Exemplar for internal assessment resource Media Studies for Achievement Standard 91496
Citizen journalism is the concept of members in the public playing an active role in collecting,
reporting, analysing and spreading news and information. One of the defining characteristics of
social media is that it allows everyday people to join in the conversation on basically every topic
they choose. Online websites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging are now used to create an
opportunity for the public to express an opinion, contribute knowledge and engage in a debate
with other social media users. This online freedom and global access has given rise to a more
open sense of journalism. Citizen journalism is aimed at equipping the public with highly
accessible, real time methods of accessing and reporting news. A popular example of citizen
journalism at work is the 9/11 tourist attacks. When the first plane collided into the World Trade
Centre Towers it wasn’t professional journalists and reporters who caught the scene as it played
out, it was actually the residents of New York City and tourists who happened to have their
cameras ready and handy. We can see from iconic pictures taken that day by ordinary people in
New York has now gone around the world and replayed year after year the power that citizen
journalism can have [images not shown in this extract]. It took a lot of individual advancements
for online journalism to become what it is today and a recent survey found that 36% of New
Zealand respondents say their participation of being a news audience is ‘digital first.’ Hands are
most commonly drawn to picking up a telephone, switching on a laptop or checking a tablet but
not only are we reading stuff online, we are contributing to it too.
Many people believe however that citizen journalism is making our lives easier, faster and
cheaper. This type of journalism is more accessible in the way that we only have to flick onto our
computer to look at the latest sites which give us opinion and news pieces. It is more affordable
and much easier to access than pay for the daily paper and only get told the news that has
happened to the previous day or days prior. Professional journalists cannot be everywhere that
news can be reported and they cannot cover every event that is taking place, especially those
that are unplanned and just happen. With technology having made it easier to access news that
ever before, the demand for footage and coverage of events as they happen has increased.
Citizen journalism however allows everyday people to join in the conversation and report any sign
of news or information that is going to benefit the society for knowing. For example during the
tsunami in the Indian ocean in 2004, bloggers were able to be on the scene and offer a first
person account about what was actually happening. We often see on news sites an opportunity
for members of the public to post their images and videos onto news websites like NZHerald,
Stuff.co.nz or TVNZ. For example when there was extreme bad weather which hit Wellington in
particular, lots of the footage came from members of the public posting photos of the flooding and
how it affected them. Stuff even put in one of their stories the following message “Do you have
more information? Email us at [email protected]. Often photos from Instagram accounts or
twitter are used to support stories and this means that footage and photos can be posted to a
news website more quickly than if news agencies had to wait for their own journalists. People go
to social media like twitter to get instant updates on news so news agencies can’t afford to wait.
Blog styles and online news opens up the news making process and people can pick and choose
what they want to read, rather than being told something they may not want to know about. Sim
Ahmed, the author of an article called “Mind The Gap,” states that “They [citizen journalists]
develop multiple versions of the same story to utilise tools available online that aren’t available in
print, such as video and interactive element.” This allows more access to news and opinions from
people that may not be able to access due to some issues or problem where print news is not
© NZQA 2015
Exemplar for internal assessment resource Media Studies for Achievement Standard 91496
available. Citizen journalism is allowing a much larger audience to be informed and even involved
in the process.
In such a technological era such as now, there is an increasing number of ways in which to
communicate a message or opinion and technology is allowing citizen journalism to grow in
prominence. A good example of this was the role that Citizen Journalism played in the Ferguson
riots in Missouri, USA. This was when an unarmed 18 year old African American boy, Michael
Brown, was killed by two white policemen. After he had been shot, a photo of Brown was posted
on Twitter by @TheePharoah and what resulted was the story became a huge story on social
media before eventually mainstream media like TV stations picked it up. A number of journalists
like @Alicesperi and @ryanjreilly who were on the scene used twitter to send pictures of the
rioting immediately while Mustafa Hussain, a politics student, used his ‘livestream broadcaster
box’ to livestream footage of what was happening – to 1.3m viewers. When Washington Post
journalist Wesley Lovery was arrested when trying to report on the riots he used his cell phone to
record what was happening to him. What social media did with Ferguson was show the power of
social media to send messages to the world. Only after it became huge on social media did the
mainstream media pick it up. Footage in the form of pictures and video was able to be uploaded
straight away and sent around America and the world immediately and without any editing. It
showed the power of social media and citizen journalism in not only covering the news but also
highlighting issues which the media wasn’t focusing on and making them important. The
Ferguson riots became an important story around the world and this was because people used
social media to highlight what the mainstream media wasn’t.
With the growing number of social media sites being used as a way to inform, report and express
opinions to people, the issue of amateur reporting is becoming a big issue and is threatening the
way knowledge is spread throughout the world. Citizen journalists are non-professional journalists
working in the community sharing their opinions and knowledge on a website or blog for people to
read. In fact, citizen journalists now use social media sites such as Facebook, twitter, skype and
YouTube to publish their writing and share their views. For example on Stuff.co.nz they have a
section called Stuff Nation in which readers are encouraged to submit their opinion on topical
issues. While these can be things like “Pet of the day’ people also submit articles on more
serious issues such as education, crime or health.
Having social media websites as a main source of information nowadays leaves the question of
how reliable is the information? With the growing number or non-professional reporters becoming
popular in the news industry, it is becoming harder and harder to trust if the information we are
reading is actually factual or not. With no training, background and strict guidelines to follow,
citizen journalists are able to write about anything they wish to or post whatever they want to
social media and often aren’t reliable sources as their content is mostly made up from their own
perspectives. In an article called ‘Blurring the Lines Between Professional and Citizen
Journalism” by Peter Townson records that almost half of online users have been tricked by what
they read. However citizen journalism is seen as a good way to allow everybody to be involved
with the news and information developments. People often view this as a way for a number of
people to interact and be involved in the online, news business community. This also creates the
issue that non-professional journalists are persuading their audience into the way they think and
are not informing their audience with the correct and important information they need.
© NZQA 2015