Google and Facebook are fighting for our lives. Barack Obama with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's HQ (Photo: Bloomberg) At first glance, Facebook’s attempt to plant smear stories about Google appears to have little to do with anyone who doesn’t spend their lives on Facebook or Google.
In reality, this Silicon Valley PR war in Palo Alto, California, is about the future of the internet – and the future of a whole lot else. Will A Brands Next Big Move Be A Journalism Department? Who should own Social Media in the organization?
The challenge in answering that question comes from a lack of clear definition. It depends on how you (and your organization) defines Social Media. Citizen journalism. The concept of citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic",[1] "guerrilla"[2] or "street" journalism[3]) is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.
"[4] Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism.