Does Citizen Journalism Present A Threat To News Industries?

Citizen reporting is playing a complementary role to mainstream reporting.
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Citizen reporting is playing a complementary role to mainstream reporting
The emergence of new technology has led to the development of new ways of getting information that seems to challenge the traditional approaches. One of these new approaches is citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is the approach where individuals can collect and share information without relying on the conventional methods. These forms of journalism is rapidly evolving and allowing ordinary people to report about things happening around them. The news sources such as the intent, blogs, web portal and social network sites are quickly becoming more reliable in providing up to date information thus threatening the mainstream media. The current study seeks to look at how journalist looks at citizen journalism and the role of citizen journalism in the society. Ideally, civil Journalism is not a challenge to mainstream media but rather a complement to sharing information within the society.
Introduction
Citizen journalism as a concept in media is the idea where the ordinary people take over the journalistic activities. Ideally, the citizens take up the responsibility of reporting issues that they are facing. The proliferation of these forms of journalism has opened up the avenue for people to discuss share and confront issues that their societies are going through. People that engage in such form of journalism are called citizen journalist. Campbell, 2015 looks at citizen journalist as a person who has not undergone any form of training but can still report on the issue around their communities. Over the years these citizen journalists have always just been termed as the audience of the mainstream media. However, over the years these people have transformed from just being an audience, and now they participate in the process of passing information. Campebell, (2015) mentions that previously the audience was at the receiving end of the media reporting, but now they engage in the pattern of broadcasting of information. It is during these eras that the citizen journalists have emerged.
There are still other diverse and varying views towards citizen journalism. One of the opinions is presented by Peters and Witschge, 2015, who looks at citizen journalism as the democratic or somewhat participatory journalism. Peters and Witschge, 2015, seems to present the idea that the citizens are engaged in the active process of receiving collecting and sharing information. Other scholars have also looked at this kind of journalism as open source journalism, civil, public journalism, and crowd-sourced journalism. All these are forms of reporting that are related to citizen journalism. However, Bowman and Willis came up with a rather inclusive definition. Their view is that this kind of journalism involves non-professionals being actively involved in the collecting analysis and reporting of information. The definition is more inclusive since it seeks to take into account any form of citizen participation in the process of sharing news.
The emergence of the internet spaces has provided greater opportunities for the citizen journalist to flourish. Today there are several user-generated websites including new portal and blog sites. Such platform operates with a regional to even an international level. With this platform proliferating, citizen journalism has found a greater avenue for sharing more information. Some known civil journalism sites include CNN (Peters and Witschge, 2015) cable news network, I-reports feature that started working in 2006. There is also al-Jazeera shamrock portal launched in 2007. Several civil journalism platforms have risen in India, Germany and even in South Korea. They include MeriNews, Cplash and even I-NewsIndia. The increase in the number of citizen journalist sites has grown as a result of the growth of the internet.
The purpose of the study
This study is important in the contemporary society since citizen reporting has become a significant trend in the media. The reason that makes this an important issue is because it is not just performed by professional rather everyday citizens that do not have any training in media. Also, these people are not limited to what they are sharing. The information shared is what the ordinary citizen's face and issues that are more pertinent to their lives. Today, anyone can be a citizen journalist since the internet has provided unlimited opportunities to share content with the society. The topics that the mainstream media would previous avoid are now discussed at length over the citizen journalist platforms. Such an approach to news has made the followers of these media channels feel that this content is less biased.
Citizen journalism has been accepted as a dominant force in the developed nations; however, there are quite little studies conducted on the subject. Although some studies have sought to look at the impact of citizen journalism in these developed societies, the scope of analysis is limited or rather biased. This is the reason that the study seeks to take a slightly unbiased views at how the society looks at these new media channels and the roles it plays in the society. Through the thorough analysis of the concept, the study would be able to ascertain the seriousness of Citizen Journalism in promoting citizen engagement in both democratic and journalistic activities.
Literature review
The development of the idea of citizen journalism remains contentious, but one thing that is agreed on is that before the emergence of the internet the idea did not exist (Barnes, 2012). According to the Open News room 2011 and Barnes, 2012 the concepts of citizen journalism came to being as groups of individuals that were not aligned to any mainstream media started to collect edit and even shred information. These groups of individuals were able to move from using the conventional method and preferred to use the new avenues that were created by the internet. The internet provided a better platform for these groups to share information since there was no restriction on what how and when to share this information. Without the chains of the mainstream media channels these sources provided more credible information and as (Barnes, 2012) argues these sources have risen to become less unbiased. Besides, the speed at which this information was being shared has made them more reliable. Typically, material posted on this platform happens on a real-time basis.
The growth of citizen journalism has grown over time, and this has forced many people to look at the relationship between mainstream and citizen reporting. At the beginning of the millennium, several researchers in the media presented the argument that mainstream media would diminish in the wake of citizen reporting. The argument they give was that citizen reporting is the creation of the audience, and thus it's much more favorable. However, there are still other researchers, who had a descending opinion. They argued that citizen's journalism would not have the capacity to replace professional journalism. Barnes, 2012, supported this view by arguing that mainstream media has found itself at a defining moment in history since its position as the custodian of news is getting challenged or rather threatened. The availability of several online publishing tools and a ready connection to the internet and the online audience has provided a chance for the citizens to become active participants in the creation and dissemination of information.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (2008) also made a related conclusion. They argued that for a long time scholars have sought to paint the picture that professional journalism might be headed to it its demise as a result of the emergence of citizen journalism. However, they contend that the idea is just overrated. Though there is the aspect of the citizen taking part in the creation and dissemination of information, still the field has not gained much ground to be able to overshadow the role played by mainstream media. The argument presented by these scholars is that while public journalism is obtaining much more ground, the audience that is serving is quite different. While people might still consume information from these platforms, they would still not end up abandoning the mainstream media. Consequently, the two media platform might still exist side by side as they complement each other rather than competing against each other.
However, some scholars have proposed quite a different view. One of these schools of thought is that citizen journalism would never be able to replace professional reporting and thus the only thing it can do is to complement it. Firmstone and Coleman, (2015) are one of the theorists that firmly believe in this theory. He stated that the reason for the rise of the democratic reporting is because the mainstream media is so preoccupied with reporting big stories to be concerned with the little items that have much more important meaning to the common people. Newman, (2009) also supports this view by arguing that untrained and unpaid blogger would never be able to take the role of professional and season journali...