Citizen Health Journalism

Abstract

This article discusses an innovative experiment in transforming citizen journalism from a general discourse to a specific set of criteria that can be reproduced in classroom settings. Specifically, it discusses how the Rio de Janeiro-based non-governmental organization Viva Rio created a set of classes called Citizen Health Journalism that attempted to train community health workers (titled “health agents”) in the technical and philosophical dimensions of this mode of journalistic production. The classes looked to capitalize on the unique identities of these agents. Recruited from the favelas (or unincorporated urban slums) of Rio to be public health workers within their own communities, these individuals had both the life experiences (as residents) and professional experience (as healthcare workers) to offer unique insights about their communities. Drawing on an in-depth analysis of training materials and participant observation in 2013 at the training courses, I argue that while turning citizen journalism into a curriculum can help make the discourse more accessible to neophytes, it also potentially sacrifices the convictions and attitudes that encourage individuals to act as citizen journalists in the first place.

KEYWORDS:

• advocacy communication
• citizen journalism
• digital literacy
• health communication
• Latin American studies
• media education and pedagogy

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the late 1980s to early 1990s, noted communication theorist James Carey and others championing the burgeoning field of “public journalism” made very similar arguments about grassroots participation in journalistic production. According to these critics, media produced at the community level with community interests in mind served as an antidote to the sensationalist, headline-obsessed corporate news outlets where “journalists came to think of themselves as in the news business” (Carey 1995a, 187, my italics). Carey’s celebration of local media activism as a cure for corporate influence was perhaps best expressed in his discussion of the way grassroots activists in the United States used computer technology to help organize around the 1992 presidential race (see Carey 1995b, 254).

2. For an extensive catalogue of citizen journalism and citizens’ media NGOs globally, see Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change (Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron 2001). This text summarizes a decade-long project by the Rockefeller Foundation examining the global rise of activist media.

3. This study is registered with the Institutional Research Board (IRB number 2012-06-0082). At various places in the following section I cite conversations with or comments by various members of Viva Favela staff and workshop participants. Staff members I mention by name and position.

4. For a detailed study of previous Viva Favela training initiatives, see Jucá dos Santos (2014).