieces, leading to a foregrounding of rational argumentation.

This idea, however, that journalistic objectivity was born partly in tandem with the technology of the wire and the necessity of political communication through technology has now been thoroughly discussed (see Schudson and Anderson 2009, Wahl-Jørgensen 2012) and disputed, if not completely rejected. While the notion that technology and journalism (and concomitantly, citizen journalism) combine to enable and sustain political and social culture, in the past as well as today, remains prevalent in journalism studies and studies of social media, this view can only be upheld when global connectivity is understood solely in terms of democratic enhancement and with a firm belief in human rationality and ideal ability of argumentation. Bearing in mind the digital, economic, gendered, racialized and cultural divides traversing the internet (Curran, Fenton and Freedman 2012); the commercialisation of private lives (van Dijck 2013); and online hate speech and trolling, citizen journalism cannot be regarded as shattering the co-dependency of technology and objectivity. Citizen journalism can instead be seen as offering public debates not only rational but also affective and creative interjections that are enhanced and enabled by technology. Such considerations seem too overwhelming to neglect. I seek to take a citizens’ perspective (rather than a public sphere perspective) on the complex interactions and power struggles between citizens’ and corporations’ social and cultural positions as well as the political hegemony of journalistic ideals and values. Given that racial, economic and social divides persist, I wish to ask: ‘Who can be considered a citizen journalist? Who is listened to and therefore able to appear in public?’ This, I argue, is not just a matter of access and participation but is also inevitably connected to issues of power and the struggle to carve out a public on one’s own terms. These questions clearly mirror the question of who counts as ‘human’, a question that postcolonial studies as well as poststructuralism’s post-humanism and new humanism have sought to query. It is also a question with which media studies has engaged in its explorations of whose voices are considered worth listening to and whose experiences are deemed relatable (see for instance Silverstone 2007, Couldry 2010, Chouliaraki 2013a).

It is important to note that the axes of debates set forth above are primarily based on teleological understandings of citizen journalism and the citizen journalist. The Dewey-Lippmann debate and the technological leaps of the telegraph and printing press are both sustained by a linear argument in which citizen journalism developed as a part of the mediatisation process that influenced politics, geography, economy and culture. Indeed, the partly private–partly public online societal participation through the latest media technology available may be understood as a result of the mediatisation process of our daily lives. Citizen journalism is, then, just the most recent practice inferred by this process and one through which the conditions of our media lives and practices are continuously transforming (Couldry 2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Shifting Perspectives
• 2 Deconstructing the Citizen Journalist
• 3 Political Citizen Journalism
• 4 Embodied Citizen Journalism
• 5 Citizen Journalism and the Politics of Visibility
• 6 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author