Citizen Journalism and Its Top 3 Advantages

Anyone can take on this job without any formal training or course persuasion from any journalism institute. The citizen journalism activities are popular all across the world and you often see the reporting from these unconventional journalists in the print news media, television, and even on the internet news channels. The popularity of this field has attracted many people to be part of it. Thus, it becomes vital to know about the top benefits of this citizen journalism field. This is a new wave in the journalism industry. The citizens work to gather, analyze, disseminate, and report the news. The citizens play an active role in journalism outside traditional media journalism institutes. It often fills in the gap created due to shortcomings in the media and news industry. Citizen journalism is also known by different names such as democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism, public journalism, participatory journalism, etc.

Top 3 Benefits of Citizen Journalism

1. Easy Access to Present Events

Today’s world is a high tech world and everyone is tech-savvy. The proliferation of online media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc made the dissemination of information easier and faster. Furthermore, the easy access to camera and internet through Smartphones made it easy to capture news in real-time. All these technical inventions and their affordability have set the stage for citizen journalism. Without any educational qualification accredited from a journalism institute and acceptance from any news or media channel, anyone can take part in the participatory journalism activities.

2. Provide a Different Point of View

In citizen journalism activities, laymen take part and that is why they represent the facts and news based on their own perspective and from the point of view of the local people in that area or city. This helps in disseminating different perspectives to the authority and public. It also engages the local viewer in the masses to bring positive changes in the society and government.

3. Assist Qualified Journalists

There are many newspapers and television channels that welcome citizen journalism. In fact, there are some citizens who take an active part in this field and that’s why they often get various opportunities to get featured in the big news headlines or to assist qualified professional journalists who mastered the skills of journalism from the top journalism institute and field experience.

Citizen journalism is not just a field! It has become passion followed by many people. Every now and then, the public witness video clips, pictures, and even written news updates from different areas of the world reported by these citizen journalists. This has added one interesting layer into this field. This even made it easy to follow the passion if one couldn’t identify the same earlier or couldn’t pursue a professional career due to any other reason. Even internet-based participatory journalism lets citizen journalists make money in different ways. In a nutshell, it is an alluring and growing field.

National Institute of Mass Communication & Journalism, Ahmedabad

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