It’s time… for me to analyse global news reporting like the educated person that I am.

Now, there are those among us (you know who you are) who have decided that they are not fond of what one would refer to as the ‘system’. Those same individuals have taken it upon themselves to broadcast the news. That’s right: citizen journalism!

Social media has allowed imposters (Among Us isn’t relevant anymore, is it?) to run amok. Is it truly an epidemic? Probably not. They’re likely to be super annoying in person, though.

It’s probably been said enough, but we truly don’t deserve the internet (and there are certain sites that prove this only too well). Now, there’s very little need for paper – although I guess the trees aren’t going to cut themselves down, are they? We’ve moved past newspapers and magazines and are now turning to Facebook, Twitter, Google and blogs (please not mine, though). It was through the internet that citizen journalism rose from obscurity and into all our hearts. Scholars have struggled to settle on just one definition for it, but there is one particular article that defines it as “news content produced by non-professionals” (Wall, M. 2015). In film, we would call them guerrilla-style filmmakers, but let’s not assume these people are at that level of pretentiousness.

I’m so glad I didn’t check Wikipedia before writing this.

In fact, the more I read, the more I realise that citizen journalism doesn’t simply consist of someone’s opinion on Andrew Tate. For decades, brave citizens (Batmen, if you will) have attempted to ‘expose the truth’. Events such as the 1988 U.S. presidential election eroded trust in the news media, thus inspiring the common people to share the news themselves. Of course, now that’s just every U.S. election, only now with each and every side of the equation spouting nonsense (I assume – I don’t really pay attention).

The internet component has allowed citizen journalism to simply become journalism. It seems anyone can say anything about anyone at this point. Obviously, there are benefits to this – for not every country is as free as ours or America. There are those who are attempting to share news from war-torn (say it with me) Ukraine who would’ve struggled to do so pre-internet. This form of citizen journalism has allowed those of us situated safely on the other side of the world away from Putin to gain an understanding of what it’s like to be caught within the line of fire. Images and videos taken from the ground level found TikTok and Facebook before certain media organisations could even reach the area (1) – talk about efficiency.

For countries that are lacking a reliable government (which is all of them, but ‘some are worse than others’ I guess), all they seem to need is citizenry (they also need to stop taking themselves seriously, but that’s why I don’t run them). What citizen journalists lack in traditional ethics, they make up for in drawing connection and raising awareness (when it’s not being communicated on Twitter).

References

Wall, M (2015). Citizen Journalism, pp. 797-813. Available at: https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2014.1002513

(1) Tsakiris, M. (2022). Ukraine: how social media images from the ground could be affecting our response to the war. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/ukraine-how-social-media-images-from-the-ground-could-be-affecting-our-response-to-the-war-178722