Online and Citizen Journalism

Online journalism is defined as the reporting of facts produced and distributed via the Internet. In recent years, the internet has completely changed journalism and it is considered the clearest evidence that this is a revolutionary technology: news editors – and in some cases, the governments that they observe – are no longer the gatekeepers to information because costs of distribution have almost completely disappeared. If knowledge is power, the internet is the greatest tool in the history of the world.

Technology has improved the processes of identifying stories that are newsworthy. Feeds from social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter provide a snapshot of events happening around the world from the viewpoint of first-hand witnesses, and blogs and citizen news sources offer analytical perspectives from the ground faster than print or television can provide. The process that happens before a story is published has also been transformed. The web has become the go-to point for the globe when it comes to getting information; it's the same for reporters. Online, they find a multiplicity of perspectives and a library of available knowledge that provides the context for stories. Increasingly, the stories are coming from the web.

However, one of the biggest grouse with internet journalism is the lack of accuracy that mainstream journalism proves to have. For example, back in November 2011, twitter was flooded with news that David Guetta, a house music DJ, had passed on. This eventually proved to be a big hoo-ha about nothing as David tweeted that he was fine, and that he didn't know where the news had sprouted from. This is not the first instance of death 'reported' on twitter. There have been many others, such as Tiesto, a trance music DJ's supposed death (http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6249901-is-dj-tiesto-dead). This shows how shoddy and dodgy information taken off the internet can be.

Yet, online journalism is the main fuel of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do - report information, they report . That information can take many forms, from a podcast editorial to a report about a city council meeting on a blog. It can include text, pictures, audio and video. But it's basically all about communicating information of some kind. The other main feature of citizen journalism is that it's usually found online. In fact, the emergence of the Internet - with blogs, podcasts, streaming video and other Web-related innovations - is what has made citizen journalism possible.

Citizen journalism is increasingly becoming depended upon, in today’s era, with an increase of news agencies displaying content provided by citizen journalists. Even for the case of the Little India Riot that occurred earlier this year, the story was first published via citizen journalism, in the form of twitter updates. People at the scene posted pictures and videos, even before the camera crew of the news agencies reached the place. Hence citizen journalism is indeed playing a vital role by reaching out to places that news agencies do not or cannot and broadcasting news from such places.

However, as useful as citizen journalism might be the question of reliability always arises, for the content is produced by the general public, who has no education on the ethics and necessities of journalism.