WHAT IS CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Citizen journalism is the act of non-professionals playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information which has long history in United Sates.

CITJ in all its froms, as it has emerged and developed during the first decade of the twenty-first century, is driven by similar motivations: it acts as a corrective and a suplement to the output of commercial, industrial journalism. It has recently begun to challenge the role of its corporate counterpart as opinion leader.

Over the years, citizen journalism has benefited from the development of various technologies. It covers photos or video taken by a member of the public and published on a mainstream or personal news site, comment and opinion contributed to a news site or blog, additional content, such as first-hand accounts used after the London bombings, and perhaps even a personal blog set up to cover a particular subject or location. Sometimes, it also called public or participatory journalism or democratic journalism.

CITJ can conceivably include anything from notes and quotes from a public meeting, to neighborhood happenings and trends, to an original analysis of a piece of proposed legislation, to a public discussion about conditions at local parks, to music and restaurant reviews, to podcast interviews with community leaders and characters, and much more.

Journalism is a collection of practices that can be done by anyone -- not just by a select few anointed by certain types of employers or degrees. Anyone can commit an act of journalism. Differ from daily paper journalism, CITJ tends to be more personal, often written in the first person. It generally doesn't attempt to be comprehensive.

However, who is citizen journalist? It is pretty easy, because everyone can be citizen journalist if you like.

Anyway, i think CITJ is a powerful force forever.

Reference:

Lasica, J. D. "What is Participatory Journalism?" 2003-08-07, Online Journalism Review, August 7, 2003.