Mapping the citizen news landscape: Blurring boundaries, promises, perils, and beyond

Pages: 373-390

ISBN: 9781501510380

DOI: 10.1515/9781501500084-019

Abstract:

This chapter offers a necessary critical overview of citizen journalism in its many forms and shapes, with a focus on its promises and perils and what it means for the future of news. We will start with a review of the concept of "citizen journalism" and its many alternative terms, then move to briefly note the long history of citizen journalism, which dates back to the early days of the printing press. This will be followed by our typology of three major forms of citizen journalism (CJ) - citizen witnessing, oppositional CJ, and expertise-based CJ - along with an assessment of each form's primary actions, motives, functions, and influences. The penultimate part of the chapter will focus on CJ's flaws and pitfalls - especially the mis/disinformation environment it fosters and the "dialogue of the deaf" it might engender - and place them in the context of the post-truth era to highlight the still critical need for professional journalists. The chapter concludes with a brief review of the understandably but unnecessarily uneasy relationship between citizen and professional journalism and calls for the latter to adopt a new attitude to work well with the former.

Source: Scopus