Citizen Journalism

As the internet has become a primary news source for many people, we have to be aware of where our news sources are coming from. Citizen Journalism or citizen journalists are individuals who are typically amateur and report on events and stories by posting online. This is breaking away from our traditional news sources. Though many people will not have full confidence in trusting a citizen journalist, we are still seeing these people as more prominent source in how we access our news information. These people give us quick information that news sources are not able to compete with. Yet of course, these people do not need to be held accountable for what they post and therefore we have no way to know if what is being posted is legit or reliable. Citizen Journalism is a non-avoidable form of journalism and we have to learn how to handle it properly.

Do you think that these new citizen journalists are positively/negatively impacting our way of accessing news? Can you think of a time where you read a friends post on Social Media and considered the information to be real news? Can you think of time where you read a news story online and later found that it was false?