Response to week 2 readings

In response to the week 2 readings, 'What is Podcasting?'. I found podcasting is actually a progression of internet usage. Other than the visually-ables can read the content and being entertained by browsing the internet. The appear of podcasting have created chances for visually disables also enjoying the content from the internet by listening. For example, some newspaper websites allow readers to download the podcast news clips so that they could listen to that any time and anywhere.



The use of podcasting is very user-friendly because of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) system. The system allows newly finished podcasts to be syndicated instantly to the world and will be available to anyone to download it. The RSS makes me feel podcasting have made effort on promoting the share of knowledge without boundaries because it is simple.



I also want to make response to the blog of Antony Loewenstein 'Bloggers of the world, unite'. I found blogosphere can help people around the world communicating based on its accessibility. Through blogs, people can get a more comprehensive source of information, though not all the content are credible. But then, it enables readers using their critical thinking to judge the credibility of the information. In addition, this blog takes Iran as an example, showing Iranian people trying to use blogs to express their live using their own view. Because of that, readers around the world can understand their lives using a 2-dimensional way instead of just receiving the 1-dimensional description from western media.

My Understanding of citizen journalism

From my knowledge, citizen journalism largely contains news and commentary from the public. The public can contribute information by different platforms such as blogs. Citizen Journalism is also known as 'personal publishing'. The accuracy of the information could be improved as many volunteers participate in reporting the issues rather than just reporting from one source. The public takes an active role in reporting and analysing news and information. Therefore, citizen journalism is a form of media generated by users. The writers are not professional journalists.

Informal way of writing may be used and photos may be taken by personal mobile cameras because there is no standard way of presenting. Through citizen journalism, there is a much wider range of topics that are generated by the public, some of them are current issues while the others are not. Although citizen journalists are sensitive about the issues in the communities and they use different source to report them, there are criticism over the professions of reporting. The traditional media institutions have criticized about the content and quality lacking problem in citizen journalism.