Citizen Journalism - a New Way of Reporting the News

What is Citizen Journalism? It is a new phenomenon when ordinary people can take part in covering the news without being professionals in this area. In this way journalism is  not seen as a boring lecture but it lead the viewers,listeners, receivers of the information to participation in creating the news. There are special citizen journalism sites where everybody can edit, comment and put further materials about certain topic. Moreover, they are accessible to everybody who have Internet all over the world. Examples of such sites that are made especially for the purpose of this new method of reporting the news are http://www.globalreporter.com/  , http://www.backfence.com/ , http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page . Youtube is also such site because it gives its members to upload whatever videos they want on various topics.
With the advance of the technology citizen journalism became even more popular. People have the necessary equipment to furnish the others with details about  a particular event. What is more, with this kind of journalism we give voice to the democracy because everybody feels free to say their own opinion, to express their view, to stick to certain believes without being afraid  or punished. Even in countries with severe regimes where the media is regulated by the government this kind of reporting the news becomes more and more popular among people, who yearn for neutral, unbiased news. Of course, there countries such as China which still does not count the citizen journalism news as legitimate source of information.
( Citizen Journalist Deported from China )
What is more, in cases of natural disasters many people accidentally become journalism when they send photos and video materials to the official media. Such is the case with the floods in Pakistan in 2010 ( How citizen journalism turned into the main source of information in Pakistan)


Some people may say that this kind of journalism cannot be trusted because non-professionals report the news. To a certain extend they are right, but in that way the news are more understandable and approachable to the public. All the information is served in a easy to comprehend language, with everyday words and phrases.

 I firmly believe that this kind of new way of collecting data will become more and more popular in the next years. In this way people will get more involved in the process of creating the news and will make them more authoritative, reliable,unbiased and closer to ordinary people.