Citizen Journalism

Captured and distributed through the lens of an ‘audience member’ or witness, citizen journalism is arguably ‘free’ from hegemonic political agendas. In contrast to news that is infused with political ulterior motives, citizen journalism can provide the ‘information recipient’ with a narrative in its natural state – the narrative is conveyed prior to censorship or the injection of a bias. While it can be argued that a narrative conveyed through the discourse of an audience member provides the ‘whole truth’ (instead of pieces of the event), does it accurately represent the opinions and perceptions of the masses? Citizen journalism is a form of social activism, portraying the conveyor’s need to construct mass awareness of an event or inherent social injustice. While it can take the shape of social and political dissension, citizen journalism can also exhibit its own implicit agendas.

While the YouTube videos of the ‘Neda narrative’ appear to convey the ‘truth’ of her death, the audience does not know who is behind the camera, who perpetrated the killing, what she was doing before getting shot, and the narrator’s relation to the victim (Fischer 2). All of these ‘unknowns’ may have implicitly affected the narrator’s construction of the narrative as well as our interpretation of the narrative. The visual of Neda’s struggle exhibits urgency, worry, sadness, disbelief, franticness, fear, and pain. While all of these emotions seem ‘real,’ the camera angles heighten these sentiments in the viewer, arguably creating a filter. Thus, while citizen journalism presents an alternative to government sanctioned media outlets, it is impossible for an event to be conveyed without a level of bias.

Citizen journalism endows the audience with ‘authority’ or the ability to construct and convey a narrative globally. While this ‘authority’ creates an alternative (to official media outlets) distribution of news, potentially presenting the audience with discarded or censored information, it turns many people into ‘sources,’ regardless of their credibility or biases. And while freedom of speech, beliefs, and expression inherently affect one’s interpretation of an event, a citizen journalist has the power to alter the ‘core text’ of the narrative and present the audience with a false foundation for interpretation. Thus, while citizen journalism enables the construction of subordinate narratives, it has the potential to exhibit the same fundamental flaws of the hegemonic narrative by conveying events through a specific lens.

With the advent of technology and social media, everyone has the ability to capture an event on film, upload it to the Internet, and instantly gain an audience of millions. While this process is enthralling, liberating, and endows users with a sense of power, it redefines the relevance and credibility of paid journalists. If anyone can distribute news to the masses via their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or blog, the necessity of the ‘journalist’ persona diminishes, erasing the social dichotomy between authority and audience. Though citizen journalism can effectively challenge political agendas and reveal social corruption, it also enables the spread of unregulated information, which has the potential to result in global misinformation and tarnish the reputation of ‘news’ and ‘media’ (Fischer 7).

Works Cited

Fischer, Annemarie. The Color Green and the G-Factor: The Iranian Protest Narrative 2009. 28 October 2010. “Global Media Narratives,” Binghamton University.

Neda Agha Soltan Killing Scene. Published by hamedfrt. YouTube: 2009. Film.