[Editor’s Note: The following article first appeared on OhmyNews on July 12, 2006.]
Netizens Are Critical to Citizen Journalism
by Ronda Hauben
It is with a smile that I prepare today to go to Korea and the 2006 OhmyNews International
Citizen Reporters’ Forum.
When leaving the forum last year I remember having a conversation with one of the citizen
reporters. She said she had been thinking and felt that perhaps one of the most important aspects of
citizen journalism was that there are netizens, people online who have find that the Internet is helpful
in their efforts and desire to make the world a better place.
She felt that it was from the netizens that the significant aspects of citizen journalism will
develop. She told me she wanted to be sure to share this with me before she left the forum.
I first came to learn about OhmyNews in 2003 when I saw an article in the Financial Times
that said the “netizens” in South Korea had made it possible to elect the President of the country.
This made me curious and I wanted to learn what I could about what had happened.
From Korean friends online and off I came to know about OhmyNews. A Korean friend
showed me the Korean edition, which was all there was in 2003, and she translated some of the many
comments there were on different articles.
She encouraged me to write to founder Oh Yeon-ho with my questions about OhmyNews.
I probably did try to write an email and sent it, but don’t remember exactly and didn’t at the
time get an answer. Instead Mr. Oh, it seems, was preparing to do an English edition so that the many
people who were interested in OhmyNews but who couldn’t read Korean would still get an idea of
the idea of citizen journalism.
A little while later, a netizen I met online said she would submit an article I had written about
the Howard Dean campaign in the U.S. to OhmyNews. In it I compared Dean’s election campaign
to the campaign for the presidency of South Korea. She translated it into Korean, and it appeared in
both English and Korean in an issue of the Korean OhmyNews in March of 2004.
This all raises an important question for me that I hope will be considered at the 2006 forum:
How is the spread of OhmyNews and OhmyNews International connected to the fight for de-
mocracy? The fact that the birth of the Korean edition of OMN was connected to the continuing fight
for democracy in South Korea seems an important aspect of any effort to spread the lessons from the
Korean OhmyNews to other publications and to other countries.
The netizens of South Korea who contributed their articles as citizen reporters when OMN
began and who continued to contribute the articles as it grew, are a factor that is to be considered and
understood. Also, it seems there was a staff for the newspaper which not only encouraged the
submissions, but who also helped to cover the developments in the fight for more democracy in
Korea for the young newspaper.
I have found that learning about and understanding the developments in the Korean fight for
more democracy is an encouragement to continue working with OhmyNews. I often wish that Ohmy-
News would have more of the articles from the Korean version of the newspaper translated into
English to be part of the English edition. That way there would be more knowledge of what is
happening in Korea among those who read and write for the International edition of the newspaper.
Next year is the 20
th
anniversary of the victory of the 1987 revolution in South Korea.
Perhaps in honor of this event OhmyNews can find a way to share more of the events of the Korean
democratization efforts with those who can only read the English edition.
I often wonder if there is any way there could be an American version of OhmyNews which
would be a champion in the fight against the conservative press and politics that dominate U.S.
society. It seems so difficult to consider this possibility here in the U.S. as the conservative forces
are so strong and pervasive.
It seems that they would find a way to impose the need to make money on whatever was
created, rather than recognizing the need to have a social purpose as the critical thrust. This is why
I feel it is so important to have some knowledge of how OhmyNews grew out of the progressive
movement in South Korea. It is important to remember that an early goal of Mr. Oh was to create
a media culture in which “the quality of news determined whether it won or lost,” not the power and
prestige of the media organization that printed the article.
Last year’s forum was a very memorable experience. There are many special events I recall,
but the most special was after I gave the brief talk I had been invited to give. Several citizen reporters
for the Korean edition of OhmyNews came to embrace me and thank me for the talk. The talk I gave
was about the online research of Michael Hauben in 1992-1993 which discovered that the Net was
encouraging people to be able to participate as citizens in a way previously impossible.
This research – observing what was developing on the Net – resulted in the concept of
“netizen.” The continuing spread of the Net and the netizens are symbolized by “netizens” I met
during last year’s OMNI forum. They, in turn, are a tribute to and an encouragement for the spread
of OMNI’s great experiment.
