Imagine Research and Development

.... not necessarily in that order :-)

I first became aware of citizen journalism whilst I was at the BBC in 2003 working for Sylvia Hines, Head of New Services. One area that was being researched was media literacy and how citizen journalism contributed to it or, vice versa.

According to Wikipedia, Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic"^[1] or "street journalism"^[2]) is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.^[3] Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

If we look at social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, delicious, etc we can all contribute and share what we see, know and do faster.

One company that was in its fledgling stages was Digital Journal which started to pay its contributors. (See video below)



If we implemented this into our education system - how much more fun and engaging would the lessons be - would it increase the learning (apparently peer to peer learning is the most effective at 90% retention)?