Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalism is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." For democracy in a complex society to work well, journalism is necessary. Citizens need information about the political, economic, and cultural systems that structure their lives in order to act on them effectively. However, traditional news institutions have had major failures in their ability to adequately cover new. The Program has the following objectives;
- Building the capacity of civil society organizations to use online and offline citizen journalism as a means of publication, lobby, networking and knowledge sharing with their constituencies.
- To increase outreach in local media of balanced, objective and informative reporting on the situation of targeted marginalized groups including women and youth, which contributes to an increased involvement and participation of these groups in democratic processes on the national level.
- To mobilize Ugandan citizen journalists, improve their skills and provide them training and basic equipment.
Where do you go to find breaking news? Chances are, your answer includes some sort of social media app, using some sort of mobile device. Social media has become the new town hall, where residents can interact with public officials, store owners, entertainers and one another from the comfort of their mobile devices, tablets and laptops.
Through CCIME, we intend to train more than 4,000 residents in multimedia community journalism and storytelling, from college and high school students to retirees and at-risk populations, such as the homeless and those struggling with mental illness and substance abuse. Our grassroots program helps inform our community from a ground-level perspective and continues to remove the technological barriers to quality storytelling in the digital age.
We intend to promote digital efforts through mobile journalism. CCIME will enable these same residents to create real-time coverage using social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We will employ a “train the trainer” blueprint, which will equip residents who train with us to, in turn, train their neighbors, family and friends, with the eventual goal of a neighborhood news and information network that feeds itself without our intervention.
Our focus on mobile media will enable us to rally residents to give a real-time glimpse of live events as they’re happening, using the free resources available on their handheld devices. With this training, we can help residents transcend their use of everyday devices to lift their community’s information needs, whether it’s organizing and covering town hall meetings, or informing one another of traffic jams, Local Government news or an interview with an up-and-coming local artist. We want to eventually remove the barrier of a media filter altogether, so neighborhoods can evolve from the typical Facebook posts about food or cats to content that’s crucial to defining a sense of place.
CCIME intends to start offering citizen journalism classes and therefore need to have a computer lab and camera equipment. We plan to start operating a storytelling portal at CCIME website. We need to have a production studio, which will serve as a mobile studio as well, enabling the CCIME to live stream interviews and events throughout the community.