What is Citizen Journalism? It is the collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public by the means of internet. What does this mean? It is referring to any time someone "unprofessional" discusses a topic and/or expresses an opinion on something news related. This could mean anything. Blogs, social media posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, streams, music, memes, all of it is considered Citizen Journalism. What do I mean by "unprofessional?" I simply mean anyone who is not a professional journalist working for a new company.
Citizen Journalism is a fairly new concept, thanks to the rise of the internet and social media platforms. Why is Citizen Journalism so significant? It is because of the post modern world and the age of information that t has helped to create. Public opinion has always been an important thing for centuries. Public opinion is what could determine if someone is reelected. However, for the most part, public opinion been relatively slow and controlled by news, propaganda, and the press. But in the first time in history, Citizen Journalism has given people ability to completely sidestep mainstream news sources and form their opinions and know what everyone else's opinions are. For once, public opinion is not fully dependent on the press. One example of this in action would be Donald Trump. He is the first president to fully make use of Twitter to speak directly to the American people. He did not need interviews from the press. If he an opinion, he could write a tweet and instantly share his opinion with millions.
Citizen Journalism has a lot of advantages. For one, it is extremely friendly to diversity. It doesn't matter if you are rich, poor, male, female, white, black, or colored. If you have an internet connection, you can share your opinion. There is also a very large poll of opinions. People can share stories that aren't covered in mainstream news outlets. And there is not nearly as much threat of stories being skewed because of sponsors and investors in a big company. It is completely unfiltered.
However, there are some advantages. One obvious one would be the lack of credibility and no peer reviews or fact checking. Of course, that doesn't mean everything is like that. But there is no guarantee. That is why it is important to get information from as many sources as possible. Another disadvantage would be group think mentality. People can be prone to think a certain way in order to conform. And from group think, we get another disadvantage: Cancel Culture. That is, when someone does anything the general public views as wrong, they are quick cancel their online presence. The problem come when people are quick to judge even when they don't have all the facts. And the way memes and other similar media function, the case is presented as a one and done deal; something that has already been proven to be true even thought it has not been proven.
Citizen Journalism is an exciting new way of discussing news. However, we must not fall into the traps, and we must have have our wits when expressing online opinions.
Info used:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1748048512461761
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photojournalism/power-people
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