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Thesis (M. A. (Media Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / Citizen journalism has the potential to enhance the state of community newspapers. The emergence of digital media brought about the concept of citizen journalism, allowing ordinary citizens to practice journalism similar to professional journalism. The resultant high volume of news information from ordinary citizens, despite its benefits, leaves editors grappling with what enters the news gate. This study investigated the perceptions and attitudes of editors of community newspapers in Limpopo province of South Africa towards integrating citizen journalism into their daily journalism practices. This qualitative study used interview guide for data collection from a total of six (7) community newspaper editors in the province. The findings of the study indicate that most editors of community newspapers have positive perceptions towards citizen journalism. They are of the view that it could contribute positively towards their organisations particularly in strengthening democratic participation as a corner stone of community media, increasing the circulation of their newspapers, and assisting their communities to strive and strengthen their relationship with the outside world. However, they are not keen to incorporate citizen journalism in their professional practices. Their expressed concerns are lack of ethics and other basic journalistic skills in citizen journalism and the possibility of encumbering the process of news gatekeeping. However, due to many positive impacts of citizen journalism, editors should endeavour to find ways to incorporate citizen journalism into their organisations. Keywords: Gatekeeping, citizen journalism, community newspapers, community participation, news editors

This bachelor's thesis is based on a Minor Field Study (MFS) conducted in Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco, April and May 2015. The aim is to study Moroccan journalists' attitudes towards citizen journalism and its impact on the role of the journalist: 1) With what claims do they define citizen journalists and journalists respectively? and 2) In what ways do these claims relate to the impact citizen journalists can be expected to have on the role of the journalist and freedom of expression in Morocco? In the discussion, theories on discourse, professionalism, journalistic ideals, and development journalism are applied. Semi-structured interviews in French were conducted with five journalists working within five different print and online publications. The material was analyzed according to a model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The interviewed journalists give accounts of how they are "condemned to be connected" to the vox populi that citizen journalists constitute. There is a prevalence of professionalism discourse where verification and objectivity are described as what characterizes a journalist. But respondents also emphasize "teamwork", and that "all journalists are citizen journalists", and these themes are interpreted as characteristic of development journalism. Within professional discourse in a development journalism context, the reliability of citizen journalists is downplayed. At the same time, citizen journalists are described as freer than professional journalists. In conclusion, it is considered likely that development journalist discourse sets an obstacle to the liberalizing impact of citizen journalism.

Uppsatsens syfte är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer, som ställs i ett jämförande perspektiv, för att svara på frågeställningen: Uppsatsen kommer att utgå från teorier som är applicerbara inom journalistyrket inom en organisation. Teorier kommer vara nyhetsvärdering, vad är det som gör en nyhet till en nyhet. Organisationer drivs framåt utav olika mål, ekonomiska och publicistiska. Hur arbetar dessa mål ihop med vad publiken vill få ut av en nyhetsorganisation, då publiken har helt nya möjligheter att bidra genom medborgarjournalistik och deltagarjournalistik. Ska man se medieanvändare som en extra tillgång, eller är det ett hot för nyhetsorganisationen, om det stämmer vad medborgarjournalistiken säger att vem som helt kan vara journalist? Det presenteras resultat från åtta stycken kvalitativa intervjuer med journalister på lokaltidningar i Sverige. Journalisterna får ge deras bild av hur de upplever yrkesrollen och dess förändringar. Vilken syn har de på medborgarjournalister och om det känner att det utgör något hot för journalistrollen. Efter guidning genom central forskning och metod kommer slutsatsen att journalistrollen inte är ett överflödigt yrke, arbetet som journalister producerar och att det finns vikt i vilken källa nyheterna kommer ifrån. / This essay is based on central theories within journalism in an organization. Highlighted theories will we news evaluation, what issues makes it into news. Organization is driven by different goals, the economic goal and the publicist goals. How does the organization work with these goals joined with what the audience want from the organization when the audience has new possibilities to contribute through citizen’s journalism and participatory journalism? Is it possible to se the media user as a threat to or an extra asses for the news organisation when, according to citizen journalism anyone can call them self a journalism without any specific education. The result will be presented from eight qualitative interviews with journalist on local newspapers in Sweden. This is to present how the journalist perceives the changes in journalism as a profession. How do they see the citizen journalists, as an extra recourse or a threat? After guidance through central research and preformed Interviews the essay comes to the conclusion that the role as a journalism in not an excessive role. The work that a journalist produces is important and it is necessary which source the news comes from.

This thesis examines the ways in which Reddit, a social news aggregator, functions as a tool that allows users to give and receive support and information during times of crisis. By exploring how Reddit was used in the aftermath of the Aurora shootings of July 2012 and the Boston bombings of April 2013, this thesis argues that Reddit has the potential to be a powerful and useful tool in times of crisis.

The enhanced discursive opportunity structures that the Internet enables has inspired a momentous revolution in the Nigerian media landscape. This dissertation chronicles the emergence and flowering of the citizen and alternative online journalism of the Nigerian diasporic public sphere located primarily in the United States. Using case-study research, it profiles the major diasporan online citizen media outlets and highlights instances where these geographically distant citizen media sites shaped and influenced both the national politics and policies of the homeland and the media practices of the domestic media formation. The study makes the case that while it is customary in the scholarship on sovereignty, state-civil society relations, and diaspora studies to emphasize domination and one-dimensionality in cultural flows, the participation of members of the Nigerian digital diaspora in the politics and discourses of their homeland, from their exilic locations in the West through the instrumentality of online citizen media, illustrates that citizens, especially in the age of the Internet, are not mere powerless subjects and receivers of informational flows from the institutions of the state and corporate mass media but can be active consumers and producers of informational resources and even purveyors of political power in ways that amply exemplify trans-local reciprocality. It also argues that the Nigerian diaspora media might very well be a prototype of an evolving, Internet-enabled, trans-local, and mutual informational and cultural exchange between the educated deterritorialized ethnoscapes of peripheral nations whose exile in the West endues them with symbolic and cultural capital and the private institutions and governments of their homelands. The study recommends a comparative study of the online citizen journalism of Third World virtual diasporas in the West.

Manifestations of citizen journalism on Twitter have been mainly analyzed around trending stories, associated with public campaigns or breaking news. Microbloggers' everyday attempts to contribute to professional media coverage, however, have been scarcely addressed in the literature. This research analyzes the practice of tweeting at influential news outlets by using a mixed-method approach. Content analysis anddirected queries about users' own motivation to tweet at media explore the interactionbetween regular users and professional news networks. Results show that there is apredisposition towards negative media commentary followed closely by newsworthy topics generated by the users, which replicate to a large extent mainstream media's agenda. When asked directly in the feed 'why do you tweet at media?', users explain their motivations to address news outlets in diverging ways, from explicit citizen journalism mission, to visibility claims and coincidental tagging. The study contributesto the study of citizen journalism on social media platforms and elaborates a mixed-method approach suited for this type of online data.

Journalism's role in the “Twitter age” is becoming an increasingly hot topic in media studies. This thesis was aimed at analyzing the media portrayal, with special emphasis on the difference between traditional and citizen journalism, in one of the UK’s most talked about recent short films on the media topic, Black Mirror – The National Anthem, and how this could affect the public. Qualitative methods were used to examine the portrayal of both traditional journalism and citizen journalism in the film and the effects aspect was researched through focus group interviews. The results of the content analysis showed that the film depicts traditional journalism as seriously challenged by the speed and extent that citizen journalism can reach through social media – but it also shows a dark side of citizen journalism. My content analysis came to support the idea that the negative portrayal of journalism in the film can affect the public opinion on journalism, in an indirect and complex way.

The constant change of the political, economic, cultural and environmental landscapes of global societies predetermined the upgrowth of the media, the journalistic writings and the blogging practices as a new way of “citizen journalism”. Political blogs are a quite new media phenomenon that gained popularity in the past few years in Bulgaria. Hence, there are limited theoretical case studies.  The lagging performance of Bulgaria in the last Reporters Without Borders Report 2011 together with the explicit recommendations of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) after the Presidential and Municipal Elections 2011 in terms of media policy, ownership and news coverage bring the question of limited freedom of speech and the emergence of the blogs as an alternative platform for expression into discussion. Two methods are used in this thesis: structured interviews with two different additional questions and Critical Discourse Analysis. The empirical material was gathered from interviews with 8 of the most influential bloggers in Bulgaria (5 of whom work as journalists) and through an analysis of the texts of their blog entries (2 articles per bloggers or 18 articles in total). The aim is to underline the possible limitations in the practice of freedom of speech in Bulgaria from the bloggers’ perspective and to show only major patterns of the social environment and the current discourse in Bulgaria. Among the main findings of this study are thаt the lack of clarity in the media ownership and the failure of the media to defend the public interest are alarming for the level of democracy. Moreover, the media dependence on power and lobbying circles, as well as the blurred boundary between politics and the media results in the media self-censhorship and thus are threatening for the democratic foundation in Bulgaria and the freedom of speech which is at its basis. This study confirms the thriving of the blogosphere as an alternative media platform. This paper aims to provide insights and policy recommendations for international media experts.

Nearly every website or software application these days features a feed to subscribe to, a network to join, or a social timeline to track—all of which do their part to influence public opinion, promote products, and bring people closer together. Being a blogger since 2003 exposed me to these user-generated trends, but never did I expect my blog space, or any others, to play such an important role in my emotional well-being; not until Hurricane Katrina hit. Sharing my story as a transplanted New Orleanian watching the disaster unfold from afar in a public forum quickly linked me to other local voices, and soon I discovered a burgeoning “Big Easy” blogosphere. This dissertation thus illustrates how online communications have the ability to evolve into cathartic and socially responsible exchanges during and after times of disaster. Relying on qualitative research methods, I first discuss existing kinds of texts (news reports, comments on news sites, print publications, oral histories, etc.) to offer a picture of how Hurricane Katrina appeared and was treated by various traditional media. I then shift focus to digital spaces, featuring profiles of various New Orleans bloggers that I compiled through a series of interviews and analysis of their perpetual posting of blog entries, photos, videos, and status updates. I conclude their writing is a shared social experience with the Internet offering multiple platforms across which they can resist the debilitating effects of trauma and present their audiences with a deeper, truer understanding of what life is like in post-Katrina New Orleans.