‘Citizen journalism’ not catching on in Japan?
Ethan Zuckerman has written an interesting update about the popularity of online citizen journalism in South Korea vs. Japan. According to the article, Japan appears to be lagging behind Korea, not only in citizen journalism, but in Confucian respect for learning and democracy. Here’s a little excerpt:
Democracy, he[the Japanese editor of OhmyNews Japan] notes, is new to Japan, introduced after WWII. And it’s still not very popular – despite Koizumi’s popularity, only 67% of people voted in the last election. (This would be a phenomenal turnout by US standards!)
Citizen – “shi-min” – sounds a little odd in Japanese. It calls up implications of “taxpayer”. But it’s important that citizen reporting include housewives, students, and foreigners living in Japan. But there are differences between Korea and Japan that may make the OhmyNews model difficult to replicate:
- South Korea had a succesful democratic movement in 1987, which generated a great deal of political will and power. In Japan, a dominant political party has ruled for over 60 years. Thus politics in Japan tends to be covered as a horserace or a baseball game, not a participatory phenomenon.
- There’s a strong distrust of mainstream media in South Korea, but great respect for mainstream journalism in Japan.
- The relationship to the Internet is complicated in Japan. Yes, there are 8.6 million bloggers, many of them writing expert blogs on esoteric subjects. But there’s a lot of resentment of this culture, largely based on the culture of “Second channel”, a Japanese site that shows much of the worst of the participatory internet.
- Many Japanese aren’t comfortable connecting their names to their opinions – they’re more comfortable in a culture of anonymity.
In bringing OhmyNews to Japan, these questions and disparities will need to be addressed and bridged.
Personally, I think OhmyNews is horrible sham journalism, bringing together large groups of ignorant ‘citizen journalists’ to post unprofessional and poorly written rants against American/Japanese imperialism. Even if there good reporters on the site, it isn’t worth my time to rake through piles of shit to find them. I really hope it doesn’t catch on in Japan, or in any other country for that matter. What’s your opinion on OhmyNews’ citizen journalism?
