Web 2.0 und Bürgerjournalismus

Citizen journalism is, nowadays, a reality everywhere. Everyone wants to share their experiences regarding who or what they see, things that happen where they live. This storytelling trend started with Web 2.0, when Internet introduced open sources platforms and easier ways to share content, like the weblogs.


As Jose Murilo Junior says ”The Web 2.0 entrepreneurial attitude has a bigger chance of succeeding because of it’s close connection with collaboration and multi-platform content. Everybody is reading more, creating more, collaborating more. (…)Web 2.0 is THE tool for freelancers.”
Dan Gilmor, author of the book “We the Media” defends that citizens are getting into journalists` space in the media, by using Internet and mobile to tell what is going on and show exclusive photos.
Quoting the author: “With the new technology, like Internet and mobile phone, media got democratic. That doesn’t mean that people have more rights, but that everyone can participate in the communications process.”
It is a phenomenon that cannot be stopped. As a matter of fact, some of the most well know media, like the French newspaper “Le Monde”, are giving more and more space to citizen’s contents. In their website, the readers can create a weblog. The "most read" are announced at the main page and some of the authors are paid to keep them.
In fact, this phenomenon is so strong that, in some countries like Brazil, there is already a magazine whose contents are entirely produced by readers. Once a week, it is possible to buy "Sou+eu!", a magazine “with real stories told by the readers themselves”.
And they will not do it for free. Each writter is paid according to the size and type of text. Instead of producing contents, journalists will just have to check and edit the text produced, as it happens nowadays in Internet.
As Dan Gillmor was told in the 80s, "One of these days journalists are going to find out what people actually want to read. And that should scare the hell out of them".