What is Citizen Journalism?
Journalism is one of the most encouraging and a challenging work. The journalist gather information and broadcast it via different media like TV, newspaper etc. He/She describes the event, ideas and issues that are relevant to the public. But the idea of journalism by public is flourishing with the advent of Internet. This is what we can say Citizen Journalism that is journalism by the people and for the people. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.
Communication has greatly changed with technology. The Internet has enabled citizens to contribute to journalism, without professional training. Citizen journalism helps the public to write their own views in their own style. Networking technologies, such as weblogs, chat rooms, message boards, wikis and mobile computing given sense to journalism by the people. Polls and views are the most broadly accepted tool to get public opinion. Citizen journalism can also be said as an involved community member posting entries on a public wiki or uploading photos and videos to a media-sharing site.
Blogging is one of the most popular tools that have proven useful to the citizen journalism movement. People can write freely their views on major issues or they can raise those untouched issues which are neglected by media. It provides a powerful platform to engage with media instead of just watching it.
Now-a-days Public Journalism is also being explored via new media such as the use of mobile phones. Mobile phones can transform reporting and places the power of reporting in the hands of the public. Mobile telephony provides low-cost options for people to set up news operations. One small organization providing mobile news and exploring public journalism is Jasmine News (http://www.jasminenews.com/) in Sri Lanka. One more example is I News India.
In 2004, when the 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge tsunami in Banda Aceh Indonesia, citizen journalism helped to broadcast the information. News footage from many people who experienced the tsunami was widely distributed.
Citizen Journalism is the way by which the average person can capture news and distribute it globally. People collect and disseminate the news, opinions, and information that matter to them most. It’s a very democratic development.
www.awkwd.com is providing such a platform for citizens to share the views and writing by public. It publishes each day the stories which are written by citizens, not professional journalists. You can here share your views and write on those issues which matter to you or which you feel concerned about. Be a part of awkwd, be a citizen journalist.
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