By Rusa Bhowmik
Citizen journalism depends on the active participation of ordinary people. Before defining it, it helps to recall what journalism itself is. The American Press Institute describes it as "the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information". Citizen journalism begins where that activity meets a citizen's sense of duty and responsibility: relaying information to the public with justice and minimum bias. It has sprouted as an alternative to the traditional reporting of mainstream media.
Why mainstream media is losing trust
The first thing to understand is that citizen journalism rests on independence. A citizen journalist is not the mouthpiece of any media outlet. The relevance of any news depends on its purpose and quality, and that is often not the case in today's media culture. Truth is frequently dressed up and made tantalizing for ratings, producing an endless stream of debates and talk shows full of sound and fury but limited useful information. Traditional reporting, in this view, is losing its way - and that is the opening citizen journalism has stepped into.
Why citizen journalism is rising now
Recent reports suggest people are placing growing trust in citizen journalists, and the scale of connectivity explains why: around 3.2 billion people have internet access and a smartphone (Source: Medium). Conventional journalism is often subjective, while a citizen on the spot has the power to record and relay events immediately. If a person can bring a message to the public simply by posting it on social media, citizen journalism has served its purpose.
The examples are recent and notable. The bystander footage of the George Floyd case in Minneapolis in 2020 caused an immediate uproar and fed movements like Black Lives Matter, with an impact that reached the US presidential election that year. In 2021 in India, reporting by patients' relatives about oxygen cylinder shortages in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and other parts of North India during the Covid surge drew national attention. Because ordinary people now have the scope to report, central and state governments are questioned and criticized more directly. The speed of this reporting puts power in the hands of citizens instead of leaving it monopolized by a few media houses.
The fake news risk
The same speed carries a danger. Fake news does make the rounds and causes chaos and distress. After the 2021 Bengal elections, for instance, articles alleging a large displacement of people circulated with viral videos of burnt police vans and vandalized shops; they later turned out to be old videos repurposed to agitate the situation. A few habits help in the long run: check the source and the website, weigh the quality, and read the news in full rather than stopping at the headline. Believing blindly is as harmful as not reporting at all.
The responsibility that comes with it
For a citizen journalist, the primary task is to share the truth - to avoid the hype and focus on objective reporting, maintaining integrity and sincerity. Done well, citizen journalism offers alternative, verified sources that genuinely make a difference. The hope is that the concept does not get tarnished the way traditional journalism has in much of the mainstream media, barring a few exceptions.
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