Citizenship Journalism

http://www.consciouscollective.net/
Rosa Weller was the speaker at the 'wemedia' event on Wednesday the 30th of January. Rosa worked as a journalist for a Russian media institute until she attempted to release an article on how charitable donations were being redirected from charity's to president Putin's government. She was not granted permission to publish the article and therefore on a matter of principle decided to leave the organisation. After Rosa returned to the UK in 2006 she began to work as a copywriter, editor and CMS manager for various arts companies and charities as they launched their first websites, in the days when HTML newsletters were 'ground- breaking'. Rosa is currently a freelance creative development consultant for small, independent arts organizations, charities and individual artists.
Rosa is a strong believer in citizenship journalism and created the site 'consciouscollective.net' as a means of producing her own citizenship journalism. I have decided to focus on her coverage of the occupy London movement which saw many people campaigning outside St Paul's cathedral. Whilst many of the newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet) attempted to paint a negative view of the demonstrators, Rosa attempted to report from the view of the protestors and created a viral video that has over 12,000 views on YouTube.