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For my EOTO topic, I was excited to cover what is known as "citizen journalism". This phenomenon has existed for a long time, but has seen a serious rise in the advent of social media and smartphones. Citizen journalism is, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "journalism that is conducted by people who are not professional journalists but who disseminate information using Web sites, blogs, and social media". This practice of using real-time technologies to produce real-time coverage of events has been praised and criticized for good reasons.
Some stories are simply unreachable for professional journalists. Conditions in a given location may be too dangerous, or accessing a location might be too logistically difficult, or an event just happens too quickly for them to see it and report on it. However, with cameras, recording devices, and platforms to share among wide sets of peoples, stories that are typically unreachable are now being told. Even better, these stories are being told and shared by direct witnesses to that story. This is a great thing for bringing new voices and typically unheard voices out to tell stories, and can provide meaningful content for real journalists to work from as well.
However, this comes with strings attached. Citizen journalists are at the end of the day, just citizens. Not to knock the everyday person, but there is no replacement for proper journalistic training, and without it mistakes can and do happen. When you've got a source that is not objective, that can edit or manipulate events to mislead, with no ethical guidelines or standards to uphold, you can run into serious problems with this content. Media outlets need to be responsible in their use of citizen journalist footage, and provide the checks necessary to deliver an accurate and comprehensive report.
This is a really important and relevant aspect of journalism today, and I was happy to get to talk more about its implications, I hope my presentation was informative.
Origin Intel For This Post, Because I'm Too Poor To Even Entertain The IDEA of Plagiarism:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/citizen-journalism
my own presentation
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