{"id":258700,"date":"2014-12-11T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=258700"},"modified":"2024-01-25T18:05:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T23:05:27","slug":"citizen-journalism-and-vigilantism-are-two-sides-of-the-same-coin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2014\/12\/11\/citizen-journalism-and-vigilantism-are-two-sides-of-the-same-coin\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen journalism and vigilantism are two sides of the same coin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In a recent piece for BuzzFeed, writer Charlie Warzel looked at\u00a0what he calls the \u201cmutation\u201d of<\/a>\u00a0citizen journalism, and how this dream of a more democratic media has somehow turned into a vicious form of vigilantism \u2014 including incidents like the one in which a right-wing blogger\u00a0tried to identify the victim<\/a>\u00a0in a controversial campus rape incident. But I think in his haste to condemn that kind of activity, Warzel overstates the case against citizen journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have always been attack-dog style bloggers, especially on the right, and I don\u2019t think this kind of approach is any more virulent than it was five or 10 years ago, although it may get more attention thanks to Twitter. Also, it\u2019s not as though citizen journalism was somehow bastardized and became vigilantism \u2014 they are opposite edges of the same sword. We can\u2019t have one without enabling the other, and to the extent that we crack down on one we also cripple its alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are there examples of when bloggers and other amateur journalists lost their way or went too far in their pursuit of the capital T truth? Of course there are. One of the most infamous occurred after the bombings in Boston, when some members of a Reddit sub-forum tried to<\/a> identify the alleged bombers and targeted an innocent man. But this kind of over-stepping isn\u2019t confined to amateurs: journalists at Gawker have engaged in what some might call vigilantism by \u201cdoxxing\u201d or publicly identifying children who posted racist remarks<\/a> following Barack Obama\u2019s re-election, or outing anonymous Reddit moderators<\/a> for offensive behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both professional and amateur journalists were also involved in identifying a man who posted<\/a> fake Twitter alerts in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Were all of these incidents justified? That\u2019s up to readers to decide for themselves. I happen to think that some or all of them overstepped the bounds of what we consider appropriate investigative behavior \u2014 and the right-wing blogger in question has definitely done so \u2014 but it is a grey area at best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is there a way to legislate or prevent those kinds of incidents without preventing more beneficial reporting by citizen journalists and bloggers? I can\u2019t think of one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to focus on the negative aspects of social media\\, but it has also been an incredibly powerful tool for good: Just think of the information that has come out of Egypt or Syria or Ukraine that would never have made it into the public eye, or the work of bloggers like Eliot \u201cBrown Moses\u201d Higgins<\/a> and his fact-checking of government and anti-government propaganda. Think of what a formerly little-known blogger named Glenn Greenwald was able to accomplish, and how much that has expanded what we know about the security and intelligence establishment in the US and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do we distinguish between what bloggers like Greenwald or Higgins do, and what bloggers like Chuck Johnson do? I honestly don\u2019t know if there is a way. The same tools that enabled Andy Carvin during the Arab Spring<\/a> or Brown Moses in Syria or Greenwald\u2019s Snowden scoop can also be used for evil, but does that mean they aren\u2019t valuable, or need to be restricted? No. It just means that most swords come with two sides.<\/p>\n

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In a recent piece for BuzzFeed, writer Charlie Warzel looked at\u00a0what he calls the \u201cmutation\u201d of\u00a0citizen journalism, and how this dream of a more democratic media has somehow turned into a vicious form of vigilantism \u2014 including incidents like the one in which a right-wing blogger\u00a0tried to identify the victim\u00a0in a controversial campus rape incident. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Citizen journalism and vigilantism are two sides of the same coin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigaom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258700"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258720,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258700\/revisions\/258720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}