Citizen journalism

Citizen journalism (also known as public journalism, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism) is based upon public citizens 'playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.' Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism 'as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism'. Jay Rosen proposes a simpler definition: 'When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.' Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists, collaborative journalism which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together, and social journalism that denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism. Citizen journalism is a specific form of both citizen media and user-generated content (UGC). By juxtaposing the term 'citizen', with its attendant qualities of civic-mindedness and social responsibility, with that of 'journalism', which refers to a particular profession, Courtney C. Radsch argues that this term best describes this particular form of online and digital journalism conducted by amateurs, because it underscores the link between the practice of journalism and its relation to the political and public sphere. New media technology, such as social networking and media-sharing websites, in addition to the increasing prevalence of cellular telephones, have made citizen journalism more accessible to people worldwide. Recent advances in new media have started to have a profound political impact. Due to the availability of technology, citizens often can report breaking news more quickly than traditional media reporters. Notable examples of citizen journalism reporting from major world events are, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2013 protests in Turkey, the Euromaidan events in Ukraine, and Syrian Civil War and the 2014 Ferguson unrest. Critics of the phenomenon, including professional journalists and news organizations, claim that citizen journalism is unregulated, too subjective, amateur, and haphazard in quality and coverage. Citizen journalism, as a form of alternative media, presents a 'radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media'. According to Terry Flew, there have been three elements critical to the rise of citizen journalism: open publishing, collaborative editing, and distributed content. Mark Glaser said in 2006: In What is Participatory Journalism? (2003), J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types: The literature of citizen, alternative, and participatory journalism is most often situated in a democratic context and theorized as a response to corporate news media dominated by an economic logic. Some scholars have sought to extend the study of citizen journalism beyond the developed Western world, including Sylvia Moretzsohn, Courtney C. Radsch, and Clemencia Rodríguez. Radsch, for example, wrote that 'Throughout the Arab world, citizen journalists have emerged as the vanguard of new social movements dedicated to promoting human rights and democratic values.'