Citizen journalism (An Indian Perspective), Notes for BJMC students, India

CITIZEN JOURNALISM 

(An Indian Perspective)

Sr P. Michelle Mathias

The advancement of gadgets that can capture Data in an instant and transmit the same through various social media networking or Blogging platforms has led to a unique genre of journalism that is called Citizen Journalism. Citizen Journalism has led to Citizens of any given country capturing an incident and disseminating it on their Blogs, Vlogs, YouTube, Instagram Posts, Facebook Posts or WhatsApp Posts.

Sonny Albarado writes in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (www.britannica.com) that Citizen journalism is a type of “journalism that is conducted by people who are not professional journalists but who disseminate information using Web sites, blogs, and social media. Citizen journalism has expanded its worldwide influence despite continuing concerns over whether citizen journalists are as reliable as trained professionals”.

Nah (2008) defines Citizen Journalists by saying that these are Individuals who are not considered to be professional journalists, but who produce, disseminate, and exchange a wide variety of news and information, ranging from current topics to common interests to individual issues.

Mortensen, Keshelashvili, & Weir (2016) define Citizen journalist as a participant who has produced either a photo, a video, or a writing piece that has been submitted for inclusion by mainstream or citizen journalism outlets, or has been intentionally or unintentionally published by a mainstream or citizen journalism outlet.

Citizen journalism is also known as "participatory journalism", "civic journalism," "democratic journalism", "public journalism,"  "stand-alone journalism," "networked journalism," "open source journalism," "crowd-sourced journalism," "grassroots journalism," "community journalism," and so on. These forms of journalism are related to "citizen journalism",  (Baase, 2008; Cohn, 2007; Noor, 2017).

Citizen Journalism has managed to find a niche in journalism for the reason that Mainstream News channels or Journalists are unable to reach at certain spots at a certain time. Many incidents such as Natural disasters, major Hazards, accidents have been captured on mobiles and footage uploaded on Social Networking forums which led to creating of footage data.

For e.g. The London Bombings, the Tsunami in India and other such incidents were primarily conquered on their smartphone cameras by citizens and this was then taken by News Channel who played these footages.

The origin of Citizen journalism is traced to an individual named Oh Yeonho and his three South Korean colleagues who found it beyond their means to hire Traditional journalists due to their massive charges for the printing of a paper in the year 2000. In order to tackle this resource crunch they started a website called ‘Ohmynews’ that used volunteers to generate content. The firm established itself with a low budget and had an overwhelming reponse. At one point, ‘Ohmynews’ had 727 Citizen reporters, and has  grown to an overwhelming 50, 000 contributors from over 100 countries. Thus, Citizen journalism received a boost.

Citizens today have realised that Video or pictorial footage matters and this is one of the reasons why such captures have become quite prominent of News Platforms who too have realised the value of these shots and footages. During the Corona Virus scare, Nature has started reclaiming its space. And much of the footage on this topic are shots captured on their smartphones by people and circulated.

In India most of the National News Channels have become hubs of Political Discussion where prominent faces of Journalism often cantankerously rattle out words and enable debates. This has often led to very little news and more of debates and personal mouth pieces being highlighted as news. There are a few channels who air proper News, albeit in short to represent atleast a little bit of every state. However, Desktop journalism is currently at its height and Paid News at its peak. On the other hand, Local News Channels are doing the noble job of bringing news of Local areas to the people. which is a considerable deal of Information.

Despite this, often a news that goes viral is brought to the main forum due to Citizen Journalism. CNN IBN too has a dedicated channel to Citizen Journalism issues called the Citizen Journalist Show. It also teamed up with Eyeway, (a forum dedicated to help Blind people),  that committed to help specially-abled people with a series of Radio Programmes that were also shot as Vlogs for YouTube to highlight the plight specially abled people have to undergo through several Citizen Journalism series.

When something goes viral it catches the frenzy of news channel. For instance, when the prices of vegetables drastically dropped and the farmers were being driven to suicide- the video of a farmer, Premsing Chavan, from Pohegaon village of Jalna district, destroying his cauliflower became viral. The video was shot by another farmer, who while shooting the video kept on telling Premsing not to do so. Premsing was barely able to secure any money for his crop, and was worried as to how he would sponsor his kids education. He and his family would have to starve. This video went viral and all news media carried this video footage. Premsing Chavan was then invited by Udhav Thackeray who met him at his residence and handed him a check of Rs 1 Lakh from a private sponsor. In India, Citizen Journalism has often played the role of Rural journalism in being able to reach out and garner help in such cases.

Newspapers too carry columns for Citizen Journalism stories. In India this trend has been given a boost by certain newspapers, who carry special columns of Citizen journalism when they want to cater to a cause. The Times of India despite being popular for its advertorials has a regular space dedicated to Citizen Journalism in many parts of India. Thus, Citizen Journalism gave a forum for citizens of the country to voice their inconveniences of Bad roads, Garbage ridden vicinities, Pot holes which can cause accidents etc,. Tribals are rarely represented in main stream media. Citizen journalism has given the tribals a platform to speak and the demand their rights. Such reports led to actions being taken by Responsible Government machinery.

While there are many benefits of the same, Citizen Journalism has been also accused of Unprofessionalism, fake content or made-up content. Often in India fake news has led to many lynchings too. This can be a cause of alarm. Therefore, a Professional media house, who picks up a Citizen story should make sure that the story is verified, analysed, cross-checked and then disseminated. While, Technology is a boon, it has also turned out to be a bane as there are many people who in order to make a quick buck spread false information.

Citizen Journalism is often considered to be logger heads with Main stream Journalism. However, on a personal note, a professional journalist cannot be everywhere at all times. In such cases, teaming up is the best solution to provide news for all citizens, based on facts not fiction and with proper audio visual footage that is verified. Citizen Journalism and Main Stream Journalism should work hand in Hand, while one provides data the other could verify the truth and present it in the best possible manner to educate the citizens of the country and highlight issues that often get negated.