I think that the Arab Spring was a revolution not only in terms of politics but also in the way traditional news agencies began to source news coverage. For the first time on a mass scale, news agencies were drawing on the collective intelligence of the public to gather news sources.
For example CNN during the Arab Spring used crowd sourced information to complement their news coverage through iReport . This CNN website encourages members of the public to create an account and publish their stories, images or videos. CNN in their Egypt and Libyan uprisings official news coverage used 450 images and videos out of the 63,00 that citizen journalists shared on iReport. (Batty,2013) News agencies such as CNN saw the benefit of using citizen journalist data. After all, protesters are people in the thick of the action, whilst journalists are just observers. Therefore are able to offer different angles to the story. (Batty, 2013)
iReport has evolved into a news blog section within the CNN website. Anyone can comment, and share articles through social media plug ins on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. ( iReport, 2014)
CNN’s iReport is an example of an organizational shift from producers to a community of prousers that can interact with the news site. (Burns,2007) Being able to share information and express an opinion online has become essential in the world of participatory culture.
It’s not only news agencies that are encouraging citizens to use their websites as publishing platforms. As with CNN, LinkedIn has realized the benefits of opening up their publishing platform to all users. LinkedIn’s director of product management, Ryan Roslansky makes the point that “Every professional has valuable experience to share.” (Anders, 2014) Opening the LinkedIn publishing platform to people other than “Influencers” means that anyone can have a chance to share ideas on the prominent networking site. Further, LinkedIn is trying to promote more interaction with the site. It has recently added in features that enable “liking”, sharing and commenting. (LinkedIn , 2013)
LinkedIn is enabling it’s members to make contributions to a pool of knowledge stored on their publishing platform.
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