Website Design

As our pitch presentation draws closer, Editor Zed has been honing in on exactly what style of web feature we will produce. Our target user group consists of internet-savvy women between 17-65 years old, who are members of the blogosphere or frequenters of social media sites such as facebook and twitter. To keep this group engaged, the aesthetics and functionality of our website are paramount.

Tara previously discussed the importance of 'de-cluttering' our website. Keeping content (including images) clear, minimalistic and relevant is key to producing a site which is easy and enjoyable to use. In the fast-paced online world, the first sign of lagging, circularity or convolution will immediately deter potential users.

Sophistication is the aim. Pages should be linked appropriately with one another, enticing the user to seamlessly transition from one article to the next. Users should always want to consume more information, and not have to search hard to find it. Ultimately, they should feel compelled to actively interact with the site, by posting comments or even submitting their own research articles.

Taking this collaborative attitude means that our site will be continuously accruing content, and the design needs to be sustainable. Thus I have looked to content-heavy websites, such as those used by magazines, as inspiration.

This screenshot of 'Good' Magazine's website shows how a huge amount of information and content can be displayed clearly, even for a first-time visitor. They have incorporated facebook, twitter and tumblr on their landing page, and have shown restraint in their image use. Tabs up the top allow users to quickly navigate to what form of information they are after, while tabs on the side and the search feature, allow users to narrow down the subject area that they are interested in.

Blogging and Citizen Journalism

BlogHer is a website that compiles links to blogs written by women in a number of different categories. Some of these include blogs about career, love & sex, health and feminism. As well as providing information, this website aims to get exposure for writers, and establish a sense of community amongst women on the internet.

Mona Gable, section editor for 'feminism' on BlogHer.com

Image from http://www.blogher.com/member/monag, retrieved 7th September, 2011

The term 'citizen journalism' is applicable to these types of social media. Although the content of the entries may not be strictly 'news', these women are contributing articles, many of which display research and critical thinking. The blogs are curated, ensuring a high standard so that most of them would almost be at home as feature stories in newspapers and magazines.

While both helping and promoting women, this website does not seem to adhere to any strict feminist ideology. Like Editor Zed, it does not attempt to achieve equality by promoting women's roles in traditionally male-dominated fields, but also allows them to participate in a type of 'lipstick feminism', whereby they can embrace their femininity while still standing up for women's rights. This attitude of acceptance and collaboration is what I hope we will achieve on our website.

References:
Flew, T. (2008) 'Citizen Journalism' in New Media: an Introduction. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 143-147. Print.

Who am I?

Image from Opensecrets.org, retrieved via

Google Image search, 7th September 2011.

A major difference between internet and face-to-face interaction is the potential to remain anonymous, or even to intentionally misrepresent one's identity online. Users of social media such as chat rooms, blogs or networking sites, can (and sometimes do) take advantage of this potential, for example by adopting pseudonyms and changing their profile pictures to something, or someone, else. Some see this as a way to preserve some sense of privacy in the digital age. Others may have ulterior motives, where assuming a different identity will allow them to achieve certain goals. For the rest, it is just a chance to experiment, have fun, and to put it simply: Why not?

But is misrepresenting your identity online ethical? Is it intelligent? And underpinning everything else, is it possible?

In the case of online gender misrepresentation, the answers to these questions are not necessarily clear. In a study by Jaffe, Lee, Huang, and Oshagan (1995), it was found that when told to use a pseudonym, women were more likely to mask their gender than men. Does this perhaps suggest that women think they will be taken more seriously as men?

On the other hand, research has shown that in practice (when they can choose their real name or a fake one), men are more likely to elect to use a female pseudonym than women are to use a male one (Spender, 1995). What are the reasons behind this? Are men doing this because they think it will facilitate communication, grant them access to more private information, or allow them to show their more feminine traits without fear of judgement?

The question of possibility is also contentious. A number of different studies have revealed that men and women tend to communicate differently, both offline and online. For example, women tend to write shorter comments, be more supportive (even if they disagree with someone's point of view) and use more emoticons. The question is, can these written cues threaten anonymity online? If so, to what extent? Is it a question of sex vs. gender - the physical attributes of men and women vs. their social adherence to stereotypes?

We hope to explore these questions and more in our website article about anonymity online.

References:

Jaffe, J. M., Lee, Y, Huang, L, & Oshagan, H. (1999). 'Gender identification,

interdependence, and pseudonyms in CMC: Language patterns in an electronic conference.'

Information Society, 15 (4), 221-234

Spender, D. (1995). Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace. Melbourne,

Australia: Spinifex Books

BOTH as quoted in

Lim, L. & Larose, R. (2003). 'On the internet, everyone knows you're a man (but not a woman): varying gender identity in online discourse. Conference Paper: International Communication Organisation. EbscoHost. Retrieved 2 September, 2011.

De-cluttering the online mess

As Editor Zed endeavours to meet the needs of our (roughly) defined 16-55 year-old users, we've established that what our target users want is content that is relevant (informing and engaging) and accessible.

While relevant content may already exist, accessibility often fails. Cyberfeminist blogs exist, but have failed to recognise the need for clean, minimalistic designs necessary for online content consumption.

A feature posted on Feminist.com demonstrates the need for layout specifically designed for online. They've used slabs of text with few hyperlinks and multimedia to break up the text, potentially deterring readers from continuing. They've also used a confronting background colour that distracts from the text.

Likewise, an article featured on OBN (a cyberfeminist alliance website) has a similar effect to the feminist article aforementioned above. With more long-winded paragraphs and dissonant background and font colours, it is apparent little thought has gone into the design process for pages other than the landing page.

While their content may be academically relevant, it isn't engaging. Despite its focus on online feminism, they may be catering to a distinct user group from our own. We aspire to blogs that reference popular culture and phenomena that users are either familiar with or would appreciate.

A blogs that is similar in style, but divergent in content is:

Figure 1.1 Mamamia.com.au (retrived August 30 2011)

Mamamia, written by Mia Freedman, comments on social trends and has a very similar target user as our own. We could potentially leverage off this site as she has been known to help local writers - and we'd mutually link her back.

Our target users want to engage with feminist discussion in a way that is culturally relevant to their lives. As we continue our research, we'll find topical issues that interest them and us and do so in a way that the design facilitates easy reading against a 'noiseless' background.

Gendered comedy

For me, the recent release of the movie 'Bridesmaids' was somewhat of a landmark. So few (funny) comedies have female protagonists, let alone an entire cast of funny women that drives a clever and entertaining plot. The goofy characters are almost always relegated to the likes of Adam Sandlers, Seth Rogens and this guy, abdigating women to the object of desire, as Laura Mulvey wrote in 1975.

In an article by Vanity Fair 'Who Says Women Aren't Funny?', writer Alessandra Stanley quotes Joan Rivers, saying "men find funny women threatening. They ask me 'are you going to be funny in be?'" Or is it just a big joke?

It got me thinking about local YouTube phenomenon Natalie Tran. Her use of humour in her observational blogs have widespread appeal, so much so that she was one of YouTube's highest earners of 2010, raking in more than $100, 000 from banner advertising, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Attracting up to 34 + million views for this video, she parodies bloggers that use make up to fake abs. But no matter how successful she may be, it seems her femininity and gender will always be a marker before her comedy. The two top comments (as well as plenty more) read as below.

Figure 1.1: Top comments on ' How to fake a six pack' (Retrieved August 22 2011)

The sexualised comments were unwarranted given that the content didn't pertain to her bikini or masturbation. While they may just be ignorant commenters, masking behind anonymity, Tran isn't respected for her talent, and the merit of her work overshadowed and interrupted by the male gaze as Mulvey suggests.

References:

• Moses, A (2010) 'Our Natalie raking in $100, 000 a year from Youtube, smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/our-natalie-raking-in-100000-a-year-from-youtube-20100820-133be.html accessed 22/08/2011
• Mulvey, L (1975) Visual and Other Pleasures, Bloomington: Indiana University Press

A letter from the Editors -

To our readers,

The seasons are changing, and so are we. We felt some strong winds coming from the disaster/social media direction and have since realigned our compass in our favour, heading in a northerly direction.

Our new aim is to look at how women participate in different media online and what the medium affords them, in terms of anonymity and representation. The fourth lecture 'Brand me and the death of privacy', in particular the reading 'Meat, Mask, Burden' has been a really interesting spring board for our idea. We're interested in the way the self is consciously constructed online, an idea that Hearn examines in detail. We're interested to see what the implications are for branding online through gender.

Here we will be able to draw on the work and concept of peforming gender; an idea expoused by Judith Butler as performance (1990). She suggests it is something that is constantly being re-enacted and contingent on social norms.

Figure 1.2 Judith Butler, source listal.com

For example, the hyper feminine ideals that are aspired to in in beauty blogs and taught in tutorials on YouTube (and god there are plenty, this list goes on!!). Normative notions of what beauty should be globally are reinforced and these bloggers are implicit in its production.

This idea has been documented by the likes of Samara Anarbaeva who comments on this YouTube phenomenon. She says "when we go online, we bring our offline experiences and learned values with us"; changing the "meaning users derive through creating and commenting on videos on YouTube'.

This interplay between the online/offline self has implications that we want to explore in more breadth in the coming months. We hope you enjoy the subject change from disasters to women. We certainly have.

Until next time,

Editor Zed

References:

• Anarbaeva, S M (2011), 'YouTubing Difference: Performing identity in online do-it-yourself communitiees http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/Anarbaeva%20Samara%20Mamatovna.pdf?bgsu1304102745
• Butler, J (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, New York, Routledge, 1990
• Hearn, A (2008) excerpt from 'Meat, mask, burden'; Probing the contours of the branded self. Journal of Consumer Culture, vol 8

Feminism Today: Self-branding and the Democratisation of the Female Body

Fact: women dominate social networking sites, with 54% of Facebook and Twitter accounts owned by females.

Females dominate Facebook and Twitter use,

according to Quantcast. [Image source: TechXav]

Thanks to social media’s self-branding functions¹, female users have democratised the dissemination of their image. But what are the rules of free speech in a public sphere that consists of personal personas?

According to a court ruling, women (and men) have a constitutional right to be naked online, even if it’s to post what Forbes calls “slutty photos of themselves”.

Social media has helped democratise images of the female body.

What does that mean for feminism today? [Image source: The Guardian]

Social Media’s High (and Low) Ideals

At its best, social media enables women to reach out to each other on the Internet and create feminist communities which direct the narrative of self² on their own terms.

At other times, social media alternatively democratises and trivialises representations of the female body.

While Editor Zed has sought to investigate the pitfalls of disaster Twitter, we realise that the feminising of Twitter and Facebook resonates more personally for us, a team of young women. We aim to investigate the space between the high and low ideals of social media and, as before, challenge existing cyber-utopian visions.

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[1] Alison Hearn, “‘Meat, Mask, Burden’: Probing the Contours of the Branded ‘Self’”, Journal of Consumer Culture 8, no. 2 (2008): 198..

[2] Hearn, 199.

Utopia in 140 Characters: What Makes Twitter Seem So Authentic?

Between the tweet stream about the Queensland flood crisis and the torrent of celebrity tweets (@kanyewest, anyone?), it’s tempting to seduced by the vision of Twitter as a digital truth serum untainted by government propaganda or PR wranglers. But is Twitter really a utopia of unmediated and immediate truth?

Kanye West wants us to believe that

his tweets “have no manager, no publicist…this is raw.” [Image source: MTV]

Why Do We Believe?

In the deluge of information about the floods, Twitter was abuzz with rumours about public transport shutting down. While this turned out to be untrue, it’s worth examining why so many people believed the information even when it came from unofficial news sources.

This photo of Brisbane’s Central Station was posted on Twitter,

fuelling rumours of a stalled transit system. [Image source: Twitpic]

When citizens tweet reports about a major event like the floods, they invoke an appearance of truth because of what Anne Helen Peterson identifies as a seeming “lack of mediation and manipulation”. The “unrehearsed quality” of tweets creates a sense of immediacy and casualness that are taken to be signifiers of truth.

Looking to Kanye to Dissect Twitter’s Cloud of Authenticity

Kanye’s tweets are so ridiculous that they must be true...right?

Citizens reportage and celebrities posting personal information are often mentioned in the same breath when talking about the most high-profile uses of Twitter. Since both uses generate a “cloud of authenticity” in similar ways, it’s useful to examine celebrity Twitter to try to understand what makes disaster Twitter seem so compellingly truthful. Whether Kanye tweets about his “fur pillows that are hard to sleep on” (as satirised by Josh Groban above) or Queensland citizens tweet (unintended) misinformation, Twitter facilitates the appearance of truth in a number of ways.

1. First person address: Celebrity and disaster tweets invoke a sense of intimacy through the inclusive “I” or “we” and validate their claims by suggesting that the experience is shared.

2. A celebrity/disaster club: The act of reading these tweets is akin to eavesdropping on private conversations, which presuppose exclusion from media manipulation.

3. Twitpics: Photos uploaded through mobile devices lend an everyday quality to the magnitude of star power or widespread disaster. Particularly, low quality images feel more authentic because they seem “deprofessionalised”¹.

Fodder for Investigation

Even if Twitter claims to offer unmediated access to people and events, the appearance of truth is a still a manufactured image. Just as Graham Webster calls for a new equilibrium in the Twitter debate, Editor Zed aims to work away from the seductive tales of a utopian technological reform and actively interrogate these constructions. Our readers are technologically fluent and in tune with current affairs. Importantly, the brief of our research asks our readers to be inquisitive and skeptical about the utopian visions of social media. Only by taking the position of cyber-pragmatism will we be able to discover an internet that suits the today’s needs.

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[1] Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 109.

Cyber-optimism: Twitter as an Act of Truthful Speech

Throughout the Queensland’s floods in January, Twitter was abuzz with hashtags like #qldfloods and #thebigwet¹ as individuals on the ground swamped to Twitter with updates.

In effect, Queensland’s tweeps challenged the emergency services’ traditional monopoly on information. To borrow from Terry Flew, crisis reportage was “deinstitutionalised”² as the boundaries between Twitter’s “de-professionalised”³ news streams and the official news narrative collapsed. ABC recognised this and launched a flood crisis map that integrated crowdsourced information from Twitter, email and SMS into emergency coverage.

ABC created a flood map that integrated crowdsourced information

from Twitter, SMS and email. [Imagesource: Crikey]

Twitter as a Parrhesiastic Utterance

It’s a fantastic story about what Twitter can accomplish, and in the wave of cyber-optimism, it’s encouraging to see Twitter as a dutiful practice in truthful speech—or parrhesia. Foucault used this Greek word, which translates to “all-telling”⁴, to analyse the politics of truth.

At its best, Twitter can be a megaphone

for parrhesiastic speech. [Image source: Tropo.com]

Read in Foucauldian terms, Twitter creates two conditions that allows parrhesia to be in play:

1. There is a speaking subject involved⁵: A tweet is a public action which reflects the speaker’s willingness to authenticate his/her verbal commitment to a specific matter, like a national crisis.

2. The act of speaking makes a difference⁶: Twitter’s network model establishes relational ties between users⁷, ties signified by the green “follow” icon which Henry Jenkins suggests is a display of solidarity. This triggers what Clay Shirky calls a “positive supply shock” to the spread of information: by professing their tweets before an assembled body, users can correct the shortcomings of knowledge in the group.

The story of Twitter is an immensely positive narrative about the power of citizen reportage, but there are also pitfalls. Tomorrow, Editor Zed will take a closer look at the less-than-utopian side of Twitter.

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[1] Liam Mannix, “How Twitter is mapping the flood crisis—and whether you can trust it”, Crikey, 12 January 2011, http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/01/12/how-twitter-is-mapping-the-flood-crisis-and-whether-you-can-trust-it/ (20 August 2011).

[2] Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 110.

[3] Flew, 109.

[4] Matthew Sharpe, “A Question of Two Truths? Remarks on Parrhesia and the ‘Political-Philosophical’ Difference”, Parrhesia 2 (2007): 89.

[5] Sharpe, 90.

[6] Sharpe, 90.

[7] Flew, 86.

Truth Telling in the Internet Age

The questions of “whose truth?” and “why this truth?” in constructing and receiving news have become more pressing as media literacy among news-consumers has evolved, and with the advent of the Internet there exists now not only the opportunity, but an actual reality in which any online-user can fulfil the roles of watchdog, whistle-blower, informer, public service announcer¹.

Twitter accounted for 1 in every 170 UK Internet visits during the London Riots (source)

Editor Zed’s interest is centred on the arena and events in which this role reversal is most acutely highlighted² – the disaster – and what “truth-telling” and “accountability” mean in an era where public broadcasting is merely a click away³. Unfounded rumours abounded on Twitter during the July London Riots, often causing more anxiety than assistance. Accusations of Muslim responsibility for the Oslo Massacre began on the blogosphere, and found their way into newspaper copy.

An example of some of the rumours and Twitter updates that have said to fuel the fire of the London Riots (source)

While we as a society have placed our collective trust in journalism’s hands, and have at times snatched it back again⁴, it continues to co-opt legitimacy in the media landscape⁵. More interesting still is the blurring of user-generated-content with professional journalism⁶, as we see more and more news-rooms deriving their own content, particularly during scenes of disaster, from Twitter feeds and Wikipedia edits⁷. 

Readers of Editor Zed are those who too are curious, and perhaps suspicious, about how we delegate legitimacy and trust in the new media environment – and what the implications and repercussions of such trust will be.

1. McQuail, Dennis (2010), Mass Communication Theory, London, Sage.
2. Matheson, Donald (2004), 'Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: Some trends in online journalism', New Media & Society, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 443-468.
3. Lowrey, Wilson and Anderson, William (2005), 'The journalist behind the curtain: Participatory functions on the Internet and their impact on perceptions of the work of journalism', Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 143-164.
4. Izard, Ralph (1985), 'Public confidence in the news media', Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 247-255.
5. Clayman, Steven (2002), 'Tribune of the people: Maintaining the legitimacy of aggressive journalism', Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 197-216.
6. Flew, Terry (2008), 'Citizen journalism', New Media: An Introduction, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, pp. 143-167.
7. Bromley, Rebekah and Bowles, Dorothy (1995), 'The impact of internet on use of traditional news media', Newspaper Research Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 14-27.

Web 2.0: Disaster Response in the New Public Sphere

Much has been said about the Internet’s capacity to act as a “new public sphere”; a radical departure from the bourgeois structures of Habermasian participatory democracy in which only those with social capital are given a deliberative voice¹. Building on the work of Nancy Fraser, who outlined the importance of the counterpublic², scholars such as Lincoln Dahlberg³ and Peter Dahlgren⁴ have each noted the potential for the online world to shatter the boundaries not only between state and public, but between the institution of journalism and the public.

According to Terry Flew, citizen journalism is one facet of this new era, emerging “at the intersection of emergent internet and digital media technologies, a perceived crisis in news values and professional journalism, and the demand for online participation”⁵. Lowered barriers of access such as declining costs, increasing global infrastructure, and user-anonymity, coupled with unrestricted and free dissemination substitutes for the traditional printing press in the form of blogging platforms (i.e. Wordpress, Blogspot, Tumblr), are each transforming the landscape of public communication and the definitions of what constitutes “news”, who can create “news”, and what relevance “news” has for diverse, fragmentary societies today⁶.

(source)

Social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook, represent another novel departure from conventional models of news-production and distribution, instead prioritising collaborative, immediate, real-time updates over the complete and decoded messages of published journalism⁷. Contrasting this, too, with the Wiki phenomenon, containing within it the possibility for anyone to contribute to the written historical record, as well as refine it and rewrite it⁸.

Jay Rosen speaks further of the exchange on roles mentioned in From the Ashes of the Journalist Rises a New Hero, citing citizen journalists as "the people formerly known as the audience”, who are “simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable."⁹

A Facebook update from a Virginia Tech Student (source)

During the Virginia Tech shootings, emergency services lagged behind in their communications about the situation to the public. Meanwhile, students harnessed the power of social media, creating a Facebook group, "I'm OK at VT". A study by the University of Colorado found that “within just 90 minutes of the first deaths... a web page accurately describing the events appeared on Wikipedia”.

Editor Zed will explore the structural and ideological foundations of Web 2.0 that thrust the “audience” into a new, undefined territory in which user-generated-content is not only “democratic” in nature, disintegrating and redistributing the authority of news once monopolised by “legitimate” news-room sources, but can also be thought of as expository, demystifying, revolutionary, and sometimes even life-saving¹⁰.


1. Sparks, Colin (2001), 'The Internet and the global public sphere', in W.L. Bennett and R.M. Entman (Eds.), Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy, New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 75-95.
2. Fraser, Nancy (1992), 'Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy', in C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Boston, MIT Press, pp. 109-142.
3. Dahlberg, Lincoln (2001), 'The Internet and democratic discourse: Exploring the prospects of online deliberative forums extending the public sphere', Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 615-633.
4. Dahlgren, Peter (2005), 'The Internet, public spheres, and political communication: Dispersion and deliberation', Political Communication, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 147-162.
5. Flew, Terry and Wilson, Jason (2010), 'Journalism as social networking: The Australian "youdecide" project and the 2007 federal election', Journalism, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 131-147.
6. Blumer, Jay and Gurevitch, Michael (2001), 'The new media and our political communication discontents: Democratising cyberspace', Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-14.
7. Flew, Terry (2008), 'Participatory Media Cultures', New Media: An Introduction, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, pp. 106-125.
8. Benkler, Yochai (2006), 'Peer production and sharing', The Wealth of Networks, New Haven, Yale University Press, pp. 51-67.
9. Rosen, Jay (2006), 'The people formerly known as the audience', PressThink, June 27 2006 [online]. Available. Accessed 14 August, 2011.  
10. Alasuutari, Pertti (1999), Rethinking the Media Audience, London, Sage.

From the Ashes of the Journalist Rises a New Hero

The public has always enjoyed a paradoxical relationship with industrial journalism. Seen concurrently as both wielding the legitimate and only arm of authority in establishing and maintaining a public discursive sphere; yet also lawless, “yellow” and corrupt – an institution founded on, and complicit in the reproduction of, systemic exclusion, questionable morality, fear-mongering and public panic, and advertising disguised as content (and with it, advertising filtering content)¹.

All the President's Men (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula (source)

The period captured on film in All the President’s Men (1976), in which the role of the Fourth Estate was immortalised, worshipped and viewed by many to be the necessary gatekeepers of a democratic society, demarks the articulation of the journalist as hero myth². The future was indeed bright, and the journalist brandished the torch to herald in a new era of government transparency, public accountability and global consciousness³.

Disenchantment and fatigue with an institution that many believe holds only a tenuous claim to truth-telling has to a large extent deteriorated the heroic-journalist trope⁴. Now, we are told, the journalist as hero is dead⁵, along with the ingrained mythology that bound together society: somebody is looking out for us, somebody has the courage to tell the truth, somebody has the resources and the reach to do so⁶.

Skip forward to 2011. 21-year-old DJ, Leon Piers, began the Twitter feed @BristolRiots and took it upon himself to launch a guerrilla-journalism campaign amidst the London Riots in retaliation to the rumours and fear-mongering in the traditional media. Armed with his bicycle and mobile phone, he and his friends rushed to the streets, tweeting short snippets of accurate, unbiased and verified information about the city’s situation, helping police, firefighters and citizens alike. He was lauded as a hero.

Gadaffi Expose Video - An act of citizen journalism filmed by Mohammed Nabbous (source)

Mohammed Nabbous, described as “the face of Libyan citizen journalism”, acted as a primary contact for Western journalists during the Libyan revolution. Utilising social media platforms like YouTube, he posted exclusive videos from a citizen’s perspective, exposing the horrors Gadaffi’s troops enacted against Benghazi rebels. He was named a hero of citizen journalism.

Strate asserts “it is through communication that we come to know our heroes, and consequently, different kinds of communication will result in different kinds of heroes"⁷. It is here where Editor Zed's topic of investigation lies: the intersection of citizen journalism with social media and wiki-technology, and if, and how, a new type of hero can emerge, like the phoenix, from the ashes of journalism⁸.

1. Simons, Margaret (2007), 'The gift economy and the future', The Content Makers: Understanding the Media in Australia, Camberwell, Victoria, Penguin, pp. 204-217.
2. Drucker, Susan and Cathcart, Robert (1994), American Heroes in a Media Age, NJ, Hampton Press.
3. Brucker, Barbara (1980), 'The journalist as popular hero, or: Up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Clark Kent',Thesis Dissertation, Bowling Green State University.
4. Roggenkamp, Karen (2005), 'Journalist as hero: Richard Harding Davis and the cult of the reporter in 1980s America in narrating the news', New Journalism and the Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Fiction, Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, pp. 48-53.
5. Hanson, Christopher (1996), 'Where have all the heroes gone?', Columbia Journalism Review, Vol. 34, No. 6, pp. 45-48.
6. Flew, Terry and Wilson, Jason (2010), 'Journalism as social networking: The Australian "youdecide" project and the 2007 federal election', Journalism, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 131-147.
7. Strate, Lance (1994), 'Heroes: A communication perspective', American Heroes in a Media Age,  NJ, Hampton Press, p. 15.
8. Alexander, Cuthbert (2005), 'Hope for a society without heroes', Proceedings of the Media Ecology Association, Vol. 6, pp. 1-9.