Citizen Journalist, Movement
Citizen journalists
According to Jay Rosen, citizen journalists are "the people formerly known as the audience," who "were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all. ... The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable."[32]
Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with a home-movie camera, is sometimes presented as an ancestor to citizen journalists.[33] Egyptian citizen Wael Abbas was awarded several international reporting prizes for his blog Misr Digital (Digital Egypt) and a video he publicized of two policemen beating a bus driver helped lead to their conviction.[34]
During 9/11 many eyewitness accounts of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center came from citizen journalists. Images and stories from citizen journalists close to the World Trade Center offered content that played a major role in the story.[35][
2004 tsunami picture taken by a bystander and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
In 2004, when the 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge tsunami in Banda Aceh Indonesia and across the Indian Ocean, a weblog-based virtual network of previously unrelated bloggers emerged that covered the news in real-time, and became a vital source for the traditional media for the first week after the tsunami.[37] A large amount of news footage from many people who experienced the tsunami was widely broadcast,[38] as well as a good deal of "on the scene" citizen reporting and blogger analysis that was subsequently picked up by the major media outlets worldwide.[37]
Subsequent to the citizen journalism coverage of the disaster and aftermath, researchers have suggested that citizen journalists may, in fact, play a critical role in the disaster warning system itself, potentially with higher reliability than the networks of tsunami warning equipment based on technology alone which then require interpretation by disinterested third parties.[39]
The microblog Twitter played an important role during the 2009 Iranian election protests, after foreign journalists had effectively been "barred from reporting". Twitter delayed scheduled maintenance during the protests that would have shut down coverage in Iran due to the role it played in public communication.[40]
Social media platforms such as blogs, YouTube, and Twitter encourage and facilitate engagement with other citizens who participate in creating content through commenting, liking, linking, and sharing. The majority of the content produced by these amateur news bloggers was not original content, but curated information monitored and edited by these various bloggers. There has been a decline in the amateur news blogger due to social media platforms that are much easier to run and maintain, allowing individuals to easily share and create and content.[27]
Wikimedia Foundation hosts a participatory journalism web site, Wikinews.[41]
The 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Special Citations and Awards was awarded to Darnella Frazier, who recorded the murder of George Floyd on her phone.[42]
Citizen journalism in a worldwide context[edit]
India[edit]
I don't believe in citizen journalists. I say give me citizen doctors and citizen lawyers and I'll give you citizen journalists.
Shekhar Gupta[43]
India has a broad media landscape expanding at "double-digit growth rates" ^[44] in comparison to the West. Issues surrounding human rights violations, violence against women and everyday witness accounts.[45][44] Most notably, images shared on Twitter during the 2008 Mumbai attacks is an example of citizen journalism in India.[44]
Iraq[edit]
In 2004 Daylight Magazine sent a box of disposable cameras to be distributed to civilians living in Baghdad and Fallujah. These were published in May 2004 along with the work of seminal documentarians such as Susan Meiselas, Roger Hutchings, etc. In June 2004 Fred Ritchen and Pixel Press teamed up with Daylight to create a touring exhibition of the images and captions which went to various institutions around the United States including: The Council on Foreign Relations, The Center for Photography Woodstock, New York University, Union College, Michigan University, and Central Michigan University before being donated to the Archive of Documentary Art at Duke University.[citation ^needed]
United Kingdom[edit]
Citizen Journalism provides a platform for individuals to be considered and acknowledged on a global scale. The circulation of information and news does not fully divulge the accurate perceptions of what is going on in the world. For instance, On Our Radar contains reporting mechanisms and trained residents that reveal their voices while questioning the reluctance journalism has when considering what voices are heard and are not, based in London. On Our Radar has undertaken in making the voices in Sierra Leone heard in regards to Ebola, revealing that it contained easy access to vital sources of information and opened more opportunities for questions and reports.[46]
Depending on the country one resides in, as societies evolve, grow, and depend more on online media outlets there is an increase of informed individuals, especially with topics regarding politics and government news. Through such evolution, citizen journalism has the capability to reach an audience that has not had the privilege of receiving higher education and still remain informed about what is surrounding them and their respective country.[47] As demonstrated in light of demanding and distorted information given to the mass public and cleared by strong demonstrations of the capabilities of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is a platform that provides a solution to the mistrust the public has towards the government as discrepancies arise from governmental statements and actions.
In 2020, a network of local Citizen Journalist publications, the Bylines Network, was founded, and has since spread to include 7 regional branches.[48]
China[edit]
Citizen journalism has created much change and influence within Chinese media and society in which its online activity is very much controlled. The interconnection built from citizen journalism and mainstream journalism in China has allotted politically and socially charged information to be distributed to promote progressive changes and serves as national sentiments. In doing so, the mass public of China has the opportunities to move around the controlled and monitored online presence and the information it contains.[49]
Citizen journalists face many repercussions when unpackaging the truth and reach domestic and global audiences. Most if not all of these repercussions result from government officials and law enforcement from the journalists respective countries. Citizen journalists are needed and depended on by the mass public but are viewed as an imminent threat to their governments. The public has had the resources to pursue this level of journalism from their surroundings and based on real life perspectives that lack censorship and influence from a higher entity. The various forms citizen journalism is formed has outdated many news and media sources as result of the authentic approach citizen journalists carry out.[50]
During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, fraudulent pictures encouraging people to pose as reporters and abuse freedom of press regulations to obstruct the police were widely circulated on social media with the aim to discredit citizen journalists.[51]
In the context of China and the national pandemic rooted from the coronavirus, many voices were censored and limited when it came to citizen journalists. This occurred in the process of visually and vocally documenting the social climate of China in regards to the coronavirus. For instance, a Chinese citizen journalist posted videos of Wuhan, China as the outbreak had been spreading globally. As a result the journalist was stopped and detained by the police and was not released for two months. In sharing their experience being detained after being released the tone it was expressed in was marketed. This citizen journalist experience is one amongst more of who were similarly detained and censored.[52]
Iran[edit]
In 2023 after Mahsa Amini protests government criminalized Iranians filming police.[53]