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What is citizen journalism？

For example, a car accident or uncivilized phenomenon on the street was recorded by passers-by and then published on the Internet to let people know what happened, so as to arouse social public opinion.Often citizen news is information reported quickly.(Kirschener & Karpinski 2010, p. )

Do you believe citizen journalism through social media is good, bad, or a bit of both? Why? Use academic readings to justify your conclusions.

In my opinion, citizen news spread through social media is bad because it is not absolute. When citizen news spreads news in social media, they cannot judge the authenticity and authority of the news through professional judgment and rational analysis. They can only express their views on the matter according to their subjective opinions, and then label the news or event with their own understanding. for example，Of the more than 40 BBC reports on Xinjiang from last August to this year, 30 were not signed by reporters. These anonymous reports are mostly references to second-hand information.The British daily express recently published an article entitled “the failure of the BBC”.BBC’s failure: half of Britons don’t want to pay TV license fees for “biased” reports The article mentioned that a poll of 1700 people found that almost half (47%) said that the BBC had been unfair in news reporting in recent years.

In doing so, choose a country/region of the world (that is not the US, UK or Australia) and discuss how it involves citizen journalism. Is it a practice that is beneficial for that region, exposing truths and stories the traditional media doesn’t cover? Does it obscure truth and spread misinformation, muddying the waters of good journalism in the region?

I will choose China to discuss the citizen news of that country. In China, although you can publish citizen news on social media and attach your own views, there will be special Internet agencies and law enforcement personnel of national departments to audit. If there are doubts or inconsistent with the facts after investigation, the law enforcement department will order to delete the news event, If there is an adverse impact, the person who publishes the news will be forced to make a statement on the Internet, apologize and attach an explanation to prove that the news is false. If it causes an extremely bad impact, affects the trend of public opinion, and brings harm or difficulties to people’s life, the person who publishes the news will be punished by law.According to the network security law promulgated by the people’s Republic of China Any individual or organization using the Internet shall abide by the Constitution and laws, observe public order, respect social morality, and shall not endanger network security, engage in activities endangering national security, honor and interests, incite subversion of state power, overthrow the socialist system, incite division of the country, undermine national unity, promote terrorism, extremism, and national hatred Ethnic discrimination, spreading violent, obscene and pornographic information, fabricating and spreading false information, disturbing economic and social order, and infringing on others’ reputation, privacy, intellectual property rights and other legitimate rights and interests.(Thorsen & Allan 2014, p. )

Reference list：

Kirschener, PA & Karpinski, AC 2010, ‘Facebook and academic performance’, Computers in human behaviour, vol.26, iss.06, pp. 1237-1245.

Thorsen, E & Allan, S 2014, Citizen journalism: global perspectives. Volume 2, Peter Lang, New York.