Who reports the news today: a news room with cameras and editors or a regular teenager who streamed it through their phone?
Social media have taken over in the journalism world. Around the globe, most news report are shared with phones through different social media platforms.
With quicker hashtag trends than press releases and more viral videos than prime time shows, the distinction between the journalist and eyewitness has been lost. Ordinary people have been empowered by social media as they are able to record history as it unfolds in the world.
This has been dubbed citizen journalism and has changed the way the world consumes information. Whether it is live updates of protests or the use of smartphone cameras to capture disaster scenes, ordinary citizens are now competing with journalists in the creation of the global narrative. However, is this empowerment a gift that empowers democracy or a two-sided sword that threatens to bury the truth in the noise?
What is Citizen Journalism?
Citizen journalism is the activity of non-professional people to produce, distribute, and share news content, which can happen via the use of platforms such as Twitter (X), Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube, and Instagram.
Citizen journalism flourishes in the open spaces of the digital world as compared to the traditional journalism where editorial procedures and professional standards control journalism.
The analysis by Paradigm Initiative on the issue of citizen journalism has suggested that the flow of information has been decentralized by the internet, allowing ordinary citizens to break the monopoly of power that traditional media and governments possessed before. This has enabled stories that could otherwise have been overlooked or stifled to be seen all over the world.
Strengths of Social Media Reporting
Speed and Immediacy
Speed is possibly the most glorified asset of citizen journalism. Coverage of events can occur live and in many cases, before professional journalists reach the scene. Eyewitnesses share updates within seconds during the time of a natural disaster, protests, or violent attacks via live streams, posts, or short videos. This real time coverage can prove invaluable to the viewers who would like to get the information immediately.
Accessibility and Inclusiveness
The traditional media tends to focus on capital and high-profile events, and leave the rural or marginalized communities underreported. Citizen journalism erases these barriers as it provides the platform to share stories to anyone. This accessibility promotes inclusivity, meaning that the voices of various backgrounds and underrepresented groups become part of the general discussion.
Diversity of Perspectives
Citizen reporting is also a way of enriching the media ecosystem as it provides different perspectives on the same event. Rather than one story with editorial interests, viewers are able to read uncensored, unedited opinions of the ones personally involved. Such variety of opinions facilitates media pluralism, as it allows the citizens to make more moderate opinions.
Advocacy and Social Change
Citizen reporters have been very instrumental in justice and accountability movements. Example, viral videos of police brutality have ignited international discourse on human rights and systemic injustice. Citizen journalism acts as a change agent by illuminating matters that mainstream media fail to capture at times.
Weaknesses of Social Media Reporting
Lack of Verification
Accuracy is one of the most urgent problems of citizen journalism. Ordinary individuals can supply information that is not verified in the present time unlike the professional newsrooms that do so after verifying facts. This editorial laxity encourages the possibility of fake claims going viral before they are corrected.
Spread of Misinformation
The issue of misinformation and disinformation is closely related to verification. Social media algorithms are too fast and too responsive, not accurate. The fake news, in particular, sensational news, tends to spread faster than the news that is checked and is still relayed to misguide audiences and even lead to panic or even harm.
Ethical and Safety Concerns
Professional journalists have ethical codes that are based on balancing between personal privacy and safety as well as the public interest. Such principles may not be adhered to by citizen journalists all the time.
Indicatively, broadcasting sensitive events in real-time would jeopardize victims, depict personal information, or weaken the operations of the police. Also, citizen reporters are themselves at risk, whether of intimidation or even physical attacks, when they report on conflict zones or political instability.
Fragmentation and Gaps in Context
Citizen journalism is a good format of reporting events in snapshots and there may not be depth, background and analysis that professional journalism provides. Viral video can expose an issue but does not give any historical, cultural and political context to the issue. Such a void may lead to incomplete knowledge and simplistic generalizations.
How Citizen Journalism Interacts with Traditional Media
Instead of regarding citizen journalism and the traditional media as direct rivals, it is more significant to consider them as complementary forces. In breaking news, professional journalists have a tendency of using citizen reports as a starting point of information. On the other hand, mainstream sources bring out the verification, analysis, and contextual framing which citizen reports tend to have.
To take one example, in the case of a crisis in the world, citizen-created content can provide instant visuals and eyewitness accounts, whilst the well-established news organization can dig deeper, interview professionals and recreate the bigger story. The joint venture forms a more vibrant and multidimensional news ecosystem.
The Implication of Technology on the Development of Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalism cannot happen without technology. The smartphone revolution turned the common people into the potential news reporters, and the development of 4G and 5G networks guaranteed faster and more stable communication. TikTok and Instagram reels have altered the way people share stories. They prefer brief content that is powerful and highly visualized as opposed to lengthy reports.
In addition to smartphones, such inventions as drones are also used by citizen journalists as a way to record aerial shots of protests, floods, and environmental devastation. These devices widen the range of what a common individual can record and they can frequently compete with the visual images of professional news teams.
This space is also starting to be formed by artificial intelligence. Social platforms are gradually being enhanced with real-time translation, automated captioning, and AI-driven image verification, which provides opportunities and challenges.
Technological ecosystem keeps on redefining who is a journalist and what is credible evidence. With more people able to access these tools, the influence of citizen journalism is only going to increase, and thus, digital literacy has become more important than ever.
The Future of Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalists will only continue to increase as technology continues to improve. Smartphones are getting smarter, the internet is growing, and the social media services are integrating live-streaming and publishing features into their applications. Some of the verification challenges are likely to be solved by the use of artificial intelligence tools that can be used to fact-check content in real-time.
Nonetheless, media literacy is the key to the future too. People have to be taught to be critical when it comes to sources, compare or contrast information, and resist the urge of sharing the information that has not been verified. The responsibility of developing this culture of discernment lies with both educational programs and online platforms.
Conclusion
The emergence of citizen journalism has admittedly changed the face of the international media. The fact that it is fast, accessible, and diverse makes it a force that cannot be ignored in the contemporary reporting. However, its disadvantages such as the absence of verification, dissemination of misinformation, moral concerns, and contextual gaps cannot be overlooked.
The best news environment would be a situation whereby citizen journalism and traditional media live together and complement each other. Citizen journalism adds vitality, immediacy, and inclusiveness to the discussion of the people whereas professional journalism is about its accuracy, accountability and richness. They create a strong synergy together that keeps the masses informed, engaged and empowered.
Meanwhile, education and technological adaptation will be critical in the end of such transformation. With the introduction of new tools like AI verification, real-time translation, and so on, one can enhance the credibility of citizen reporting and reduce the chances of manipulation to a minimum.
The governments, the civil society, and the media houses need to collaborate to strike a balance between the freedom of expression and protection against abuse. Through this, citizen journalism can still develop without being a competitor to the traditional news but as an accomplice- to open up the mindset, be accountable when required, and eventually becoming a valuable contributor to democratic dialogue in a generation to come
