Citizen Journalism Is A Threat To News Industries

CITIZEN JOURNALISM IS A THREAT TO NEWS INDUSTRIES
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Citizen Journalism is a Threat To News Industries
The concept of citizen journalism is essentially based on ordinary members of the public playing an active role in which they gather, report, analyze, and disseminate news and information. Put simply, private individuals perform the same tasks as professional journalists and press officers perform. The information they report could take various forms, for instance a blog or podcast editorial and may include video, audio, pictures or text (Holt & Karlsson 2015, p. 1799). There is a growing debate of whether citizen journalism poses an opportunity or threat to professional reporters. This paper addresses the question: Does citizen journalism present a threat to news industries? The paper argues that to a large extent, citizen journalism in fact poses a threat to the news industries, although it provides opportunities to a small extent.
The proliferation of the Internet as well as other new technology devices has led to a trend in which individuals cover events and disseminate content immediately and easily. Digital tools such as micro-blogging, social networks, mobile devices and blogs allow people to cover their own communities and publish their own stories. This is what is known as citizen journalism and has a great impact on the way the mainstream media work. It is the reporting of news events by ordinary citizens with the use of the Internet to disseminate the information. Citizen journalism, as Bekken (2017, p. 1276) pointed out, could be as simple as reporting of news and facts which is mainly disregarded by the mainstream media firms. Citizen journalism may act as a check on the reporting of the mainstream companies in the news industry by offering alternative analysis.
Citizen journalism poses a threat to the mainstream professional journalists in the news industry and a large number of professional journalists have complained about this rise in citizen journalism as the triumph of amateurism over professionalism. New media technologies including Blogger, Facebook and Twitter have allowed ordinary people to transmit information internationally; a power that was reserved only for big media companies in the past. Also, the growing accessibility, speed and presence of advanced cellular phones and other media sharing devices, as Mythen (2010, p. 45) pointed out, has given civilian reporters the ability to report on news events not just to a larger, international audience, but also faster in comparison to professional journalists. This form of news coverage is essential to journalism in the present day; ordinary people being unrestricted, relatable and available to capture footage and photos of news events as they break in different parts of the globe (Rosen 2010, p. 35).
With media convergence and the explosion of digital media innovation, Noor 2013 (p.55) pointed out that citizen journalism is currently able to reach a broad array of people. News contents these days are being delivered on more and more platforms, including laptops, mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, personal computers among other devices. The advanced connectedness and development in online networking activities such as photograph sharing, tweeting, and blogging occur in what Bruns (2010) calls a produsage economy, wherein consumption and creation of content are intertwined; that is, private individuals are being involved actively in producing their own news instead of only consuming mainstream news. This indefinitely poses a major threat to the mainstream media given that it breaks down the notions and structures of passive production and consumption between mainstream media companies and their audience members.
As a case in point, a terrible and grisly revelation of death tolls in hospitals in Aleppo and underground hospital conditions in this Syrian city became known when John Sweeney, a professional journalist working with the BBC, published appalling footage demonstrating so. Dr. David Nott, a citizen journalist, had sent to him that footage. A scene that really captured the catastrophe and cruel side of the ongoing conflict in the country was when two young boys laid dead in a puddle of blood on the floor as a consequence of bed shortage in the hospital. This elucidated the humanitarian plight of the warfare taking place in Syria. It also shed light on the political dilemma in the country given that the photos were due to the Russian airstrikes and Syrian regime, claims which have been denied by the pro-regime side of the hostilities (Cass 2015, p. 62).
With regard to the hospital footage, doctor Nott, namely the citizen journalist who sent it, occupies the 1st tier of citizen journalism primarily because he was courageous enough to leave his role as a physician for a moment and assume the role of a journalist to report on a war crime using his portable and inexpensive video technology. The professional journalist John Sweeney and the mainstream media company BBC would occupy the 2nd tier. John Sweeney picked up on particular truths/news and chose to report on them. This is also widely known as user-generated content, in which mainstream media firms pick up on news that citizen journalists reported (Cass 2015, p. 63). When the first tier and the second tier diffuse and cooperate with each other, they could truly be seen as a development, addition, as well as a progression to the news media industries, given that this democratizes and revolutionizes news making, and also methodically re-conceptualizes the public sphere (Allan & Peters 2015, p. 1350).
It is of note that by making new facts and truths known, the professional media organizations are now being compelled to cover news events which may have otherwise gone off without being noticed. This serves to create more variety for news outlets and effectively attracts a broader base of news consumers to arouse the credibility of this media outlet (Holt & Karlsson 2015, 1797). This is when, as Cass (2015, p. 63) stated, citizen journalism harms the news industries given that it unavoidably gives emphasis to and reveals agendas of other news companies. As a case in point, the Syrian government owned media firm Syrian Arab News Agency decided to ignore the casualties brought about by the airstrikes of the Syrian government. It also chose not to televise the photos being disseminated. Whenever the conventional mainstream media fails to make new facts known by not disclosing them, civilian journalists effectively tackle the democratic deficit in the conventional media that then hurts the reputation of the news industries. This empowers the public sphere and local communities, and thus it is truly re-conceptualized. Even so, this serves to threaten the sovereignty of the mainstream news outlets that operate on certain agendas, therefore addressing the democratic deficit (Lewis 2017, p. 34).
As networks of people start forming, consumers and citizens start to become increasingly conscious of what is taking place around them, and unquestionably there is a loss of interest and public trust in the mainstream media. In essence, people are not caring any more about the conventional news generated by the news industries (Bekken 2017, p. 1277). This significantly presents a threat to the news industries, since they are organs of public opinion which means that the influence of the news industries is becoming weaker and any news stories published by them are rendered not effective in influencing the public (Lewis 2017, p. 35). As members of the public become increasingly weary and conscious of the mainstream news companies and their agendas, an increasing sense of inquisitiveness and research occurs. In some situations, citizen journalism and private individuals’ use of digital media could support gate-keeping practices counter-productively in unexpected and unusual ways. This would hurt the credibility of the mainstream media companies even further. Civilian reporters could also divulge the misreporting and wrongdoings of the mainstream news companies, which may also hurt the credibility and reputation of the news industries (Mythen 2010, p. 47).
Citizen journalism is known to promote social democracy. Professional journalists are usually trained to maintain the journalistic virtues of balance and objectivity, in addition to the fundamental American ideologies of liberty, life and pursuit of happiness, whilst at the same time rebuffing ideologies of those who challenge these beliefs (Rosen 2010). The presence of citizen journalists and bloggers on the Internet is threatening to expose the unwillingness of the conventional professional reporters to look deeper into stories which defy legitimate debate and consensus. Such exposure serves to weaken the authority of professional reporters and makes the people less likely to trust their neutrality whenever they cover news stories (Rosen 2010). Citizen journalists are able to connect with one another and share the accounts and stories. In this way, they get to learn that the sphere of legitimate debate as defined by professional reporters does not agree with their own definition (Stelter & Perez-Pena 2010). Previously, there was nowhere for this sort of sentiment to go. At the moment however, it gathers, solidifies and expresses itself on the Web online (Rosen 2010). Bloggers can tap into it for the purpose of serving a demand and gaining a following. Nonetheless, what is actually occurring is that the mainstream media’s authority to define deviance, assume consensus, and spell out the terms for legitimate debate is weaker whenever individual citizens are able to connect horizontally around and about the news (Rosen 2010).
The other form of threat that citizen journalists pose to the news industries is the fact that they reduce sales and profits of the mainstream media companies because consumers of news are reading newspapers and watching television less and watching news on social media more and more. According to Bruder (2016), media coverage has served to encourage people these days to mainly turn to their smart phones or any of their internet-connected portable device to access broadcast information and news stories online or on social media instead of watching the news on television or reading it in the newspapers. At the moment, the number of people who have cell phones with cameras has gone up considerably. This has led many of those people to take on the rol...