EOTO: Citizen Journalism

 Citizen journalism is a fairly simple idea which describes something we already do and have done for thousands of years: rely on word-of-mouth information. Now, for most of human history, this has been a terrible idea, because as a facet of our physical existence we cannot find and consume enough information to have a decent idea of what is going on around us at any given time. The internet has changed that. Smartphones, ones which in the modern day are all equipped with high definition cameras, enable information to pour onto an open forum endlessly and easily. 

So much information being uploaded makes it again impossible to see everything out there because of our own limitations, but therein lies the solution. We, as people, know some information is inherently more useful or interesting. Social media algorithms, while nowadays more convoluted with user-specific targeting, operate at their core on the Marketplace of Ideas. In general, posts starting off are only shown to a few people, but if those people engage with the post enough it will be shown to more people, and so forth. The more valuable a post is, i.e. how interesting or useful people find it to be, the more engaged they would be. In principle, the system operates well to disseminate information, and we are just now entering a period in time in world history where it is becoming useful.

Many events in recent world history have benefitted from the knowledge of citizen journalism. 9/11, the Arab Spring, and the current Russia-Ukraine conflicts come into mind when discussing the topic. The accounts of people on the ground can be useful, informative, and heartbreaking. People recording themselves becoming victims of war crimes, troop movements of enemy forces, and vital wartime information for civilians are being disseminated to the peoples of countries at a pace never seen before.

For that, I believe social media to be of a general good to society, but to our use of it when we are divided I detest. Citizen journalism is a bright spot in humanity, a means for the truth to be sought out in a world of disinformation.