Over the decades, the media narrative of the world has been tightly guarded by a handful of large, strong news corporations. These entities such as television, large newspapers and international news agencies had massive influence. They were the prime gatekeepers, and they chose what the masses saw as the truth. The advantage of this kind of reporting was a professional manner of reporting and standard rules, however, it lacked a significant strong point; the news could easily present one side of the story, or could be under the influence of influential forces, or could simply be a repetition of what leaders said.
The 21st century however altered everything. Due to the availability of inexpensive smartphones, the ever-present internet, and the emergence of social media, the number of potential reporters has increased dramatically to billions of people. Anyone with a phone and an internet connection could film, share and publish events as they happened without going through the old news hierarchy at all. This significant change gave rise to citizen journalism-a fast, broad web of witnesses that gave raw, first-hand reports.
This movement enhances what is referred to as grassroots reporting. When the Mainstream Media (MM) tends to concentrate on top-tier officials and press conferences that are planned, citizen journalists through grassroots reporting often record the human face of a crisis or protest, the unplanned actions. The information they generate, which is frequently tremulous and emotional, has a verisimilitude which can instantly conflict with the smooth, official narratives being pumped out by governmental sources or simply reiterated blindly by big news desks.
The Moment of Conflict: When Stories Disagree
As soon as a video or a story of a citizen journalist becomes viral, a significant point of conflict emerges. It is the moment that a comfortable or official story is disrupted by unclear and indisputable visual evidence that alters everything. It is in this way that grassroots reporting makes people reconsider what has occurred, demonstrating how decentralized media can immediately hold those with power and institutions to account.
This is how the institutional media tells the story: it is based on the words of the police, the government or famous political leaders as primary sources. When the video by a citizen journalist appears making the incident look completely unlike what the mainstream outlet claimed it was, that mainstream outlet has a dilemma to choose between: either not mentioning the existence of the video and risking being perceived as unreliable, or publishing the findings of a citizen, which means they admitted that they were mistaken in their or incomplete first reporting. This back and forth demonstrates how citizen journalism is a much-needed.
The Arab Spring: Seeing the Conflict Unfiltered
Among the earliest and most potent world instances of citizen journalism challenging mainstream accounts occurred during the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010. In countries such as Egypt, Syria and Libya, dictators would instantly halt the movement and operations of foreign journalists and big news outlets. Simultaneously, the state-controlled TV stations aired propaganda that down-sized the protests, falsely claimed that the demonstrators were part of the outside rabble, and denied that lethal force was being used.
The only reliable source of information in the world became citizen journalists who were mostly using mobile phones to pass on information. Their social media videos provided direct, verifiable evidence of massive on-the-street protests, bloody government cracksdowns, arrests and fatalities. In Syria, early activist video footage was recorded of tanks marching into cities and security agencies firing on unarmed protesters- a massive contrast to state television accounts that all was well. The mainstream media was incapable of accessing the battlegrounds and had to rely on these crude videos to deliver a true story. This move was a confirmation that the grassroots reporting was right and shattered the official lies that were intended to fool the world.
Police Actions and the Power of the Phone Camera
Reporting on citizen-police events has been the most apparent point of contention in the United States and around the world. Traditionally, the police department’s account of the events leading to the death of someone in police custody or the use of force would in the first instance describe the events, and the media would in most instances accept the police description and report it without questioning. Those stories typically centered around the resisting party, the threat to the officers or an unexpected health issue that was not necessarily the fault of the officers.
This was changed forever with the widespread use of high-quality smartphone cameras. Necessary events, such as the death of Eric Garner in New York in 2014 or, most notoriously, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, were recorded by anyone who was around. The nine-minute amateur video in the George Floyd case provided clear visual evidence of excessive and lethal force, which directly contradicted the early police assertions that Floyd had a medical condition upon facing arrest.
This video did not merely supplement the mainstream narrative; it substituted it. It provoked an international movement, resulted in the immediate prosecution of the police officers, and compelled large news organizations to fundamentally alter their approach to covering police violence. Instead of police logs, they began to prioritize the visual evidence taken by citizens. The smartphone turned out to be a final accountability instrument that exposed previous bias and disrupted institutional narratives.
Political Accountability and Election Monitoring
The role of citizen journalists is also imperative during political events and elections when the incentive to control the narrative is very high. Throughout campaigns, the mainstream news is usually preoccupied with the official talking points, planned speeches and press conferences that have been strictly regulated. This is a controlled setting and unguarded moments or local rule-breaking are scarcely captured.
Often, the grassroots reporting gives the critical, raw picture of the political ground game. As a case in point, when people are voting, they can record long queues, faulty voting machines, and voter-suppression efforts at local polling locations on their phones, which might be overshadowed by big networks that concentrate on the nationwide outcomes. A full-length video of a citizen at political rallies can record a political figure giving a statement that will be edited or toned down by state media, or record a much more accurate reflection of the real crowd turnout and behavior than a state press pool camera can.
This citizen surveillance is a crucial scrutiny of state-controlled or politically partial media in that the local reality of democracy, whether positive or negative is exposed. This compels both political organizations and news networks to be more open about what is happening on the ground, so that accounts of complete success or utter failure cannot pass without a challenge.
Disaster Coverage: Filling the News Gap
In the case of natural disasters, citizen reporting, particularly when it is fast and decentralized, can emphasize the slowness of mainstream sources and their limited scope. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as an example, institutional media were primarily engaged in reporting about the initial destruction and the top-level government reaction. They simply could not get or see the profound human crisis occurring in remote, low-income communities in New Orleans.
Those trapped there shared pictures of trapped families, deplorable living situations, and the inability of government assistance to arrive fast through blogs, early social media, and even basic cell phone cameras. Such first-hand narrations soon turned into evidence of a tremendous government failure. By the time MM outlets appeared, they needed to be directed by these citizen reporters. This authenticated the grassroots accounts of abandonment and neglect that had been watered down in official reports. The opinion of the citizen played a central role in compelling the country to reevaluate its emergency strategies and combat inequality in society.
The Problem of Fact-Checking: Give and Take
The bare reality of citizen-captured content is its greatest strength, but also the source of the greatest issue with institutional journalism: fact-checking and context.
The primary defense of mainstream media against the amateur reporter is its assertion of professionalism: journalists are taught to check sources, compare various facts, provide background, and adhere to strict ethical rules. Citizen journalists who operate outside such regulations can easily disseminate misinformation, inaccurate captions, or distorted information. The pace of social media implies that a single unverified video can turn into a worldwide falsehood within hours.
The mainstream media’s role is to adopt the speed and accuracy of grassroots reporting without losing its sense of accuracy. They are now required to be reporters and fact-checkers to the whole digital world. Such commitment to verification will make sure that the powerful amateur evidence is used in a responsible way, which will reduce the chances of disseminating harmful or misleading materials.
This is an essential push and pull, the citizen supplying the crude evidence, the institution supplying the check needed. Without the citizen journalist, the valuable reality would be smothered; without the institutional form, the truth would be got lost in a plethora of uncontrollable clatter.
