Citizen journalism

Citizen journalism refers to the reporting of news events by people without journalism training. These nonprofessionals use the internet and social media to spread information. Members of the public report about news that is ignored by mainstream media, which includes newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters, or by media outlets under the government's control. The term was coined in 2000.

The availability of technology has allowed citizen journalists to gather news and disseminate it easily through personal websites, blogs, and social media. People at disaster scenes, tragedies, or political crises take to social media to upload text updates and photos of live events as they occur, breaking stories before traditional media are able to respond. The phenomenon has garnered its share of controversy. Lacking training, nonprofessionals may not be considered as credible as professional journalists. The global reach of citizen journalism continued to grow in the twenty-first century as traditional media outlets combated dwindling readers and viewers.

Brief History

The beginnings of citizen journalism stretch back to the infancy of the United States. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin distributed news and views through his own publication, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Thomas Paine freely wrote about liberty and rebellion in his influential pamphlet Common Sense. The anonymously published Federalist Papers analyzed the proposed Constitution, questioning the historic document that would form the basis of the nation's government.

In modern times, ordinary people have captured amateur video of historic events. Witnesses at the scene recorded footage of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King in 1991.

Traditionally, professional journalists and large media outlets collected facts, analyzed news, and distributed that information to the public using resources only they could access. Due to advances in technology, however, mainstream broadcasts and newspapers increasingly ceased functioning as the epicenter of knowledge. With the immediate dissemination of news on the World Wide Web, readers came to know just as much as the press and could spread it just as fast.

In the late 1990s, the internet aided the transformation of news taking place. In 1999, San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor wrote the first blog for a traditional media outlet. Gillmor went on to author the definitive book on the topic, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, in 2004. He also founded and began overseeing the Center for Citizen Media.

Citizen journalism received a major boost on the world stage in 2000. That year, South Korean progressive journalist Oh Yeon-ho started a free online newspaper, OhmyNews, after perceiving an imbalance in the nation's traditional media and the stories they chose to cover. The newspaper relied on ordinary readers to generate digital content. The phrase "citizen journalism" caught on after Oh said, "Every citizen is a reporter." With fifty thousand contributors at its disposal, OhmyNews grew into one of South Korea's leading news outlets.

Topic Today

Citizen journalism has changed where and how news originates in the twenty-first century. Thousands of alternative news sites have sprung up on the internet, and millions maintain their own blogs, social media sites, and newsletters managed by platforms like Substack. People without journalism training can use the tools of technology to report on breaking news and spread it globally and instantly on the internet. Citizens use their smartphones to photograph and film live events and describe them on social media sites.

With readership and viewership down, traditional media have joined in. Many reporters write online blogs for their newspapers. News websites invite readers to contribute their own news, video, and photos of significant events and to comment on stories. Some media organizations have more formally integrated citizen journalism into their operations. Fox News became the first major news outlet to hire citizen journalists. Fox struck up a partnership with Fresco News, a journalism start-up that relies on hundreds of citizen journalists, to provide on-air content in several of its television markets across the country. Likewise, the Documenters Network, launched in Chicago in 2016, trains and pays community members to cover local government meetings, filling the gap left by traditional news outlets that increasingly eliminated newsroom jobs in the 2010s. By 2023, the initiative had expanded to ten cities, including Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

Disasters and tragedies often provide the backdrop for citizen journalists. Witnesses' videos from the tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia in 2004 circulated on the internet and broadcast news. One of the most memorable images of the 2005 London subway bombings was a cell phone photo snapped by a man escaping with other passengers from a train engulfed by smoke. When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005, citizen journalists played an essential role in covering the disaster on the ground in stricken New Orleans. They described living through the widespread destruction and its aftermath, receiving warnings and updates from the government, and observing looters in the streets.

Citizen journalists have also provided coverage in areas of political unrest, where media outlets are primarily controlled by the government. During the volatile 2009 presidential election in Iran, citizens worked around restrictions on journalists by sending out images and information on Twitter. Videos of the 2011 crackdown on Syrian demonstrators by the regime were posted on the video-sharing site YouTube.

In the 2010s and 2020s, widespread demonstrations on social issues were routinely documented by citizen journalists. Chicago activist/blogger Tim Pool reported from inside the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City's Zuccotti Park in 2011. Pool used his cell phone to live-stream video to viewers on the social media platform Ustream, including twenty straight hours of the park's eviction. His feed was broadcast live on mainstream news networks and websites. Stirring photos and video circulated on Twitter during the 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by a White police officer. Similarly, a young woman's social media release of a bystander video shortly after George Floyd died in police custody in May 2020 was credited with giving the public greater, more authentic insight into the incident than what was initially reported by police. The video, captured on Darnella Frazier's cell phone and posted to Facebook, not only went viral prior to mass, countrywide demonstrations and protests but was also used as crucial evidence in the 2021 trial of the White police officer, Derek Chauvin, ultimately convicted of Floyd's murder. While other surveillance video and body camera footage had eventually been analyzed, Frazier's video was considered especially significant in its witnessing of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for several minutes despite his and other bystanders' calls for relief and aid.

Citizen journalism has faced scrutiny from critics, including established journalists. Citizen journalists lack proper training, leading to questions about their objectivity and bias. They face accusations of spreading fear and misinformation. They are not restricted by the protocols imposed on mainstream media, leaving them in unregulated territory.

Despite these criticisms, citizen journalists have grown in prominence. Citizen journalism websites have built credibility, working outside what they believe to be the confines or agendas of mainstream media and providing readers with alternative news sources. A substantial network of regional news websites operating on citizen journalism, called Bylines Network, launched in 2020 in the United Kingdom. That same year, it was widely noted that a Chinese citizen, ultimately arrested, had taken and produced several videos meant to show the reality of the country's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in the city of Wuhan. In addition to such citizen journalism pertaining to the pandemic occurring in other countries throughout the early 2020s, Russia's controversial invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulted in numerous examples of citizen journalism documenting the ongoing war, including accounts of alleged human rights atrocities, from Ukraine on social media.

Bibliography

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