Citizen journalism is where private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do, report information. The current world we live in is all about producing, sharing and consuming. We live in a digital age where information can be shared to the world in a matter of seconds. Citizen journalism is incredibly popular. No degree required or fees to pay unlike qualified journalists, and no filter or direct risk. Citizen journalism is the absence of authority, an open process with no closure.

The arrival of the Internet with blogs, podcasts, YouTube and other Web-related innovations is what has made citizen journalism possible. In 2012, there were about 59.4 million WordPress sites across the world. Blogs and social media have taken away the feature of ‘gatekeepers’ (publishers, editors, content controllers) allowing individuals to post what they want, free from control.

As social media allows for immediate uploads, it is quickly becoming the host to report news before any other form of media.

However, one problem it poses is that Citizen Journalism has been marred by inaccurate reporting; such as reports during Superstorm Sandy that the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded.
With the majority of citizen journalists not being paid for their work, it seems unrealistic to expect them to have the same commitment to their work as paid professionals would, this being a problem that doesn’t seem likely to disappear any time soon.

Nevertheless, Citizen journalism allows for instant access and immediate information for people all around the world.

Although the information we are fed may not always be completely accurate or obtained from viable sources such as traditional medias, this is not to say the use of this information in conjunction with traditional sources is not valuable. Collective intelligence redistributes power to the numbers and upholds the value that the individuals knowledge and understanding combined with another, makes for a collective understanding of the human experience.

We just have to be careful as to what we take as fact and fiction..