hankyoreh

Executive Director

By Kwon O-sung

Chatting with the Hankyoreh on Oct. 15 over an online video feed, Ushahidi (ushahidi.com) Executive Director Juliana Rotich gave off a familiar feeling that almost made it seem like she was right there in Seoul rather than 10,000 kilometers away in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Describing a May visit to Korea, she said, “I noticed that when you shake hands, you put both hands as a sign of respect. We do that here, too, in Kenya, particularly when speaking with elders. I’m really happy to connect, and happy that technology can help us discover the commonalities that we have as people.” This, she said, is the foundation of citizen journalism.

With a name meaning “testimony” in Swahili, Ushahidi is a program through which information received from the public through Twitter and text messages is organized into categories and placed on an online a map for viewing. Anyone with a basic knowledge of web programming can download the program from the web site and create a platform for displaying the information on a public Google map. In addition to the information that comes from online sources like Twitter, it is also capable of processing mobile phone text messages.

When Hurricane Irene struck the US in August of this year, a resident of the afflicted area used Ushahidi to create a map providing information about the extent of the devastation, asking that the information be sent to a local NGO and Twitter friends. The online map was used for avoiding dangerous areas and requesting support in reconstruction efforts. The program has also served as a channel for citizens to share information during major events such as the Liberian presidential election in early November, the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, and large-scale wildfires in Russia. Today, Ushahidi is used in over 100 countries.

The site first emerged in Kenya in early 2008. When election results led to bloody fighting between supporters of the different presidential candidates, attorney and prominent blogger Ory Okolloh proposed sharing information among citizens, and Ushahidi was born. Around ten developers from countries like Canada and Ghana took part, IT expert Rotich among them. Ideas were exchanged primarily through video chatting.

Citizen journalism, in which people take an active role in reporting, has gained momentum thanks to advancements in information technology. Detailing changes in the news environment, a 2010 OECD report on the Internet revolution and the evolution of news media said the rise in news reporting through citizen journalism was more than enough to offset the decline of the traditional news media. WikiTree, a citizen-participatory website launched in South Korea this past February, ranked first among all media outlets for average daily article exposure on Twitter, according to a Sept. 5 study by the Internet site Bloter.net. Single-person media have also demonstrated the burgeoning capabilities of lone citizens. Korea’s top-ranked video blogger, Media Mongu, has drawn more than 24.6 million visitors to date.

The rise of citizen journalism can be traced to frustrations with the media establishment. Rotich said Ushahidi began out of the situation observed during the post-election violence in Kenya. “On TV, they had, I think, some movie on, yet when I was outside I would see houses burning,” she explained. Many participants in a discussion on the Arab Spring at an Online News Association conference in Boston on Oct. 23 cited the blogger network Global Voices as providing a glimpse at the unvarnished reality that was not being reported by major media outlets. Established in the U.S. in 2005, that network now has 500 bloggers providing news for their respective regions in 30 different languages.

The media establishment has also picked up on the power of citizen media and is making active efforts to take advantage. When around 24,000 work-related emails sent and received by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin were released in June, the New York Times and other US news outlets created a database for the content and enlisted citizens to provide information about problematic content. In February 2010, the Washington Post used Ushahidi to report on blizzard damages in the US capital.

Citizen journalism is moving in concert with new citizen actions that have drawn on the power of social media, including the Arab Spring. The Editors Weblog, a site where newspaper and publishing editors from around the world exchange information, noted recently that the user generated content site Citizenside had been making up for the mainstream media’s failure to provide adequate coverage on the Occupy Wall Street protests. That site, which started out as an online community where users shared photographs and videos, now has some 50 thousand amateur citizen photographers in over 100 countries posting images. The combined rise in citizen campaigning and media activity was likewise seen with the Hope Bus campaign, a series of bus caravans organized by South Korean citizens as a show of support for Kim Jin-suk, who was occupying a crane at a Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction shipyard to protest layoffs.

The key element of citizen journalism cited by activists is the sharing of a sense of fellowship among citizens. Nasser Weddady of the Islamic human rights group American Islamic Congress said, “Let’s not kid ourselves [about] all the romanticizing of Facebook and Twitter” as causes of the revolutions in the Islamic world, explaining that those media were able to play the role they did because there was already a broad-based consensus that the dictatorships should end.

Rotich said the emergence of Ushahidi and the Arab Revolution show that change comes when people see that others are thinking the same things. Information technology, she said, lowers the barriers to exchanging opinions, allowing people to gather ideas more actively.

Konkuk University in Korea mass communications professor Hwang Yong-suk said, “Citizen journalism is clearly playing a bigger role in the exchange and spread of information, which is an essential element of democracy. But it is also becoming more and more important that we be able to handle that information correctly so that there is an appropriate sense of responsibility.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]