Technology, such as the internet has created a new world in which a person is able to communicate, share ideas and opinions, as well as provide themselves with entertainment. It is a popular medium which provides people with numerous channels for information, as well as entertainment (Bruns, 1). With these new emerging technologies more and more people are beginning to create their own type of media coverage that shares their ideas and opinions on media coverage. We are now seeing a decline in sales of news-paper companies and an increase in citizen journalism (Bruns, 2). The internet and social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and various blog webpage’s have opened up a new world for citizen journalism. For the first time in history people are now able to share media coverage and provide a different spin on the news by giving their opinions and thoughts, while sharing this information with their follows or potentially the rest of the world. We are in an information age and newspapers and broadcasting stations are not providing enough information to the public. There are all types of people out there, left-winged people and right winged people, and all the people in between. Media coverage by journalists and broadcasting stations often take a bias when providing media coverage to the public. However with citizen journalism we are now seeing a shift in these biases because we are able to access information from all standpoints written by a variety of people. Social media as Hermida claims is a social awareness stream, where we are able to be constantly updated through links, photos as well as videos (Hermida, 660). With these constant updates being produced the idea of journalism is now disintegrating, because we are now seeing a mixture of professional journalism mixed in with non-professional journalism, otherwise known as citizen journalism (Hermida, 660).
I believe that citizen journalism is a positive thing; however I cannot say that I participate in it very often. I am not an avid user of social media nor do I have the time to sit down find articles share them with my Facebook friends. However I guess the only citizen journalism that I do participate in would be tweeting about hockey trades and issues surrounding the NHL. However I appreciate people that do participate in citizen journalism, because often when I am scrolling through Twitter or Facebook I am updated about events occurring through links and pictures that people share. One primary example of this was the Toronto flood that just occurred. If you were not updated on the events that took place in Toronto you wouldn’t miss much seeing as people on Facebook and Twitter were giving constant updates about the city’s condition. People were sharing articles, posting photos and videos to participate in citizen journalism.
Refernces
Bruns, A. & T. Highfield. (2012). Blogs, Twitter, and breaking news: The produsage of citizen journalism. pre-publication draft on personal site [Snurb.info]. Published in: Lind, R. A. ed. (2012). Produsing Theory in a Digital World: The Intersection of Audiences and Production. New York: Peter Lang. p15-32.
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