Wikis+and+Journalism



Wikis create a new form of journalism called "wiki journalism," which is basically collaborative journalism. The advancement of the internet age has forced us to recognize new technologies and has allowed us to collaborate with each other. According to the article, //"We Media, How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information" // authors Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis define participatory journalism as "The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

According to Wikipedia, the largest example of Wiki Journalism is Wikinews. "Wikinews was launched in 2004 as an attempt to build an entire news operation on wiki technology. Where Wikinews – and indeed Wikipedia - has been most successful, however, is in covering large news events involving large numbers of people, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech Shootings, where first hand experience, or the availability of first hand accounts, forms a larger part of the entry, and where the wealth of reportage makes a central ‘clearing house’ valuable."

The advantages of this new collaborative journalism is that it allows different perspectives to be seen and also covers various news stories that may not be as important to some. Wikis allow readers to do something they've never been able to do before: edit, add knowledge, report, and so much more.

While wiki journalism receives criticisms for the possibility of disinformation or inappropriate photos being published, wiki journalism is not going anywhere anytime soon. Wikipedia is under constant attack for not being a credible source. However, for example, in the article //"Wikipedia in the Newsroom"// author Donna Shaw states about criticisms, "[Indeed], the primary knock against Wikipedia is that its authors and editors are also its users — an unpaid, partially anonymous army, some of whom insert jokes, exaggeration and even outright lies in their material. About one-fifth of the editing is done by anonymous users, but a tight-knit community of 600 to 1,000 volunteers does the bulk of the work, according to Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales. Members of this group can delete material or, in extreme cases, even lock particularly outrageous entries while they are massaged."

However, despite the criticisms and possibility of misinformation, Wikipedia and other form of Wikis - Wiki News, Wiki Journalism, be considered reliable sources of information. Shaw goes on to state, "In December 2005, the science journal Nature published a survey of several experts about the content of comparable Wikipedia and online Encyclopedia Britannica entries. In a conclusion hotly disputed by Britannica, Nature said that Wikipedia "comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries," in that the average Wikipedia article contained four errors to Britannica's three. Britannica's 20-page response said that "almost everything about the journal's investigation...was wrong and misleading...the study was so poorly carried out and its findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit." The company further asserted that Nature had misrepresented its own data — its numbers, after all, showed that Wikipedia had a third more inaccuracies than Britannica — and asked for "a full and public retraction of the article." Nature stood by its story."

References:

Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. "We Media, How audiences are shaping the future of news and information." July 2003. 8 Nov. 11 

Shaw, Donna. "Wikipedia in the Newsroom." __American Journalism Review.__ February/March 2008. 8 Nov. 2011 .