Gatekeeping In Citizen Journalism

The world of journalism is changing by the digital technologies even anyone can be the journalist in this century. Although this phenomenon might not happen in the last century and it becomes reality in society. People call those message provider as ‘Citizen journalist’. Citizen journalists refers to a citizen who shares content on media platform with no paid and no professional training. (Kelli A. Long, 2014). Even a normal person can be the part of ‘citizen journalist’, they can use their phones or camera to capture pictures, videos and write some description and share on the new media. Some people think that ‘citizen journalist’ is fighting for civil right, democracy, freedom and the truth. It can benefit for humanity, but it also can be

The concept of gatekeeping which is selected, what kind of message should produce for public or individuals and what message should not, propose by Kurt.L (1947). A professional journalist should do gatekeeping seem like a window to control how many lights can shine into the room. Behind the gatekeeping, it affects how the agenda setting which is a duty of the mass media to public. Cohen (1963) stated that agenda setting is “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about”. It means how citizen journalist delivered news to people, but not just a storyteller, it can shape people’s perception and to motivate citizen to discuss about those stories. Therefore, gatekeeper is being a dominant role to shape public opinion and the thinking about the society issue such as political issue, economic issue and cultural factors.

Citizen who participates in journalism might not totally understand gatekeeping is important for the society. The advantage of is citizen journalists is they can provide varios types of news on the internet to people day by day. However, as Paul.W (2010) who is the publisher of the Raymondville Chronicle worried that many people wanted to voice out their political thinking or agenda. Nevertheless, problem is derived from too much information so that people cannot clarify what kind of news

The first important element is about the sources creditability, if the information is faulty, it does not have any significance to let people know and believed. Secondly, is selecting and filtering the material have the newsworthy to produce to public because it will affect public agenda. Last but not the least, citizen journalist is non-professional to report the news. Journalist have to discipline about reporting standard such as words, structures and composing. These are the reasons why citizen journalist should not be trusted by the public. Moreover, citizen journalism is rising up in recent year, if they take time to build up their reputation in the society and to have more education about professional journalism, citizen journalist will create a new generation of media