[Annotation 3 (Revised)] Everyone Can be a Citizen Journalist

                                               Everyone Can be a Citizen Journalist

    When you hear human flesh search, because of the term ”flesh”, you probably have a bloody imagination that a lot of netizens find out every piece of information of the target which is like a rotten corpse devoured completely by a group of hungry condors. Netizens collect all the information and arrange them in their words even attached with some pictures. They are not professional reporters but they can make their arranged articles look like a piece of News. Also they can publish a series of reports on the Internet. The amateur reports are Citizen Journalist (公民記者). They choose what they observe in their daily life to report.
    With the progress of the technology, for example, the invention of televisions and radio, information can be transmitted more quickly and extensively. However, what kind of information we accept is controlled by the mass media. Not everyone have the chance to convey his idea in a TV program.
Nowadays, more and more people have blogs where they can easily share their thoughts.The professor of law, Glenn Reynolds, who is famous for his blog, instapubdit, argued that "power once concentrated in the hands of a professional few has been redistributed into the hands of the amateur many" (Russell, 2007, p67). Bloggers, the amateur reporters, show what they found on the Internet such as something illegal or immoral. In their blog, they can keep update the content, while the traditional media has to check it again before publishing.
   Columbia Journalism Review ( Samantha Henig, 2005) declares: "We've seen blogs act as media or political watchdogs, but not as aggressive watchdogs of individual violations of social norms. So this seems like a notable step. And, as with the emergence of citizen-journalism, it is an undefined and unregulated step in a cyber world that lacks boundaries and standards."

    Unavoidably, there may be some mistakes in the professional or amateur reports. It is easier and quicker to correct the latter. The person involved can also clean up the misunderstanding in the comments of the amateur reports. Human flash search should not be considered as a cold-blooded hunting. It is an online platform providing everyone a chance to convey his ideas and can be examined and discussed publicly.
Most people consider human flesh search as a terrible monster that　fiercely exposed their privacy. But did you ever think about that how much information you put on the Internet by yourself? More and more people use community website (社群網站) such as Facebook. On Facebook, people can list their family member or partner. People share their lives on Facebook with photos, or even show the location. Do you really know each one in the friend list? It is not fair to say that human flesh search invades the privacy. You ,your friends or your friends’ friends are those who also have the responsibility of protecting the privacy

    If someone has done something bad before, it is easy to find his behavior on the Internet. He may have the infamous reputation forever. So do we need to prohibit human flesh search to protect this kind of person’s privacy?  Daniel J. Solove argued that keeping the information confidential too much is dangerous. He stated that If we protect the secrets (the infamous behavior) ,we prevent the spread of right information and also remove the information that help people to evaluate someone.


Reference
Daniel J. Solove  (2011) The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet [Chinese version] 隱私不保的年代：網路的流言蜚語、人肉搜索、網路霸凌和私密窺探。台北市：博雅。


Samantha Henig (2005) The Tale of Dog Poop Girl Is Not So Funny After All [Electronic version] Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_tale_of_dog_poop_girl_is_n.php