What Are The Disadvantages Of Citizen Journalism

Abstract: After being familiar with the words like ‘Newspaper’,’Press’,Broadcast Journalism’ etc,we became familier with the word ‘Citizen Journalism’ from the 90s’.And today the number of journalists among the citizens are significantly increasing.Now,the question comes,what is Citizen Journalism?It is also known as ‘public’,’participatory’,’democratic’,’guerrilla’ or ‘street’ journalism. The collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially by means of the Internet is called citizen Journalism. Similarly,Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a repose

through a mobile phone. As well as this social media has been on the rise with Facebook and Twitter now a necessity for news organisations to use as a source of news.There are many different types of citizen journalism and citizen journalists. As mentioned it can be opportunistic and this is the most common form of citizen journalism reported. This accidental form happens when a bystander or citizen happen to be in the right place at the right time, for example at the site of a tragedy that has just happened and they witness the incident unfolding before them and capture it through film, photos or write about the event. What the person does with the information they have captured is their own choice, they may post it their selves on their blog or through social media or in some cases, citizen journalists work with the media the get the message out to the public through global media and in a more professional context.The other type of citizen journalist is somebody who has purposely placed their selves at the scene in order to capture an

Given below are the activities of various online news media:

Meri News(www.merinews.com):

Burgeoning population, while on one hand champions India as the world's largest democracy, it sets forth newer challenges for us as a nation, towards building a responsible society. Evolution of technology and emergence of new modes of communication add bigger dimensions to this daunting task raising the expectations and information needs of the people on one hand while facilitating instant and seamless flow of information. Thus People to People (P2P) interaction is of paramount importance and rather inevitable.

Emanating from the need to empower democracy by providing a media to the people of the country to communicate with one and all, www.merinews.com is an effort to provide one such platform to interact and express. It is a news platform for collective wisdom,

Based on the concept of participatory media and citizen journalism, which transcend beyond the limitations of conventional media and allows citizens of the country to report, read, write, comment and debate news, views - happenings they find significant. In unique ways, it provides the tools of informing and opinion shaping to the people in both text and visual