the use of citizen journalism as a news source

The use of citizen journalism as a news source

By. Jamie

What is citizen journalism?

There are a number of platforms available to the public which they can use to upload content.

Twitter is a key player, and the list of news stories that break on Twitter before they do on mainstream media is staggering.  Famous examples include Whitney Houston’s death, which was reported on Twitter over an hour before any mainstream press picked up on it.

Osama bin Laden’s raid and death, one of the biggest news stories of 2011, was reported unwittingly in tweets by a local IT consultant one day before Barack Obama announced it to the world.

Additionally, the live chase for the men guilty of the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 saw news channels relying heavily upon the updates of citizens living in the area to establish what was happening. This was captured through videos, pictures, tweets, skype calls, blogs and many more mediums.

There’s an app for that

User generated content, digital storytelling and consistently available live streaming is fuelling the news with different events from different perspectives. Us ‘normal’ folk are no longer limited to the letters to the editor section, but are relied upon to source the news as well.

What qualifies as news?

But for something that was once a revolutionary addition to news reporting, it’s now becoming the subject of reporting. More and more often we are seeing news bulletins dedicated to what people have said on Twitter.