For week three, I wanted to create a way for citizen journalists to be able to collaborate and work together to share and provide resources. To control the spread of 'fake new' and unreliable resources, I would utilise products already currently available such as 'The Whistle' or 'CameraV', which work to verify sources.
Rather than copying these preexisting products, my website would be aimed more at allowing citizen journalists all over the world to collaborate with one another and learn from each other. Personally, I believe journalistic writing is improved by wider knowledge and experience - my platform would allow these journalists to communicate and share different viewpoints on a large scale, on a website dedicated solely to citizen journalism.
To create this website would be quite simple as it would use HTML and CSS I am already competent in, however, JavaScript would have to be used to make the website interactive and to allow journalists to upload a wider range of material. The appearance of the website would be similar to wordpress.com as far as how user would be able to upload and publish content. However, I want the homepage of my website to be more dynamic and interactive through the use of categorisation and search bars, to allow other users to filter what they want to see and from where around the globe; allowing users or viewers to see news in their local area, and those living abroad to see what is going on back home in terms of local level journalism. The homepage would be tailored to a registered user’s preferences. Tut to make the site more accessible for non-registered users/visitors, who wouldn’t be able to upload, the homepage would showcase the most popular and latest uploads around the world.
Additionally to the verification of sources, there would need to be a process of filtering posts for use of profanity or hate speech - whilst I wouldn't want my website to be stopping freedom of speech, allowing posts like this to appear on the homepage would dampen the wider use of the website; such as its use for students studying journalism or English.
The skills required for this projects would be
HTML, CSS and JavaScript (to build the website)
PhotoShop (to create a logo and for general aesthetic design of the website)
Marketing
Financing (to acquire and maintain an online domain)
Communication (reaching out to the other products available on the market to collaborate for this product and to journalists for feedback)
Leading on from this, there are numerous tutorials online on how to integrate search bars and filters onto a website this should be relatively simple to do with practice. The basic code for the website in HTML and CSS would be easy to create as I have created basic websites before that allow visitors to leave comments and feedback; however, I would be tutorials on how to progress these skills further and make the website to a professional degree.