Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic",[1] "guerrilla"[2] or "street journalism"[3]) is the concept of members of the public

"playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.[4] Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires." Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which are practiced by professional journalists, or collaborative journalism, which is practiced by professional and non-professional journalists working together. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content. Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006:[5] The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube. In What is Participatory Journalism?,[6] J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types: 1. Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community) 2. Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report) 3. Full-fledged participatory news sites (NowPublic, OhmyNews, DigitalJournal.com, Blottr.com, GroundReport) 4. Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Newsvine) 5. Other kinds of "thin media." (mailing lists, email newsletters) 6. Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as KenRadio). Citizen journalism is news created by amateur reporters who were previously seen as audiences, viewers or readers. The roots of citizen journalism lie in the self-printed pamphlets that were distributed on the street-side. However, by enabling everyone to report news without the permission of gatekeepers like news organizations or editors, social media has democratized journalism and enriched it by bringing in a diversity of views and voices to it.

There are four aspects of citizen journalism. Do note that when I say blogging, I mean it in the broadest sense, including photo-blogging (on sites like Flickr), video-blogging (on sites like YouTube) and micro-blogging (on sites like Twitter). 1. News blogging: Re-blogging, commenting on, giving context on, or curating news that is often reported in traditional media. WATBlog and Pluggd.in, for instance, curate news on the IT/ Telecom/ Media industry in India. 2. Local blogging: Blogging about local news that is not usually reported in traditional media. For instance, the Metroblogging network, which has chapters in Mumbai , Chennai , Bangalore and Hyderabad, is focused on covering local city news. 3. Change blogging: Blogging about a cause or an issue. The Blank Noise Project, which writes against street sexual harassment is a good example of this. The Indian Water Portal Blog is another especially Sharda Prasads K2K project. 4. Crisis reporting, which involves live blogging about a crisis as it unfolds. Often, these are game-changing events that bring citizen journalism into the mainstream, because citizen journalism is often the fastest and the most inclusive/ interactive source of news on these events. Examples include the Tsunami in 2004 and the Mumbai terror attack in 2008. While blogs like TsunamiHelp and MumbaiHelp have played an important role in coordinating such efforts, they are essentially distributed efforts. Sometimes, corporates have experimented with their own citizen journalism initiatives, like MTV Indias My India Report and IBN Lives Citizen Journalist. Similarly, there are citizen journalism websites like NowPublic, GroundReport, Merinews and Instablogs. Still, citizen journalism remains a bottom up, distributed phenomenon WHAT HAPPENED IN 2008? Many observers have argued that citizen journalism on social media came into its own in 2008. First the Democratic party Netroots, led by blogs like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos, played an important role in president elect Obamas campaign, both in the primaries and in the presidential elections. Then, we got a preview of how important citizen journalism is likely to become in developing countries when social media played a leading role in covering the China earthquake and the Mumbai terror attack. Two trends in citizen journalism became evident in 2008 1. Mobile technology is playing an increasingly important role in citizen journalism. In the 2004 Tsunami, citizen reporters in the affected areas text messaged updates to their friends who had access to the internet and they collated these text messages into blog posts and wikis. In the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, Twitter, which can be updated via SMS, became one of the most important sources of news on the crisis.

2. Mainstream media is now willing and eager to integrate citizen journalism in their news coverage. News organizations are not only promoting citizen journalism platforms like IBN Lives Citizen Journalist, but also engaging in platforms like Twitter (see @DNAIndia, @BangaloreMirror, @IndiatimesNews). PREDICTIONS FOR 2009 We will see a continuation of these trends in 2009 - Citizen journalism will play an important role in the 2009 Indian general elections. Young people in India are very engaged with politics in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack and this engagement will make an impact in the 2009 elections. This will include more debate on the many problems facing India and even specific political parties and candidates. This will also involve a serious get out the vote campaign to get more young people to go out to vote. Some politicians will also experiment with social media. BJPs V K Malhotra, for instance has a Twitter account @VKMalhotra . - More news organizations will experiment with citizen journalism, both by creating citizen journalism platforms on their own websites and by actively tracking social media for stories and sources. - We will see some new initiatives for tracking and curating citizen journalism, in order to make sense of it, especially in the 2009 general elections. This can include a social voting website like IndiaTalks which I intent to launch later in the year, or an automated website like mumbaiterror.informm.in created by social media measurement company Informm, or a mix of both. In fact, Venkat Ramna from Informm, who is a friend, promises to quickly put up election2009.informm.in in the run up to the 2009 election. - We will see Twitter and other mobile based applications like SMSGupShup and MyToday, playing an important role in the 2009 general elections, both in the campaigning and in the coverage of the elections. You should also see this great series on citizen journalism in India by Pramit Singh: 1, 2, 3, 4. When I have some time, Ill update this post to include some of the interesting points in Pramits posts. "Citizen Journalism" or Participatory Journalism is an evolving form of journalism through user generated content. When any common man in his capacity as a citizen of a nation takes up the initiative to report things or express his views about happenings around him then the occurrence is popularly termed as citizen journalism or participatory journalism. Citizen Journalists are not bound by the conventional term of a journalist. Citizen journalists take up an initiative to express ideas irrespective of their educational or professional background. In a way this emerging form of journalism is promising a scenario of breaking free from media bias as well as taking local news on a global platform.