Re-Launch

Re-Launch of Random Acts of Journalism 2008

A New Year's resolution? Not quite. A preference to watching paint dry til my eyes bleed at work? *Sheepishly* Perhaaaps. Genuine interest in subject matter? Absolutely.

Whether or not relaunch is the right word for a blog that took of with a thunderous thud is indeed debatable, of course, but the goals of RAJ have changed.

RAJ was to be a sounding board for my dissertation, to encourage participation by others in order to create a truly comprehensive account of the current state of citizen journalism and nail down a definition of the term 'Citizen Journalism' itself. Of course, once I went from gingerly poking a toe into the pool of quicksand to actually jumping in, TDI (Total Dissertation Immersion) occured, and, with sand up to and over my head, I laid in the (exfoliating) bath of dissertationness until September 1st. At this time, my fist punched through the sand Mario Bros style, and I shot out of sandy dissertationville, shedding the TDI and landed (with very nicely exfoliated skin) onto a soft and cuddly pile of 'holy sh** reality' and began my calmly desperate search for a job with my shiny new Masters degree in, erm, MEDIA. I got me one of them there jobs working in THE MEDIA and have been treading water ever since, using absolutely nothing that I learned during the most intellectually enlightening and academically exciting years of my life. While the position of 'assistant' entails a mindblowingly plentiful variety of ways of 'assisting', really, the position of assistant hammers your intellect out of you, requires absolutely nothing from you that someone else can't do exactly, deflates your confidence and shatters your hopes and dreams. Back up, back up, it's not so extreme, mind you, and in some ways motivates me to work even harder to prove myself.

Aaaaanyway, there I was, plugging along in my life as a clerical assistant in the field of MEDIA, when I received a very special letter in the mail, from my university. I had heard a month before that I had indeed secured my A- on my dissertation and therefore would be graduating with a distinction. This had made me proud of course, but it seemed like ages ago that I had suffered from TDI, and I felt almost as unconnected from my lifestyle as a cool, international media academic filled with the hope of changing my career and working in something exciting such as documentary filmmaking or guerilla citizen journalism. Upon reading my dissertation feedback, however, I remembered that this office gig is temporary, and that my interest in the area of citizen journalism never ever disappeared at all.

Therefore, the goals of this website are as follows:
1. Re-immerse myself in the area of citizen journalism
2. Continue to develop my theories of the phenomenon of citizen journalism as a sympton of an ever-emerging surveillance society.
3. Monitor the continuously changing concept of 'citizen journalism' as it develops within the mainstream media on websites such bbc.co.uk, yahoo.com,, etc etc
4. Participate in symphony of voices on the subject of citizen journalism and also all participatory media, including social media.
5. Plug back in to the academic world of the MEDIA instead of trying to swim the backstroke in the puddle that is my real life in the 'media' as a PR assistant.

Those are my goals. They may change, grow, re-focus. But there they are damn it. I am ready to kayak through the rapids of the 'MEDIA' I know and care a bit more about. I've got my paddle, my helmet, shiny Masters tucked into my pocket, and it's time to push off while my skin is still so nicely exfoliated!