Citizen Journalism paper at CCI Conference

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation has now completed its conference Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons. It was a very successful event, with over 180 delegates enjoying three days of lovely Brisbane winter sunshine and a very strong range of keynote presentations, papers and panels. If you want a blow by blow, panel by panel conference description, check out Axel Bruns' fabulous blog.

The paper that I presented was co-authored with Jason Wilson, and was titled "Citizen Journalism and Political Participation: The Youdecide project and the 2007 Australian Federal Election". It reported on the youdecide2007.org project, and the full paper can be found at the QUT ePrints site.

A summary of our main points in evaluating this project against the objectives set for it is:

1. Promoting citizen participation in Australian politics

• Good range of contributions, site visits (about 12-16,000 a week) across 50 electorates
• Biggest story was 'crate gate affair' concerning MP for Herbert, Peter Lindsay
• 40% of registrants were from Queensland
• Didn't get participants from some key electorates (e.g. Wentworth and Bennelong)
• Localism is a key issue to consider as Queensland Decides site attracted as much participation in early 2008
  

2. Promoting citizen engagement in the policy process

• Not really - it was more a news site than a deliberative site
• Context of a Federal election may have been a factor here
• Uneven buy-in from political organisations (Liberals did not get involved at all)
• Site design issues may have been a factor
  

3. Building top-down/bottom-up links between mainstream and online independent media

• Good range of references in mainstream media, both to stories and to project itself
• You Decide TV program on Briz 31 attracted about 16,000 viewers on a Friday night (can still be viewed on YouTube)
  
• Club Bloggery site established on ABC Online on back of collaborative Gatewatching site
  
• Didn't make link with SBS as project partner
  

4. Broadening base of political participation beyond the 'political junkies'

• Didn't happen - very much a site for the already politically engaged