Citizen journalism is a practice where by the general public play a role in the reporting collecting and distribution of news. In contradiction with professional journalism citizen journalism, otherwise known as public or participatory journalism, He’s not a job in there for the people producing the content does not get any monetary reward. Reasons for the rise in citizen journalism said to be to fill the gap left by traditional journalistic outlets and also the rise in people becoming more political.
The role of people being involved in the generals the process is not a completely new idea. In ancient Greece people were required to be active in the democratic process although this was much more formalized than the modern practice of citizen journalism.
Citizen journalism has been responsible for a number of movements in the past few years. Iran’s green movement was heavily influenced by locally Iranians using technology to communicate what was happening. The Arab spring was another world event but was largely mobilized by the use of the citizen through social media. The occupy protests which swept the world in 2010 are another notable example of the practice.
There are some criticisms of citizen journalism. The most common of which is the potential for misinformation to be spread. Unlike traditional media outlets, there is nobody vetting the information which is been distributed, often by social media. However, That are differences between this and fake news. Where fake news sets out to spread misinformation this is not the purpose of the citizen journalist.