Journal articles on the topic 'Hunting, british columbia'

Spawning salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) are important resources for terrestrial ecosystems and often shape the ecological strategies of organisms with which they co-evolve. Gray wolves (Canis lupus), primarily predators of ungulates, are sympatric with salmon over large areas, but the relationship between the two remains poorly understood. We report here observations of direct and indirect evidence of salmon predation by wolves in several watersheds of coastal British Columbia and in detail report on the foraging behaviour of four wolves at one river during September and October 2001. Wolves oriented themselves upstream during detection and pursuit of salmon. The pooled mean capture rate was 21.5 salmon/h and mean efficiency (successes/attempt) was 39.4%. In most cases, wolves consumed only heads of salmon, perhaps for nutritional reasons or parasite avoidance. Preying on salmon may be adaptive, as this nutritious and spatially constrained resource imposes lower risks of injury compared with hunting large mammals. We infer from capture rates and efficiencies, as well as stereotypical hunting and feeding behaviour, a history of salmon predation by wolves and, as a corollary, a broad distribution of this foraging ecology where wolves and salmon still co-exist.

Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in British Columbia are classified into mountain, northern and boreal ecotypes based on behavioural and ecological characteristics. We recognized 12 mountain caribou herds, 27 northern caribou herds, and an area occupied by low density boreal caribou dispersed in the boreal forests of the northeast portion of the province. Abundance estimates were usually based on attempts at total counts made from the air. Trends were based on repeated population estimates or the difference between recruitment and mortality rates for each herd. In 1996 there were approximately 18 000 caribou in British Columbia; 2300 mountain and 15 600 northern and boreal. These estimates suggest a slight increase in the numbers of both ecotypes over the last 18 years. Fifteen percent of the herds were reportedly increasing, 10% were decreasing, 31% were stable, but for 44% of the herds the trend was unknown. Historically caribou were found throughout 8 of the 14 biogeoclimatic zones in B.C. Caribou are now rarely found in the Sub-Boreal Spruce zone, likely due to increased predation from wolves that increased in response to increasing moose numbers. Ranges of several herds in the Engelmann Spruce — Subalpine Fir and Alpine Tundra zones of south-eastern British Columbia are also reduced relative to historic conditions, probably because of habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, predation and hunting. Forest harvesting represents the greatest threat to caribou habitat and current research focuses on the mitigation of forest harvesting impacts.

We compared the general breeding and feeding ecology of ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) in the Creston and Nelson areas of southeastern British Columbia. In the Creston Valley, ospreys nested atop tall trees surrounding a shallow and productive warm-water marsh. Prey species taken by male ospreys included black bullhead (Ictalurus melas), pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus), and yellow perch (Perca flavescens). In contrast, near Nelson, ospreys nested on man-made structures along the narrow West Arm of Kootenay Lake. Osprey prey species in the Nelson area included longnose sucker (Catostomus catostomus), largescale sucker (Catostomus macrocheilus), and mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni). Prey captured at Nelson were larger and contained significantly more energy than at Creston Valley, and hunting from a perch was used for 26% of all captures. All Creston Valley prey were caught by flight hunting. The strike success of foraging ospreys at Nelson was significantly higher than at Creston, and the net yield of flight hunting was 3 times higher. In spite of these differences, the breeding performance of ospreys in the two areas was very similar. Average clutch size was 2.8, brood size at hatching was 2.0, and the average pair fledged 1.4 young. The nest failure rate did not differ between the two areas. Most clutches were initiated in early May, with Nelson-area ospreys laying, on average, 4–7 days later. Egg volumes were smaller at Nelson (66.6 vs. 69.1 cm3). However, the rate at which nestlings gained mass was significantly greater at Nelson. We discuss reasons why the breeding performance varies so little in spite of the great differences in feeding regime.

The intentional removal or addition of species or specific human impacts on ecosystems trigger changes that can help us understand species interactions. In many temperate forests, deer populations are increasing and so is the need to understand how they influence ecosystems. We took advantage of the introduction of Sitka black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitchensis Merriam) to the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), British Columbia, Canada, to study how hunting pressure affects the impact of deer on tree regeneration after logging. We show that although the regeneration of western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn ex D. Don) is drastically reduced in presence of deer, regeneration is better and browsing stress lower, in areas where deer are more exposed to hunting. Similar effects of accessibility for hunters are observed on browsing stress of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carrière). Western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) is not significantly affected, and its regeneration is not correlated to hunting. We suggest that the effect of hunting on tree regeneration could be explained by the incidence of hunting on deer behaviour rather than by the actual number of deer killed by hunters. These results suggest that the future occurrence of redcedar stands in second-growth forests on this archipelago may depend on the amount and distribution of deer hunting.

Caribou (Rangifer tarandus), elk (Cervus canadensis), moose (Alces alces), and Stone's sheep (Ovis dalli stonei) were either decreasing or stable in numbers in two areas in northeastern British Columbia in 1981-1982, prior to reductions in wolf (Canis lupus) numbers. Following the reduction of wolf numbers, recruitment improved 2-5 times for all four species, and all populations increased, based on either hunting statistics, census results, and (or) recruitments greater than 24 offspring at 9 months of age per 100 females. Recruitment of offspring at 9 months of age, when regressed against wolf numbers, declined with decelerating slopes for all four species. This inverse functional response is hypothesized to result from the preparturient spacing of females to reduce predation risk, and in this regard moose seem the least secure and sheep the most effectively spaced. For the four species, mean recruitment at 9 months of age that balanced adult mortality and provided a finite rate of increase of 1.00 was 24.16 ± 0.91 offspring/100 females (n = 11, coefficient of variation = 12.5%). The predicted recruitment rate for all four species in the absence of wolves was 53-57 offspring/100 females. But the birth rate of moose was much higher than those of the other species, indicating greater loss to other factors of which bear predation may be the greatest. Following wolf reductions of 60-86% of entire travelling packs, the wolves quickly recolonized the removal zones, with rates of increase ranging from 1.5 to 5.6.

AbstractThe sharp increase in the human population of Vancouver Island; the urban development policy favoring forest fragmentation and smaller, scattered settlements; and the relatively sizable population of large predatory mammals have contributed to one of the highest human-large predator contact zones in North America. Although some studies have evaluated public attitudes toward larger carnivores from urban/rural, gender, and generational perspectives, few have focused on black bears and cougars on the British Columbia coast. In this study, four hundred people in the densely populated southeast corner of Vancouver Island were interviewed about their attitudes toward black bear and cougar presence and behavior. The majority of interviewees had positive attitudes toward both bears and cougars, and were opposed to the shooting of carnivores, preferring trapping and removal. Contrary to expectation, few respondents saw carnivores as threats to livestock, companion animals, or children. Both black bears and cougars were perceived as serving useful functions as part of the island’s heritage and cultural development (through hunting, tourism, and recreation).

Due to increasing anthropogenic pressures, including land-use transformation globally, the natural process of animal migration is undergoing alterations across many taxa. Small-scale migrants provide useful systems at workable scales for investigating the influence of disturbance and landscape barriers on natural movement patterns and migrations. The Western Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus Holbrook, 1840) in British Columbia, Canada, is a small, migrant predator that undertakes seasonal spring movements from its communal hibernaculum to summer hunting and mating grounds and reverses its movements in autumn. From 2011 to 2016, we examined changes to spring migration movements in 27 male Western Rattlesnakes encountering both mitigative fencing barriers and disturbed habitats. Individuals moving through disturbed habitats or intercepted by mitigative fencing demonstrated shorter migration distances and reduced spring path sinuosity compared with individuals migrating in undisturbed habitats. Specifically, individuals encountering a fence during spring movements completed shorter total spring migration path lengths and occupied smaller home ranges over the course of the entire active season. Total spring migration distance also was strongly associated with the distance that individuals traveled until they first encountered human disturbance. This study contributes significantly to our knowledge of how fencing barriers may impact normal behavioural patterns in smaller vertebrates.

This study measured the incidence of feeding damage in 1989 and 1990 by black bears (Ursusamericanus Pallas), and possibly by grizzly bears (Ursusarctos L.), within managed and unmanaged second-growth western hemlock (Tsugaheterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.)–western red cedar (Thujaplicata Donn) forest stands near Jennis Bay, 39 km northwest of Port Hardy, British Columbia. Tree mensuration (1989) and damage assessments (1989 and 1990) were conducted in 69 sample plots located in stands that were spaced in 1980 to 1982, when the trees were juvenile, and in 19 plots located in a nearby unspaced (control) stand. Western red cedar, which represented 13.6% of the managed stands, was the most severely damaged species (cumulative attack of 63.8% in 1989, increasing to 69.1% in 1990). Western hemlock, the major tree species, had <0.5% of trees attacked, and amabilis fir (Abiesamabilis (Dougl.) Forbes) was not attacked. Cumulative incidence of damage to red cedar in the control stand was 66.7% in 1989, increasing to 71.4% in 1990. The annual incidence of attack in 1990 was 18.1% in the spaced stands and 16.7% in the control stand. The total percentage of girdled cedar stems (mortality) was 10.7% in the control and 23.3% in the spaced stands overall. Bear damage clearly declined during 1990, which may be related to dispersal or removal (hunting) of animals from the general area or to a declining number of cedar trees (30%) that remain unattacked by bears. Crop tree selection against red cedar in future spacing projects could alleviate bear attacks.

Salmon provide a key source of marine-derived nutrients to aquatic and surrounding terrestrial habitats in coastal areas of the North Pacific. Bears are a major predator of salmon and provide an important pathway for carcass transfer to riparian zones. We studied selective consumption of salmon (Oncorhynchus keta and Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) by bears (Ursus arctos and Ursus americanus) on 12 streams on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada. We predicted that bears would select more energy-rich parts, and eat less of each fish (i.e., selective consumption), in streams with more prey and simpler habitat (i.e., streams that facilitate salmon capture). Bears were 12% more likely to consume fish selectively in narrow, shallow streams with less pool volume, where salmon are easier to catch, than in deep, wide streams. However, bears were also 21% more likely to selectively consume fish in streams with more wood obstacles and undercut banks, where hunting was predicted to be more difficult. This suggests that stream characteristics can have significant indirect effects on riparian nutrient subsidies to ecosystems through selective feeding by bears.

The characteristics of a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) population in southeastern British Columbia were studied between 1979 and 1986, a period of timber harvest, gas exploration, and outdoor recreation, including grizzly hunting. I investigated the hypothesis that collectively these activities were detrimental to the grizzly population. I predicted a low density of bears compared with other interior populations and (or) a negative rate of increase. The sex ratio of cubs and yearlings captured was 50:50 and they represented 21.5 and 17.5% of the population, respectively. Although more adult males than adult females were captured, I estimated that there were more adult females than males in the population. I used two methods of population estimation and assumed saturation trapping : one method was based on home range characteristics and the other on the proportion of aerial locations in the study area. The average estimated bear density was 6.4/100 km2, which was high for an interior population, and increased from approximately 5.7/100 km2 in 1981 to 8.0/100 km2 in 1986, for an average annual observed rate of increase of r = 0.07.

The causes and rates of grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) mortality in a radio-marked population in southeastern British Columbia were studied for 9 years during a period of timber harvest, gas exploration, and outdoor recreation, including grizzly hunting. During 110 bear-years of radio tracking 55 radio-collared grizzly bears and their dependent offspring, one bear with a functioning radio collar died from natural causes and eight others from human intervention; in addition, four dependent offspring were thought to have died. Excluding trap-related mortalities, the best estimate for the annual survival rates were as follows: 0.82 for cubs, 0.88 for yearlings, 0.93 for subadults, and 0.93 for adults. Of the eight bears killed by human intervention, two were killed by legal harvest, five by illegal harvest (one of these in a trap), and one was killed in a trap by another bear. No mortalities were directly attributable to industrial activities. Resource extraction industries do contribute to grizzly bear mortality indirectly through the construction of roads, which provide easy access to hunters, poachers, and settlers. Road access planning and postoperational control of vehicles are recommended management actions.

Kleptoparasitism, or food piracy, is common in a wide range of taxa, particularly among predators, with the larger species forcing smaller species to surrender their catch. The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is known to rob Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) of just-caught prey. We present time series of kleptoparasitic interactions between eagles and peregrines hunting Dunlin (Calidris alpina) that were wintering at Boundary Bay in the Fraser River valley, British Columbia. In 1108 hours of observation during January, intermittently between 1994 and 2014, we recorded 667 sightings of Peregrine Falcons, including 817 attacks on Dunlin resulting in 120 captures. The population of wintering Bald Eagles in the study area increased from about 200 in 1994 to 1800 in 2014, while the rate of kleptoparasitism at the expense of peregrines increased from 0.05 to 0.20. The increase in the number of Bald Eagles coincided with a decline in January sightings of Peregrine Falcons, which suggests that some falcons may have left the study area because of interference from eagles. The decrease in Peregrine Falcon numbers can be expected to have led to reduced predation risk for Dunlins. Christmas Bird Counts conducted in the Fraser River Valley have underscored the fluctuation in eagle and peregrine numbers reported here.

Hunting aerial-feeding bats, species that take airborne prey (usually flying insects), use echolocation to detect, track,and assess targets. The echolocation calls of aerial-feeding bats at sites in Canada (British Columbia and Ontario), Mexico,Brazil, and Zimbabwe were significantly dominated by frequencies between 20 and 60 kHz, although at the more tropicallocations some aerial-feeding bats used echolocation calls with most energy <20 or >60 kHz. The impact of frequency-specificattenuation, perhaps combined with frequency-specific, hearing-based defenses of some insects, suggests that by usingecholocation calls <20 kHz, bats could both extend the effective range of echolocation and make their calls less conspicuous toinsect ears. Bats using calls >60 kHz would be less conspicuous to the insects. We found two patterns of echolocation-callbehaviour. Most adjacent echolocation calls, and all that were dominated by sounds >20 kHz, showed large (80%) overlap inbandwidth. The other pattern involved much less overlap in bandwidth (0–30%) between adjacent calls and was evident in thecalls of the molossid Tadarida midas, which used echolocation calls dominated by sounds <20 kHz. This behaviour wouldallow the echolocating bat to extend its effective range of perception by separating in frequency the echoes returning fromadjacent calls.

We studied the breeding performance of ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) in southeastern British Columbia from 1987 to 1990. Clutch size, brood size, and the number of young fledged per nest all declined significantly as clutch initiation date was delayed. The quality of later born young as measured by growth rate and the number of fault bars in rectrices did not seem to be reduced. Behavioural observations of the flight-hunting performance of six focal males demonstrated that food availability did not decline in the course of the nestling period. Clutch initiation of some osprey pairs was naturally delayed when their nests were occupied by Canada geese (Branta canadensis). Nest occupation delayed clutch initiation by 9.4 days on average, and reduced clutch size by 0.2 eggs. Osprey pairs possessing an alternate nest were not delayed by the presence of geese in their primary nest, and did not reduce clutch size, suggesting that the clutch size reduction was a direct response to the delay, rather than to the presence, of geese. The results do not support the reduced food availability or reduced breeding commitment hypotheses for seasonal clutch size decline. The data conform to the predictions of the hypothesis that the optimal clutch size is set by a trade-off between the declining reproductive value of later hatched nestlings and the delay required to be able to enlarge the clutch.

Trace mineral imbalances can have significant effects on animal health, reproductive success, and survival. Monitoring their status in wildlife populations is, therefore, important for management and conservation. Typically, livers and kidneys are sampled to measure mineral status, but biopsies and lethal-sampling are not always possible, particularly for Species at Risk. We aimed to: 1) determine baseline mineral levels in Northern Mountain caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou; Gmelin, 1788) in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, and 2) determine if hair can be used as an effective indicator of caribou mineral status by evaluating associations between hair and organ mineral concentrations. Hair, liver, and kidney samples from adult male caribou (nHair = 31; nLiver, nKidney = 43) were collected by guide-outfitters in 2016–2018 hunting seasons. Trace minerals and heavy metals were quantified using inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and organ and hair concentrations of same individuals were compared. Some organ mineral concentrations differed from other caribou populations, though no clinical deficiency or toxicity symptoms were reported in our population. Significant correlations were found between liver and hair selenium (rho = 0.66, p<0.05), kidney and hair cobalt (rho = 0.51, p<0.05), and liver and hair molybdenum (rho = 0.37, p<0.10). These findings suggest that hair trace mineral assessment may be used as a non-invasive and easily-accessible way to monitor caribou selenium, cobalt, and molybdenum status, and may be a valuable tool to help assess overall caribou health.

The overall objective of this two-year investigation is to study gray wolf (Canis lupus): ungulate interrelationships in a multi-prey system. This study focuses on elk (Cervus elaphus), and is being conducted in the North Fork of the Flathead River drainage, in Montana and British Columbia, the main area of grey wolf recovery.We address questions that resource managers will be asked as wolf recovery occurs. From a National Park Service perspective, the results could be used to educate the public about the role of predation in natural systems. Glacier National Park has the opportunity to lead the way in conducting research on this keystone predator and its prey, and to demonstrate the role biosphere reserves can play in ecological research. Information that will be important for future informed resource management is being gathered. Management of public lands might require a balance accommodation between wolves, their prey, and sport hunting, along with other forms of recreation. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks needs information on the impacts of wolves on game populations in order to maintain numbers and recreational opportunities. As reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park is considered and debated, knowledge gained from this study will be helpful. Finally, this study can expand ecological knowledge of the role of a major predator on the prey population dynamics and interrelationships. To expand knowledge of the study area prey base available to wolves, these specific parameters will be addressed: 1. Age and cause-specific mortality of elk. 2. Seasonal distribution and key elk seasonal use areas. 3. Age, sex distribution/composition of the elk population. 4. Long-term elk abundance and distribution monitoring plan.

AbstractThe endemic radiation of the threespine stickleback in North America possesses features that will permit us to gain unique insights into evolutionary pattern and process. Already, comparison of populations has demonstrated a remarkable level of adaptive differentiation in reproductive behavior across populations in both southern British Columbia, Canada, and the Cook Inlet Region of Alaska, U.S.A. In small, shallow lakes, threespine stickleback feed predominantly on benthic invertebrates in the shallow littoral zone. They form large groups that attack nests defended by males, and consume all of the young within. In contrast, in larger, more oligotrophic lakes, adult stickleback feed primarily on plankton in large open-water foraging groups. They do not form groups that cannibalize young in nests. In these non-cannibalistic populations, males perform more conspicuous courtship behavior than do those in cannibalistic populations, apparently because risk of attack by visually hunting conspecifics is low. Courtship in these lakes more often includes the conspicuous zig-zag dance, and less often, meandering and dorsal pricking. Anadromous populations tend to be cannibalistic, but also are often behaviorally intermediate. They incorporate the zig-zag dance in courtship more often than do males in cannibalistic freshwater populations, but also usually incorporate the less conspicuous dorsal pricking behavior. These results suggest that the ancestral condition was intermediate and that both cannibalistic and non-cannibalistic freshwater populations display some derived elements in their reproductive repertoires. This kind of comparison among populations thought to have been independently derived from the marine form can provide insights into the patterns and causes of adaptive diversification. For populations such as these, carefully chosen from disparate geographic locations so as to preclude common evolutionary history after colonization of freshwater,

Abstract The distribution and abundance of the white-tailed jackrabbit Lepus townsendii have declined significantly since 1950, continuing a trend that began in some regions of its range in the late 1800s. We reviewed museum records and the literature to evaluate the status of the white-tailed jackrabbit in each state and province in its historical range and evaluated possible reasons for its decline. Our evaluation revealed its extirpation or decline throughout much of its range, but its legal or conservation status does generally not reflect this precarious status. We note its extirpation in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and potential extirpation in British Columbia, Oregon, Illinois, and Wisconsin. We classified the white-tailed jackrabbit to be broadly extirpated in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Nebraska and California, and declining with local extirpations in Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and South Dakota. We consider it to be a relict in Ontario, and possibly declining in Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana. We consider only Manitoba to have a possibly stable population. Determining the reasons for the species' reduced distribution is difficult, as the decline appears to be due to multiple factors, none of which provide a universal explanation. We dismissed road kills, recreational hunting, disease and parasites, and competition with black-tailed jackrabbits Lepus californicus as causes of the widespread population declines and extirpations. We concluded that habitat alterations and climate change are overriding factors, and that past depredation measures and increased predator populations have likely contributed to the decline. These hypotheses require further testing. We recommend more research on the distribution, abundance, ecology, and population dynamics of white-tailed jackrabbits, and management that includes a frank appraisal of the species' status, the potential for grassland restoration, and programs to reintroduce populations into prairie preserves and restored grasslands.

The expansion of moose into southern British Columbia caused the decline and extirpation of woodland caribou due to their shared predators, a process commonly referred to as apparent competition. Using an adaptive management experiment, we tested the hypothesis that reducing moose to historic levels would reduce apparent competition and therefor recover caribou populations. Nested within this broad hypothesis were three specific hypotheses: (1) sport hunting could be used to substantially reduce moose numbers to an ecological target; (2) wolves in this ecosystem were primarily limited by moose abundance; and (3) caribou were limited by wolf predation. These hypotheses were evaluated with a before-after control-impact (BACI) design that included response metrics such as population trends and vital rates of caribou, moose, and wolves. Three caribou subpopulations were subject to the moose reduction treatment and two were in a reference area where moose were not reduced. When the moose harvest was increased, the moose population declined substantially in the treatment area (by 70%) but not the reference area, suggesting that the policy had the desired effect and was not caused by a broader climatic process. Wolf numbers subsequently declined in the treatment area, with wolf dispersal rates 2.5× greater, meaning that dispersal was the likely mechanism behind the wolf numerical response, though reduced recruitment and starvation was also documented in the treatment area. Caribou adult survival increased from 0.78 to 0.88 in the treatment area, but declined in the reference. Caribou recruitment was unaffected by the treatment. The largest caribou subpopulation stabilized in the treatment area, but declined in the reference area. The observed population stability is comparable to other studies that used intensive wolf control, but is insufficient to achieve recovery, suggesting that multiple limiting factors and corresponding management tools must be addressed simultaneously to achieve population growth.

AbstractAt Boundary Bay, British Columbia, Canada, Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) captured 94 Dunlins (Calidris alpina) in 652 hunts. The two main hunting methods were open attacks on flying Dunlins (62%) and stealth attacks on roosting or foraging Dunlins (35%). Peregrines hunted throughout the day, yet the kill rate per observation hour dropped 1–2 hr before high tide and peaked 1–2 hr after high tide. The drop in kill rate coincided with the departure of the mass of Dunlins for over-ocean flights lasting 2–4 hr. The peak in kill rate occurred just after the tide began to ebb and the Dunlins returned to forage in the shore zone. The hypothesis that closeness to shoreline vegetation is dangerous for Dunlins is supported by three converging lines of evidence: (1) the high success rate (44%) of peregrine hunts over the shore zone compared to the rate (11%) over tide flats and ocean; (2) the high kill rate per observation hour at high tide; and (3) the positive correlation of kill rate with the height of the tides. Seven of 13 Dunlins killed by Merlins (Falco columbarius) and all five Dunlins killed by Northern Harriers (Circus cyaneus) were also captured in the shore zone.Depredación de Calidris alpina por Rapaces durante el Período Invernal con Relación al Ciclo de la MareaResumen. En la Bahía Boundary, Columbia Británica, Canadá, halcones Falco peregrinus capturaron 94 ejemplares de Calidris alpina en 652 horas. Los dos métodos principales de caza fueron ataques abiertos sobre individuos que estaban volando (62%) y ataques encubiertos sobre individuos que estaban posados o forrajeando (35%). F. peregrinus cazó a lo largo del día, pero la tasa de matanza por hora de observación disminuyó 1–2 hr antes de la pleamar y alcanzó un máximo 1–2 hr después de la pleamar. La caída en la tasa de matanza coincidió con la partida en masa de C. alpina para realizar vuelos sobre el océano que duraron 2–4 hr. El pico en la tasa de matanza ocurrió justo después de que la marea comenzó a menguar y de que los individuos de C. alpina regresaron a forrajear a la zona de playa. La hipótesis de que la cercanía de la vegetación a la línea de playa es peligrosa para C. alpina es apoyada por tres líneas convergentes de evidencia: (1) la alta tasa de éxito (44%) de las cacerías de F. peregrinus sobre la zona de playa comparada con la tasa (11%) de las cacerías sobre los planos de la marea y el océano; (2) la alta tasa de matanza por hora de observación durante la pleamar; y (3) la correlación positiva de la tasa de matanza con la altura de las mareas. Siete de 13 individuos de C. alpina cazados por F. columbarius y todos 5 individuos de C. alpina cazados por Circus cyaneus también fueron atrapados en la zona de playa.

AbstractEvidence for aboriginal whale hunting, long thought to be a practice limited to Northwest Coast tribes in northern Washington and British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, was previously reported at the Par-Tee site on the Oregon coast between about cal AD 620 and 990. An age estimate for a humpback whale phalanx with an embedded elk bone harpoon point was based on radiocarbon dates on charcoal not directly associated with the whale bone. We present high-resolution accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS)14C dates for purified bone collagen extracted directly from the whale phalanx and embedded harpoon point. A calibrated date for the harpoon point places the whale hunting event between about cal AD 430 and 550. The apparent14C age of the whale bone is estimated to be 220±3714C yr older than the marine model age at that time, consistent with values from the eastern Pacific. These new dates suggest that whale hunting took place on the Oregon coast as much as 200–500 yr earlier than previously reported and more than a millennium before historic contact in the region. Our research highlights the significance of museum collections and high-resolution AMS14C dating for addressing a variety of issues related to ancient archaeological sites and cultures.

Full TextThe first law enacted in Canada to protect existing Aboriginal rights was section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.2 The first law in Canada to recognize the rights of non-human animals as anything other than property has yet to be enacted. The first Supreme Court of Canada (hereafter referred to as the Court) case to interpret section 35 was R. v. Sparrow.3 The 1990 case confirmed an Aboriginal right of the Musqueam peoples of British Columbia to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes. Since this precedent-setting case, many similar claims have been brought before the courts by way of the fluctuating legal space created by s.35. Many of these cases have been about establishing rights to fish4, hunt5, and trap non-human animals (hereafter referred to as animals). The Court has developed, and continues to develop tests to determine the existence and scope of Aboriginal rights. These tests primarily embody cultural, political and, to a surprisingly lesser degree, legal forces. One of the principal problems with these tests is that they privilege, through the western philosophical lens, the interests of humans. Animals are, at best, the resources over which ownership is being contested. The Euro-centric legal conceptualization of animals as 'resources' over which ownership can be exerted is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the relegation of animals solely to a utilitarian role is antithetical to Indigenous-animal relationships and therefore demonstrates one of the fundamental ways the Canadian legal system is ill equipped to give adequate consideration to Indigenous law. Second, failure to consider animals' inherent value and agency in this context reproduces the human-animal and culture-nature binaries that are at the root of many of western Euro-centric society's inequities. This paper argues that Aboriginal peoples' relationships with animals are a necessary, integral and distinctive part of their cultures6 and, therefore, these relationships and the actors within them are entitled to the aegis of s.35. Through the legal protection of these relationships, animals will gain significant protection as a corollary benefit. If the Court were to protect the cultural relationships between animals and Aboriginal groups, a precondition would be acceptance of Indigenous legal systems. Thus, this paper gives a brief answer to the question, what are Indigenous legal systems and why are animals integral to them? The Anishinabe (also known Ojibwe or Chippewa) are Indigenous peoples who have historically lived in the Great Lakes region. The Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron is home to the Cape Croker Indian Reserve, where the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation live. The people of this First Nation identify as Anishinabe. The Anishinabek case of Nanabush v. Deer is a law among these people and is used throughout the paper as an example of Indigenous-animal relationships. Making the significant assumption that s.35 has the capacity to recognize Indigenous law, the subsequent section of the paper asks why we should protect these relationships and how that protection should be achieved. Finally, the paper concludes that both the ability of s.35 to recognize Indigenous-animal relationships, and the judicial and political will to grant such recognition, are unlikely. Indigenous-animal relationships are integral to the distinctive culture of the Anishinabek, however the courts would be hesitant to allow such an uncertain and potentially far-reaching right. This is not surprising given that such a claim by both Indigenous and animal groups would challenge the foundations upon which the Canadian legal system is based. There are many sensitive issues inherent in this topic. It should be noted the author is not of Indigenous ancestry, but is making every effort to learn about and respect the Indigenous legal systems discussed. While this paper focuses on a number of Anishinabek laws; it is neither a complete analysis of these practices, nor one that can be transferred, without adaptation, to other peoples. Finally, Indigenous peoples and animal rights and Indigenous law scholars, such as Tom Regan and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, respectively, may insist on an abolitionist approach to animal 'use' or reject the legitimacy of s.35 itself.7 These perspectives are worthy and necessary. This paper positions itself amongst these and other sources in order to reflect upon the timely and important issue of the legal status of Indigenous-animal relationships. I:WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? The Law Commission of Canada defines a legal tradition as “a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of law, the role of law in the society and the polity, the proper organization and operation of a legal system, and the way law is or should be made, applied, studied, perfected and taught.”8 Indigenous legal traditions fit this description. They are living systems of beliefs and practices, and have been recognized as such by the courts.9 Indigenous practices developed into systems of law that have guided communities in their governance, and in their relationships amongst their own and other cultures and with the Earth.10 These laws have developed through stories, historical events that may be viewed as ‘cases,’ and other lived experiences. Indigenous laws are generally non-prescriptive, non-adversarial and non-punitive and aim to promote respect and consensus, as well as close connection with the land, the Creator, and the community. Indigenous laws are a means through which vital knowledge of social order within the community is transmitted, revived and retained. After European ‘settlement’ the influence of Indigenous laws waned. This was due in part to the state’s policies of assimilation, relocation and enfranchisement. 11 Despite these assaults, Indigenous legal systems have persevered; they continue to provide guidance to many communities, and are being revived and re-learned in others. For example, the Nisga’a’s legal code, Ayuuk, guides their communities and strongly informs legislation enacted under the Nisga’a Final Agreement, the first modern treaty in British Columbia.12 The land and jurisdiction claims of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations ultimately resulted in the Court’s decision in Delgamuukw,13 a landmark case that established the existence of Aboriginal title. The (overturned) BC Supreme Court’s statement in Delgamuukw14 reveals two of the many challenges in demonstrating the validity of Indigenous laws: “what the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en witnesses[es] describe as law is really a most uncertain and highly flexible set of customs which are frequently not followed by the Indians [sic] themselves.” The first challenge is that many laws are not in full practice, and therefore not as visible as they could be and once were. What the courts fail to acknowledge, however, is that the ongoing colonial project has served to stifle, extinguish and alter these laws. The second challenge is that the kind of law held and practiced by Indigenous peoples is quite foreign to most non-Indigenous people. Many Indigenous laws have animals as central figures. In Anishinabek traditional law, often the animals are the lawmakers15: they develop the legal principles and have agency as law givers. For instance, the Anishinabek case Nanabush v. Deer, Wolf , as outlined by Burrows, is imbued with legal principles, lessons on conduct and community governance, as well as ‘offenses’ and penalties. It is not a case that was adjudicated by an appointed judge in a courtroom, but rather one that has developed over time as a result of peoples’ relationships with the Earth and its inhabitants. An abbreviated summary of the case hints at these legal lessons: Nanabush plays a trick on a deer and deliberately puts the deer in a vulnerable position. In that moment of vulnerability, Nanabush kills the deer and then roasts its body for dinner. While he is sleeping and waiting for the deer to be cooked, the Wolf people come by and take the deer. Nanabush wakes up hungry, and out of desperation transforms into a snake and eats the brains out of the deer head. Once full, he is stuck inside the head and transforms back into his original shape, but with the deer head still stuck on. He is then chased and nearly killed by hunters who mistake him for a real deer. This case is set within the legal context of the Anishinabek’s treaty with deer. In signing the treaty, the people were reminded to respect beings in life and death and that gifts come when beings respect each other in interrelationships.16 Nanabush violated the rights of the deer and his peoples’ treaty with the deer. He violated the laws by taking things through trickery, and by causing harm to those he owed respect. Because his actions were not in accordance with Anishinabek legal principles, he was punished: Nanabush lost the thing he was so desperately searching for, and he ended up nearly being killed. This case establishes two lessons. The first is that, like statutory and common law, with which Canadians are familiar, Indigenous law does not exist in isolation. Principles are devised based on multiple teachings, pre- vious rules and the application of these rules to facts. That there are myriad sources of Indigenous law suggests that the learning of Indigenous law would require substantial effort on the part of Canadian law-makers.17 The second is that animals hold an important place in Indigenous law, and those relationships with animals – and the whole ‘natural’ world – strongly inform the way they relate to the Earth. II: CAN CANADIAN LAW ACCEPT INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? If there were a right recognized under s.35 concerning the Indigenous-animal relationship, what would it look like? Courts develop legal tests to which the facts of each case are applied, theoretically creating a degree of predictability as to how a matter will be judged. Introduced in Sparrow, and more fully developed in Van der Peet, a ‘test’ for how to assess a valid Aboriginal right has been set out by the Court. Summarized, the test is: “in order to be an Aboriginal right an activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the Aboriginal group claiming the right.”18 There are ten, differently weighted factors that a court will consider in making this assessment. The right being ‘tested’ in this discussion is the one exemplified in Nanabush v. Deer: the ability of Indigenous peoples to recognize and practice their laws, which govern relationships, including death, with deer and other animals. The courts have agreed that a generous, large and liberal construction should be given to Indigenous rights in order to give full effect to the constitutional recognition of the distinctiveness of Aboriginal culture. Still, it is the courts that hold the power to define rights as they conceive them best aligning with Canadian society19; this is one way that the Canadian state reproduces its systems of power over Indigenous peoples.20 The application of the Aboriginal right exemplified in Nanbush v. Deer to the Sparrow and Van der Peet tests would likely conclude that the Anishinabek do have an integral and distinctive relationship with animals. However, due to the significant discretion of the Court on a number of very subjective and politically sensitive factors, it is uncertain that the Nanabush v. Deer case would ‘pass’ Van der Peet’s required ten factors.21 This is indicative of the structural restraints that s.35 imposes. 22 The questions it asks impair its ability to capture and respect the interrelationships inherent in Indigenous peoples’ interactions with animals. For example, the Court will characterize hunting or fishing as solely subsistence, perhaps with a cultural element. Shin Imai contends these activities mean much more: “To many…subsistence is a means of reaffirming Aboriginal identity by passing on traditional knowledge to future generations. Subsistence in this sense moves beyond mere economics, encompassing the cultural, social and spiritual aspects for the communities.”23 Scholar Kent McNeil concludes that: “regardless of the strengths of legal arguments in favour of Indigenous peoples, there are limits to how far the courts […] are willing to go to correct the injustices caused by colonialism and dispossession.”24 It is often not the legal principles that determine outcomes, but rather the extent to which Indigenous rights can be reconciled with the history of settlement without disturbing the current economic and political structure of the dominant culture. III:WHY PROTECT THE ANIMAL-INDIGENOUS RELATIONSHIP? Legally protecting animal-Indigenous relationships offers symbiotic, mutually respectful benefits for animals and for the scope of Aboriginal rights that can be practiced. For instance, a protected relationship would have indirect benefits for animals’ habitat and right to life: it would necessitate protecting the means necessary, such as governance of the land, for realization of the right. This could include greater conservation measures, more contiguous habitat, enforcement of endangered species laws, and, ideally, a greater awareness and appreciation by humans of animals and their needs. Critical studies scholars have developed the argument that minority groups should not be subject to culturally biased laws of the mainstream polity.24 Law professor Maneesha Deckha points out that animals, despite the central role they play in a lot of ‘cultural defences,’ have been excluded from our ethical consideration. Certainly, the role of animals has been absent in judicial consideration of Aboriginal rights.26 Including animals, Deckha argues, allows for a complete analysis of these cultural issues and avoids many of the anthropocentric attitudes inherent in Euro-centric legal traditions. In Jack and Charlie27 two Coast Salish men were charged with hunting deer out of season. They argued that they needed to kill a deer in order to have raw meat for an Aboriginal religious ceremony. The Court found that killing the deer was not part of the ceremony and that there was insufficient evidence to establish that raw meat was required. This is a case where a more nuanced consideration of the laws and relationships with animals would have resulted in a more just application of the (Canadian) law and prevented the reproduction of imperialist attitudes. A criticism that could be lodged against practicing these relationships is that they conflict with the liberty and life interests of animals.28 Theoretically, if Indigenous laws are given the legal and political room to fully operate, a balance between the liberty of animals and the cultural and legal rights of Indigenous peoples can be struck.29 Indeed, Indigenous peoples’ cultural and legal concern for Earth is at its most rudimentary a concern for the land, which is at the heart of the challenge to the Canadian colonial system. If a negotiated treaty was reached, or anti-cruelty and conservation laws were assured in the Indigenous peoples’ self government system, then Canadian anti-cruelty30 and conservation laws,31 the effectiveness of which are already questionable, could be displaced in recognition of Indigenous governance.32 Indigenous peoples in Canada were – and are, subject to imposed limitations – close to the environment in ways that can seem foreign to non-Indigenous people.33 For example, some origin stories and oral histories explain how boundaries between humans and animals are at times absent: Animal-human beings like raven, coyote and rabbit created them [humans] and other beings. People …acted with respect toward many animals in expectation of reciprocity; or expressed kinship or alliance with them in narratives, songs, poems, parables, performances, rituals, and material objects. 34 Furthering or reviving these relationships can advance the understanding of both Indigenous legal systems and animal rights theory. Some animal rights theorists struggle with how to explain the cultural construction of species difference: Indigenous relationships with animals are long standing, lived examples of a different cultural conception of how to relate to animals and also of an arguably healthy, minimally problematic way to approach the debate concerning the species divide.35 A key tenet of animal-Indigenous relationships is respect. Shepard Krech posits that Indigenous peoples are motivated to obtain the necessary resources and goals in ‘proper’ ways: many believe that animals return to the Earth to be killed, provided that hunters demonstrate proper respect.36 This demonstrates a spiritual connection, but there is also a concrete connection between Indigenous peoples and animals. In providing themselves with food and security, they ‘manage’ what Canadian law calls ‘resources.’37 Because of the physical nature of these activities, and their practical similarity with modern ‘resource management,’ offering this as ‘proof’ of physical connection with animals and their habitat may be more successful than ‘proving’ a spiritual relationship. Finally, there are health reasons that make the Indigenous-animal relationship is important. Many cultures have come to depend on the nutrients they derive from particular hunted or fished animals. For example, nutrition and physical activity transitions related to hunting cycles have had negative impacts on individual and community health.38 This shows the multidimensionality of hunting, the significance of health, and, by extension, the need for animal ‘resources’ to be protected. IV: HOW SHOULD WE PROTECT THESE ABORIGINAL RIGHTS? If the Anishinabek and the deer ‘win’ the constitutional legal test (‘against’ the state) and establish a right to protect their relationships with animals, what, other than common law remedies,39 would follow? Below are ideas for legal measures that could be taken from the human or the animal perspective, or both, where benefits accrue to both parties. If animals had greater agency and legal status, their needs as species and as individuals could have a meaningful place in Canadian common and statutory law. In Nanabush v. Deer, this would mean that the deer would be given representation and that legal tests would need to be developed to determine the animals’ rights and interests. Currently the courts support the view that animals can be treated under the law as any other inanimate item of property. Such a legal stance is inconsistent with a rational, common-sense view of animals,40 and certainly with Anishinabek legal principles discussed herein.41 There are ongoing theoretical debates that inform the practical questions of how animal equality would be achieved: none of these in isolation offers a complete solution, but combined they contribute to the long term goal. Barsh and James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson advocate an adoption of the reasoning in the Australian case Mabo v. Queensland,42 where whole Aboriginal legal systems were imported intact into the common law. Some principles that Canada should be following can also be drawn from international treaties that Canada has or should have signed on to.43 Another way to seek protection from the human perspective is through the freedom of religion and conscience section of the Charter. Professor John Borrows constructs a full argument for this, and cites its challenges, in Living Law on a Living Earth: Aboriginal Religion, Law and the Constitution.44 The strongest, but perhaps most legally improbable, way to protect the animal- Indigenous relationship is for Canada to recognize a third, Indigenous order of government (in addition to provincial and federal), where all three orders are equal and inform one another’s laws. This way, Indigenous laws would have the legal space to fully function and be revived. Endowing Indigenous peoples with the right to govern their relationships would require a great acquiescence of power by governments and a commitment to the establishment and maintenance of healthy self-government in Indigenous communities. Louise Mandell offers some reasons why Canada should treat Aboriginal people in new ways, at least one of which is salient to the third order of government argument: To mend the [E]arth, which must be done, governments must reassess the information which the dominant culture has dismissed. Some of that valuable information is located in the oral histories of Aboriginal Peoples. This knowledge will become incorporated into decisions affecting the [E]arth’s landscape when Aboriginal Peoples are equal partners in decisions affecting their territories.45 V: CONCLUSION A legal system that does not have to justify its existence or defend its worth is less vulnerable to challenges.46 While it can be concluded that s.35 has offered some legal space for Indigenous laws and practices, it is too deeply couched in Euro-centric legal traditions and the anthropocentric cultural assumptions that they carry. The most effective strategy for advancing Indigenous laws and culture, that would also endow many animals with greater agency, and relax the culture-nature, human-animal binaries, is the formal recognition of a third order of government. Lisa Chartrand explains that recognition of legal pluralism would be a mere affirmation of legal systems that exist, but which are stifled: “…this country is a multijuridical state, where the distinct laws and rules of three systems come together within the geographic boundaries of one political territory.” 47 Revitalizing Indigenous legal systems is and will be a challenging undertaking. Indigenous communities must reclaim, define and understand their own traditions: “The loss of culture and traditions caused by the historic treatment of Aboriginal communities makes this a formidable challenge for some communities. Equally significant is the challenge for the Canadian state to create political and legal space to accommodate revitalized Indigenous legal traditions and Aboriginal law-making.”48 The project of revitalizing Indigenous legal traditions requires the commitment of resources sufficient for the task, and transformative change to procedural and substantive law. The operation of these laws within, or in addition to, Canadian law would of course cause widespread, but worthwhile controversy. In Animal Bodies, Cultural Justice49 Deckha argues that an ethical relationship with the animal Other must be established in order realize cultural and animal rights. This paper explores and demonstrates the value in finding legal space where cultural pluralism and respect for animals can give rise to the practice of Indigenous laws and the revitalization of animal-Indigenous relationships. As Borrows writes: “Anishinabek law provides guidance about how to theorize, practice and order our association with the [E]arth, and could do so in a way that produces answers that are very different from those found in other sources.”50 (see PDF for references)

AbstractThe historic extirpation and subsequent recovery of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) have profoundly changed coastal social-ecological systems across the northeastern Pacific. Today, the conservation status of sea otters is informed by estimates of population carrying capacity or growth rates independent of human impacts. However, archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that for millennia, complex hunting and management protocols by Indigenous communities limited sea otter abundance near human settlements to reduce the negative impacts of this keystone predator on shared shellfish prey. To assess relative sea otter prevalence in the Holocene, we compared the size structure of ancient California mussels (Mytilus californianus) from six archaeological sites in two regions on the Pacific Northwest Coast, to modern California mussels at locations with and without sea otters. We also quantified modern mussel size distributions from eight locations on the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada, varying in sea otter occupation time. Comparisons of mussel size spectra revealed that ancient mussel size distributions are consistently more similar to modern size distributions at locations with a prolonged absence of sea otters. This indicates that late Holocene sea otters were maintained well below carrying capacity near human settlements as a result of human intervention. These findings illuminate the conditions under which sea otters and humans persisted over millennia prior to the Pacific maritime fur trade and raise important questions about contemporary conservation objectives for an iconic marine mammal and the social-ecological system in which it is embedded.

The distribution and abundance of the white-tailed jackrabbit Lepus townsendii have declined significantly since 1950, continuing a trend that began in some regions of its range in the late 1800s. We reviewed museum records and the literature to evaluate the status of the white-tailed jackrabbit in each state and province in its historical range and evaluated possible reasons for its decline. Our evaluation revealed its extirpation or decline throughout much of its range, but its legal or conservation status does generally not reflect this precarious status. We note its extirpation in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and potential extirpation in British Columbia, Oregon, Illinois, and Wisconsin. We classified the white-tailed jackrabbit to be broadly extirpated in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Nebraska and California, and declining with local extirpations in Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and South Dakota. We consider it to be a relict in Ontario, and possibly declining in Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana. We consider only Manitoba to have a possibly stable population. Determining the reasons for the species' reduced distribution is difficult, as the decline appears to be due to multiple factors, none of which provide a universal explanation. We dismissed road kills, recreational hunting, disease and parasites, and competition with black-tailed jackrabbits Lepus californicus as causes of the widespread population declines and extirpations. We concluded that habitat alterations and climate change are overriding factors, and that past depredation measures and increased predator populations have likely contributed to the decline. These hypotheses require further testing. We recommend more research on the distribution, abundance, ecology, and population dynamics of white-tailed jackrabbits, and management that includes a frank appraisal of the species' status, the potential for grassland restoration, and programs to reintroduce populations into prairie preserves and restored grasslands.

In 1999, the TV movie Shark Attack depicted an attack by mutant great white sharks on the population of Cape Town. By the time the third entry in the series, Shark Attack 3, aired in 2002, mutant great whites had lost their lustre and were replaced as antagonists with the megalodon: a giant shark originating not in any laboratory, but history, having lived from approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago. The megalodon was resurrected again in May 2021 through a trifecta of events. A video of a basking shark encounter in the Atlantic went viral on the social media platform TikTok, due to users misidentifying it as a megalodon caught on tape. At the same time a boy received publicity for finding a megalodon tooth on a beach in South Carolina on his fifth birthday (Scott). And finally, the video game Stranded Deep, in which a megalodon is featured as a major enemy, was released as one of the monthly free games on the PlayStation Plus gaming service. These examples form part of a larger trend of alleged megalodon sightings in recent years, emerging as a component of the modern resurgence of cryptozoology. In the words of Bernard Heuvelmans, the Belgian zoologist who both popularised the term and was a leading figure of the field, cryptozoology is the “science of hidden animals”, which he further explained were more generally referred to as ‘unknowns’, even though they are typically known to local populations—at least sufficiently so that we often indirectly know of their existence, and certain aspects of their appearance and behaviour. It would be better to call them animals ‘undescribed by science,’ at least according to prescribed zoological rules. (1-2) In other words, a large aspect of cryptozoology as a field is taking the legendary creatures of non-Western mythology and finding materialist explanations for them compatible with Western biology. In many ways, this is a relic of the era of European imperialism, when many creatures of Africa and the Americas were “hidden animals” to European eyes (Dendle 200-01; Flores 557; Guimont). A major example of this is Bigfoot beliefs, a large subset of which took Native American legends about hairy wild men and attempted to prove that they were actually sightings of relict Gigantopithecus. These “hidden animals”—Bigfoot, Nessie, the chupacabra, the glawackus—are referred to as ‘cryptids’ by cryptozoologists (Regal 22, 81-104). Almost unique in cryptozoology, the megalodon is a cryptid based entirely on Western scientific development, and even the notion that it survives comes from standard scientific analysis (albeit analysis which was later superseded). Much like living mammoths and Bigfoot, what might be called the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ serves to reinforce a fairy tale of its own. It reflects the desire to believe that there are still areas of the Earth untouched enough by human destruction to sustain massive animal life (Dendle 199-200). Indeed, megalodon’s continued existence would help absolve humanity for the oceanic aspect of the Sixth Extinction, by its role as an alternative apex predator; cryptozoologist Michael Goss even proposed that whales and giant squids are rare not from human causes, but precisely because megalodons are feeding on them (40). Horror scholar Michael Fuchs has pointed out that shark media, particularly the 1975 film Jaws and its 2006 video game adaptation Jaws Unleashed, are imbued with eco-politics (Fuchs 172-83). These connections, as well as the modern megalodon’s surge in popularity, make it notable that none of Syfy’s climate change-focused Sharknado films featured a megalodon. Despite the lack of a Megalodonado, the popular appeal of the megalodon serves as an important case study. Given its scientific origin and dynamic relationship with popular culture, I argue that the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ illustrates how the boundaries between ‘hard’ science and mythology, fiction and reality, as well as ‘monster’ and ‘animal’, are not as firm as advocates of the Western science tradition might believe. As this essay highlights, science can be a mythology of its own, and monsters can serve as its gods of the gaps—or, in the case of megalodon, the god of the depths. Megalodon Fossils: A Short History Ancient peoples of various cultures likely viewed fossilised teeth of megalodons in the area of modern-day Syria (Mayor, First Fossil Hunters 257). Over the past 2500 years, Native American cultures in North America used megalodon teeth both as curios and cutting tools, due to their large size and serrated edges. A substantial trade in megalodon teeth fossils existed between the cultures inhabiting the areas of the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio River Valley (Lowery et al. 93-108). A 1961 study found megalodon teeth present as offerings in pre-Columbian temples across Central America, including in the Mayan city of Palenque in Mexico and Sitio Conte in Panama (de Borhegyi 273-96). But these cases led to no mythologies incorporating megalodons, in contrast to examples such as the Unktehi, a Sioux water monster of myth likely inspired by a combination of mammoth and mosasaur fossils (Mayor, First Americans 221-38). In early modern Europe, megalodon teeth were initially referred to as ‘tongue stones’, due to their similarity in size and shape to human tongues—just one of many ways modern cryptozoology comes from European religious and mystical thought (Dendle 190-216). In 1605, English scholar Richard Verstegan published his book A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, which included an engraving of a tongue stone, making megalodon teeth potentially the subject of the first known illustration of any fossil (Davidson 333). In Malta, from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, megalodon teeth, known as ‘St. Paul’s tongue’, were used as charms to ward off the evil eye, dipped into drinks suspected of being poisoned, and even ground into powder and consumed as medicine (Zammit-Maempel, “Evil Eye” plate III; Zammit-Maempel, “Handbills” 220; Freller 31-32). While megalodon teeth were valued in and of themselves, they were not incorporated into myths, or led to a belief in megalodons still being extant. Indeed, save for their size, megalodon teeth were hard to distinguish from those of living sharks, like great whites. Instead, both the identification of megalodons as a species, and the idea that they might still be alive, were notions which originated from extrapolations of the results of nineteenth and twentieth century European scientific studies. In particular, the major culprit was the famous British 1872-76 HMS Challenger expedition, which led to the establishment of oceanography as a branch of science. In 1873, Challenger recovered fossilised megalodon teeth from the South Pacific, the first recovered in the open ocean (Shuker 48; Goss 35; Roesch). In 1959, the zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky of Queen Mary College analysed the teeth recovered by the Challenger and argued (erroneously, as later seen) that the accumulation of manganese dioxide on its surface indicated that one had to have been deposited within the last 11,000 years, while another was given an age of 24,000 years (1331-32). However, these views have more recently been debunked, with megalodon extinction occurring over two million years ago at the absolute latest (Pimiento and Clements 1-5; Coleman and Huyghe 138; Roesch). Tschernezky’s 1959 claim that megalodons still existed as of 9000 BCE was followed by the 1963 book Sharks and Rays of Australian Seas, a posthumous publication by ichthyologist David George Stead. Stead recounted a story told to him in 1918 by fishermen in Port Stephens, New South Wales, of an encounter with a fully white shark in the 115-300 foot range, which Stead argued was a living megalodon. That this account came from Stead was notable as he held a PhD in biology, had founded the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia, and had debunked an earlier supposed sea monster sighting in Sydney Harbor in 1907 (45-46). The Stead account formed the backbone of cryptozoological claims for the continued existence of the megalodon, and after the book’s publication, multiple reports of giant shark sightings in the Pacific from the 1920s and 1930s were retroactively associated with relict megalodons (Shuker 43, 49; Coleman and Huyghe 139-40; Goss 40-41; Roesch). A Monster of Science and Culture As I have outlined above, the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ had as its origin story not in Native American or African myth, but Western science: the Challenger Expedition, a London zoologist, and an Australian ichthyologist. Nor was the idea of a living megalodon necessarily outlandish; in the decades after the Challenger Expedition, a number of supposedly extinct fish species had been discovered to be anything but. In the late 1800s, the goblin shark and frilled shark, both considered ‘living fossils’, had been found in the Pacific (Goss 34-35). In 1938, the coelacanth, also believed by Western naturalists to have been extinct for millions of years, was rediscovered (at least by Europeans) in South Africa, samples having occasionally been caught by local fishermen for centuries. The coelacanth in particular helped give scientific legitimacy to the idea, prevalent for decades by that point, that living dinosaurs—associated with a legendary creature called the mokele-mbembe—might still exist in the heart of Central Africa (Guimont). In 1976, a US Navy ship off Hawaii recovered a megamouth shark, a deep-water species completely unknown prior. All of these oceanic discoveries gave credence to the idea that the megalodon might also still survive (Coleman and Clark 66-68, 156-57; Shuker 41; Goss 35; Roesch). Indeed, Goss has noted that prior to 1938, respectable ichthyologists were more likely to believe in the continued existence of the megalodon than the coelacanth (39-40). Of course, the major reason why speculation over megalodon survival had such public resonance was completely unscientific: the already-entrenched fascination with the fact that it had been a locomotive-sized killer. This had most clearly been driven home by a 1909 display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, Bashford Dean, an ichthyologist at the museum, reconstructed an immense megalodon jaw, complete with actual fossil teeth. However, due to the fact that Dean assumed that all megalodon teeth were approximately the same size as the largest examples medially in the jaws, Dean’s jaw was at least one third larger than the likely upper limit of megalodon size. Nevertheless, the public perception of the megalodon remained at the 80-foot length that Dean extrapolated, rather than the more realistic 55-foot length that was the likely approximate upper size (Randall 170; Shuker 47; Goss 36-39). In particular, this inaccurate size estimate became entrenched in public thought due to a famous photograph of Dean and other museum officials posing inside his reconstructed jaw—a photograph which appeared in perhaps the most famous piece of shark fiction of all time, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws. As it would turn out, the megalodon connection was itself a relic from the movie’s evolutionary ancestor, Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws, from the year before. In the novel, the Woods Hole ichthyologist Matt Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film) proposes that megalodons not only still exist, but they are the same species as great white sharks, with the smaller size of traditional great whites being due to the fact that they are simply on the small end of the megalodon size range (257-59). Benchley was reflecting on what was then the contemporary idea that megalodons likely resembled scaled-up great white sharks; something which is no longer as accepted. This was particularly notable as a number of claimed sightings stated that the alleged megalodons were larger great whites (Shuker 48-49), perhaps circuitously due to the Jaws influence. However, Goss was apparently unaware of Benchley’s linkage when he noted in 1987 (incidentally the year of the fourth and final Jaws movie) that to a megalodon, “the great white shark of Jaws would have been a stripling and perhaps a between-meals snack” (36). The publication of the Jaws novel led to an increased interest in the megalodon amongst cryptozoologists (Coleman and Clark 154; Mullis, “Cryptofiction” 246). But even so, it attracted rather less attention than other cryptids. From 1982-98, Heuvelmans served as president of the International Society of Cryptozoology, whose official journal was simply titled Cryptozoology. The notion of megalodon survival was addressed only once in its pages, and that as a brief mention in a letter to the editor (Raynal 112). This was in stark contrast to the oft-discussed potential for dinosaurs, mammoths, and Neanderthals to remain alive in the present day. In 1991, prominent British cryptozoologist Karl Shuker published an article endorsing the idea of extant megalodons (46-49). But this was followed by a 1998 article by Ben S. Roesch in The Cryptozoology Review severely criticising the methodology of Shuker and others who believed in the megalodon’s existence (Roesch). Writing in 1999, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, arguably the most prominent post-Heuvelmans cryptozoologists, were agnostic on the megalodon’s survival (155). The British palaeozoologist Darren Naish, a critic of cryptozoology, has pointed out that even if Shuker and others are correct and the megalodon continues to live in deep sea crevasses, it would be distinct enough from the historical surface-dwelling megalodon to be a separate species, to which he gave the hypothetical classification Carcharocles modernicus (Naish). And even the public fascination with the megalodon has its limits: at a 24 June 2004 auction in New York City, a set of megalodon jaws went on sale for $400,000, but were left unpurchased (Couzin 174). New Mythologies The ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ is effectively a fairy tale born of the blending of science, mythology, and most importantly, fiction. Beyond Jaws or Shark Attack 3—and potentially having inspired the latter (Weinberg)—perhaps the key patient zero of megalodon fiction is Steve Alten’s 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, which went through a tortuous development adaptation process to become the 2018 film The Meg (Mullis, “Journey” 291-95). In the novel, the USS Nautilus, the US Navy’s first nuclear submarine and now a museum ship in Connecticut, is relaunched in order to hunt down the megalodon, only to be chomped in half by the shark. This is a clear allusion to Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), where his Nautilus (namesake of the real submarine) is less successfully attacked by a giant cuttlefish (Alten, Meg 198; Verne 309-17). Meanwhile, in Alten’s 1999 sequel The Trench, an industrialist’s attempts to study the megalodon are revealed as an excuse to mine helium-3 from the seafloor to build fusion reactors, a plot financed by none other than a pre-9/11 Osama bin Laden in order to allow the Saudis to take over the global economy, in the process linking the megalodon with a monster of an entirely different type (Alten, Trench 261-62). In most adaptations of Verne’s novel, the cuttlefish that attacks the Nautilus is replaced by a giant squid, traditionally seen as the basis for the kraken of Norse myth (Thone 191). The kraken/giant squid dichotomy is present in the video game Stranded Deep. In it, the player’s unnamed avatar is a businessman whose plane crashes into a tropical sea, and must survive by scavenging resources, crafting shelters, and fighting predators across various islands. Which sea in particular does the player crash into? It is hard to say, as the only indication of specific location comes from the three ‘boss’ creatures the player must fight. One of them is Abaia, a creature from Melanesian mythology; another is Lusca, a creature from Caribbean mythology; the third is a megalodon. Lusca and Abaia, despite being creatures of mythology, are depicted as a giant squid and a giant moray eel, respectively. But the megalodon is portrayed as itself. Stranded Deep serves as a perfect distillation of the megalodon mythos: the shark is its own mythological basis, and its own cryptid equivalent. References Alten, Steven. Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Alten, Steven. The Trench. New York: Pinnacle Books, 1999. Atherton, Darren. 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Dendle, Peter. “Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds.” Folklore 117.2 (2006): 190–206. Flores, Jorge, “Distant Wonders: The Strange and the Marvelous between Mughal India and Habsburg Iberia in the Early Seventeenth Century.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49.3 (2007): 553–81. Freller, Thomas. “The Pauline Cult in Malta and the Movement of the Counter-Reformation: The Development of Its International Reputation.” The Catholic Historical Review 85.1 (1999): 15–34. Fuchs, Michael. “Becoming-Shark? Jaws Unleashed, the Animal Avatar, and Popular Culture’s Eco-Politics.” Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and Popular Culture. Jon Hackett and Seán Harrington. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2018. 172–83. Goss, Michael. “Do Giant Prehistoric Sharks Survive?” Fate 40.11 (1987): 32–41. Guimont, Edward. “Hunting Dinosaurs in Central Africa.” Contingent Magazine, 18 Mar. 2019. 26 May 2021 <http://contingentmagazine.org/2019/03/18/hunting-dinosaurs-africa/>. Heuvelmans, Bernard. “What is Cryptozoology?” Trans. Ron Westrum. Cryptozoology 1 (1982): 1–12. Jaws. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures, 1975. Lowery, Darrin, Stephen J. Godfrey, and Ralph Eshelman. “Integrated Geology, Paleontology, and Archaeology: Native American Use of Fossil Shark Teeth in the Chesapeake Bay Region.” Archaeology of Eastern North America 39 (2011): 93–108. Mayor, Adrienne. The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Mayor, Adrienne. Fossil Legends of the First Americans. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005. Meg, The. Dir. Jon Turteltaub. Warner Brothers, 2018. Mullis, Justin. “Cryptofiction! Science Fiction and the Rise of Cryptozoology.” The Paranormal and Popular Culture: A Postmodern Religious Landscape. Eds. Darryl Caterine and John W. Morehead. London: Routledge, 2019. 240–52. Mullis, Justin. “The Meg’s Long Journey to the Big Screen.” Jaws Unmade: The Lost Sequels, Prequels, Remakes, and Rip-Offs. John LeMay. Roswell: Bicep Books, 2020. 291–95. Naish, Darren. “Tales from the Cryptozoologicon: Megalodon!” Scientific American, 5 Aug. 2013. 27 May 2021 <https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/cryptozoologicon-megalodon-teaser/>. Pimiento, Catalina, and Christopher F. Clements. “When Did Carcharocles Megalodon Become Extinct? A New Analysis of the Fossil Record.” PLoS One 9.10 (2014): 1–5. Randall, John E. “Size of the Great White Shark (Carcharodon).” Science 181.4095 (1973): 169–70. Raynal, Michel. “The Linnaeus of the Zoology of Tomorrow.” Cryptozoology 6 (1987): 110–15. Regal, Brian. Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads, and Cryptozoology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Roesch, Ben S. “A Critical Evaluation of the Supposed Contemporary Existence of Carcharodon Megalodon.” Internet Archive, 1999. 28 May 2021 <https://web.archive.org/web/20131021005820/http:/web.ncf.ca/bz050/megalodon.html>. Scott, Ryan. “TikTok of Giant Shark Terrorizing Tourists Ignites Megalodon Theories.” Movieweb, 27 May 2021. 28 May 2021 <https://movieweb.com/giant-shark-tiktok-video-megalodon/>. Shark Attack. Dir. Bob Misiorowski. Martien Holdings A.V.V., 1999. Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Dir. David Worth. Nu Image Films, 2002. Shuker, Karl P.N. “The Search for Monster Sharks.” Fate 44.3 (1991): 41–49. Stead, David G. Sharks and Rays of Australian Seas. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1963. Stranded Deep. Australia: Beam Team Games, 2015. Thone, Frank. “Nature Ramblings: Leviathan and the Kraken.” The Science News-Letter 33.12 (1938): 191. Tschernezky, Wladimir. “Age of Carcharodon Megalodon?” Nature 184.4695 (1959): 1331–32. Verne, Jules. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. 1870. New York: M. A. Donohue & Company, 1895. Weinberg, Scott. “Shark Attack 3: Megalodon.” eFilmCritic! 3 May 2004. 20 Sep. 2021 <https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=9135&reviewer=128>. Zammit-Maempel, George. “The Evil Eye and Protective Cattle Horns in Malta.” Folklore 79.1 (1968): 1–16. ———. “Handbills Extolling the Virtues of Fossil Shark’s Teeth.” Melita Historica 7.3 (1978): 211–24.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media? How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use? What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation? What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”? Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation? 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Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Burns, Alex. "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (Apr. 2008) "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media?How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use?What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation?What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”?Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation?Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators?How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. 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New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out >. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine >. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. 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Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.