Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

With an incredible boom in communication technology, a substantial increase in the number of citizens taking part in what is known as “citizen journalism” has been witnessed in the past few years. Citizen journalism has brought about a fundamental shift in democracy where in everything happening around is disseminated, reported, analyzed, and made to go through a wholesome journalistic process by the public itself. Owing to a 24/7 access to the arms of technology, citizens have become an immediate source of breaking news and in turn, have brought in the very idea of citizen journalism into mainstream media. Unlike an early advent of citizen journalism in developed countries, India has just begun witnessing a sudden surge in the same since a decade. The present research paper attempts to understand if citizen journalism has marked the end of literate traditional media or bridged the gap between the media and the inaccessible. Through the study of different cases of crisis reporting within India and various media platforms for citizen journalism, it considers how it is boosted by social media. Furthermore, it focuses on the impact of citizen journalism on professional journalists, citizen journalists, and mainstream media in general. The paper also throws light on how the aforementioned concept can be made understood to the citizens from an early point in their academic journey to ensure a sensible journalistic arrangement in future.