Citizen journalism: Revisiting the concept and developments

Introduction

The inception of modern citizen journalism takes its roots in the early 2000s, with users appropriating social media platforms and blogs to report, distribute, and consume news. In many places, these digital tools gave a new voice to those long denied by the authoritarian control of the media landscape (Sheen et al., 2024). In historicizing citizen journalism, Hughes (2011) argues that printing of pamphlets backing American colonies’ independence from Britain was a defining moment for citizen journalism practice, suggesting that the press freedom clause of the First Amendment of the US in 1791 was in fact to protect citizen journalists because at that time there were no professional journalists. Scholars such as Miller (2019) and Matheson (2014), however, consider citizen journalism as a relatively new phenomenon, which gained momentum in the late 1990s and early 2000s thanks to the ubiquity of digital technology. Other scholars like Blaagard (2019) dispute appeals to confine citizen journalism to technological networks, preferring to link it to its embodied and political roots.

Whatever the roots of citizen journalism were, the very idea of common citizens playing active roles in creating and disseminating news was enticing to many. Coupled with the development of normative theories of the public sphere and democratic vitalization, citizen journalism and related concepts such as “participatory journalism” (Singer et al., 2011), “grassroots journalism” (Gilmor, 2004), “networked journalism” (Jarvis, 2006), or “alternative/emancipatory” journalism (Atton, 2008) had become a dominant discourse in the journalistic field. In terms of practice, citizen media outlets proliferated in many parts of the world, and the number once reached more than 1000 in the United States alone (Knight Citizen News Network, 2006). The Arab Spring of the early 2010s, in which citizen-produced news content helped propel democratization protests in the Middle East, was the ultimate celebration of the power of citizen journalism.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and the fervor surrounding citizen journalism appears to have waned both in terms of practice and research. Many celebrated citizen journalism projects were short lived, and scholarly research on the subject seems to have declined in volume as well. The Arab Spring turned into the Arab Winter, or resurgence of authoritarianism, and little research on the role of citizen journalism on the matter has been conducted. Indeed, some (e.g., Mutsvairo and Salgado, 2022) wonder whether citizen journalism might be dead and want to re-examine its concept and validity.

It is in this context that this special issue of Journalism revisits the discourse and practices related to citizen journalism nowadays. Is citizen journalism still relevant? What is citizen journalism today, and what are the new developments in the field? What are the new models and initiatives of civic participation in reporting, and how do rapid changes in technologies influence them? How do citizen journalism and other forms of citizen-led media around the world compare? What is distinctive about citizen journalism today, or has it blended with other forms of content creation and participation in general? This special issue aims to contribute to answering these questions by re-examining the promises and perils of citizen journalism and other forms of citizen-led media.

The changed landscape

Citizen journalism occurs when citizens, untrained in the professional gathering and reporting of news, take journalistic matters into their own hands. It takes an inclusive approach, giving everyone an opportunity to actively participate in the production and dissemination of journalistic content, particularly in the contemporary sense, if they have technology to record and disseminate news. Defining citizen journalism comes with its own challenges, especially if we consider the fact that anyone owning a smartphone could potentially be considered a citizen journalist. For example, one may contest the claim that anyone who can generate, share, and spread content is a citizen journalist.

Citizen journalism has always been considered as an alternative source of news to traditionally minded ways of accessing news. But it can take many different forms, including “community citizen journalism” (Tse, 2024: 1), which focuses on positive and regional news as well as news featuring common people. This way, citizen journalists also “gatewatch” and collaborate (Bruns, 2005). Citizen journalism has been linked to alternative media production, and in some cases it has been seen as an instrument of whistleblowing. Despite quality and bias concerns, citizen journalism offers diverse perspectives, which are critical in the democratization of opinions, thereby fostering freedom of speech (Togtarbay et al., 2024). For this reason, citizen journalists ought to have civic skills to be able to perform their duties online (Kim and Lowrey, 2014). Additionally, concerns regarding the lack of professionalization have been common; for example, research in South Africa showed professional journalists were concerned about the possible failure of citizen journalists to recognize the importance of objectivity in their day-to-day professional practice (Mapudzi and Osunkunle, 2017); while other studies have highlighted misinformation concerns associated with news produced by citizen journalists (Peterson-Salahuddin, 2023). Journalism should ensure factual accuracy, and journalistic procedures should derive from checking sources and content. But these concerns are not necessarily present in citizen journalism, although some research demonstrates that they may be present in some cases (e.g., Peterson-Salahuddin, 2023). Even though journalistic verification can be instrumentalized and depends on the level of state control of media (e.g., Zeng et al., 2019a), it still plays a crucial role in the production of journalistic content, both to differentiate it from other types of content and to act as an effective brake against the spread of mis/disinformation.

Since the heyday of citizen journalism research and practice, a lot has changed in the media environment as well as in social and political contexts. The ups and downs of citizen journalism are also tied to these changes. In this introductory article, we identify the new developments as well as the remaining issues of the field.

First, the acceleration of technological changes has brought new promises and challenges for citizen journalism. While citizen journalism existed long before the digital revolution in such forms as underground media or the letters to the editor section, it is the Internet that really propelled citizen journalism to the forefront of the journalistic field. In the early days of the Internet, in particular, there were rosy hopes that decentralized, horizontal, and inexpensive communication and citizen participation would revitalize the public sphere (Rheingold, 1993). Through the new technological means, the people formerly known as the audience (Rosen, 2006) would become producers of content and transform journalism, many scholars argued. Soon after came social media and the so-called Twitter revolution, which allowed firsthand citizen witnessing coupled with real-time sharing of events. From the Arab Spring to #BlackLivesMatter, citizens bearing witness and sharing news through social media played vital roles in social movements and in informing the public.

Despite the hopes of citizen journalism enthusiasts, how much the Internet and social media actually changed journalism is still debated, as social media use is normalized and professional journalists are still retaining much of their traditional gatekeeping roles (Lasorsa et al., 2012; Singer, 2005). And even before the debate about the impact of citizen journalism is settled, we now observe new controversies due to technological and socio-political developments in the field. That is, corporate and sometimes state actors now have dominant influence over the digital space, potentially troubling citizen journalists. In what is known as “platform society” (van Dijk et al., 2018) or “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2019), big tech platforms, such as Facebook and Google, capitalize on personal data and act as gatekeepers that allow, prevent, and regulate content, and more broadly, Internet use (Hintz, 2016). This has serious implications both for the security and for the free expression of citizen journalists because they are subject to commercial or government surveillance in the social media, and that may lead to a chilling effect that suppresses critical debate and dissident voices (Allan and Hintz, 2019; Penney, 2016) and could thus induce high levels of self-censorship.

Equally troubling is the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and all kinds of extreme content in the digital space. Such content is often widespread by profit-seeking individuals and organizations and may be inadvertently associated with citizen journalism, giving citizen journalists a bad name and causing a credibility problem. In fact, the lowered attention to citizen journalism these days, if any, may be associated with the mainstream media’s curtailment of citizen content due to the proliferation of misinformation and the dangers of relying on non-professional journalists (Tsene, 2022). Furthermore, corporate and state efforts to regulate mis/disinformation and extreme content may well lead to censorship of legitimate information provided by citizen journalists. Overall, as digital infrastructures today have come to both enable and restrict citizen activities, the notion of digital citizenship and citizen journalism may require re-examination and a new understanding (Hintz et al., 2018).

Along with the changes in the digital infrastructure, the social and political climate of our time presents new challenges to citizen journalism. It appears that citizen activism and participation, which is the ethos of citizen journalism, has diminished over the years. Now a “participation fatigue” has set in some countries (Landwehr and Ojeda, 2021), as citizens, especially young people, withdraw from participatory processes due to unmet expectations and lack of efficacy (Coleman, 2007). This presents a threat to citizen journalism as it raises the question of its viability.

Often, what’s replacing overall political participation from ordinary citizens is political polarization. Polarization, or extreme partisan attitudes and behaviors, runs deep today across different facets of society in many countries. People are now divided more than ever along the lines of politics, race, religion, issues, or gender, for example. Civic participation from the middle may be down, but some people are more active from extreme ideological standpoints, seeking to influence the mainstream culture and seize control. It is a toxic atmosphere in which each side questions the moral legitimacy of the other, viewing the opposing side as an existential threat to their way of life (Pew Research Center, 2020). This general climate of social and political division may adversely affect citizen journalism. First, citizen journalism already deviates from the traditional objectivity paradigm of journalism and celebrates emotional, carefree, and even a biased style of writing (Min, 2018). While there are many benefits to these norms of citizen journalism, they may serve to intensify polarization in the current political climate. Citizen journalism may be blamed to be associated with “echo chambers” (Sunstein, 2017) and filter bubbles” (Pariser, 2011) effects where citizens on social media interact only with like-minded people, worsening polarization. While professional media is not free from the blame, the burden seems to be placed more, whether it is fair or not, on citizen journalism because of its frequent free-wheeling, non-objective characteristics. Relatedly, some forms of citizen journalism in recent years have blended with the influencer culture on social media, making it difficult to differentiate journalism from promotions and public relations activities. This can be detrimental to citizen journalism, as it may affect negatively the credibility of citizen journalists. How citizen journalism can adapt to this new political and social climate and maintain its relevance is a matter of concern.

Citizen journalism: expanded scopes and perspectives

Blagaard (2019) was one of the first to interrogate citizen journalism from a postcolonial theoretical lens, using a Virgin Islands-based newspaper to argue that citizen journalists are inherently political players, fighting against colonialism. As such, her position is that citizen journalism isn’t technologically networked but manifests itself in political decision-making. What is quite evident is that citizen journalism continues to thrive in the outpouring of politically associated global movements ranging from Black Lives Matter (Williams Fayne and Richardson, 2023) to COVID-19 protests (Ugbo et al., 2022) and various other human rights-related issues (Allan et al., 2007). Despite the recent developments seemingly adverse to citizen journalism, the practice certainly did not perish. In fact, one can argue that diverse forms of citizen journalism continue to emerge around the world, making positive contributions to democratic governance (Coe, 2021). If we go beyond the narrow confines of the Western hemisphere, citizen journalism boasts very vibrant practices (Mpofu, 2016; Zeng et al., 2019b). On the African continent, in particular, citizen journalism is thriving in environments with constraints to freedom but where technologies that enable alternative means of expression are rapidly embedded in society (Mutsvairo and Salgado, 2022). Many of the articles in our special issue concern citizen journalism in the Global South and the non-Western region, also suggesting the areas in which this practice is more vibrant now. From an urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya, to the conflict zones of Palestine and Kashmir, the articles indeed cover a broad swath of the globe. Examining citizen journalism outside the West is important because, as Mutsvairo and colleagues (2014) suggest, citizen journalism in the Global South is still a novelty, and along with that come an abundance of definitions, imaginations, and practices that may critically inform citizen journalism scholarship. Certainly, citizen journalism does not just concern civic participation in the bourgeois public sphere of the West.

As we cover broad geographic areas and practices, the conceptualization of what constitutes citizen journalism also merits re-examination. Traditional scholarship tends to consider citizen journalism as an act of civic participation contributing to civil society by stimulating the conversation of democracy in the public sphere (Friedland and Kim, 2009; Nah and Chung, 2020). While this definition still holds a central place in the citizen journalism scholarship, as meticulously illustrated in the history of citizen journalism research discussed in this issue (Nah et al., 2024), there are also more varied, ambiguous, and contested conceptualizations. For example, as Dvořák (2024) discusses in this issue, homeless people deliberately or inadvertently engaging in their own storytelling is not necessarily tied to democratic participation but is more of an act of resistance and their own identity building. Similarly, Glazunova and Schapals (2024) in this issue identify the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny as an intentional activist and accidental citizen journalist engaged in a hybrid form of journalism. The horizon of citizen journalism is also expanded when Zeng (2024) discusses the case of diasporic journalistic actions by Chinese citizens abroad, and Peifer (2024) examines a citizen academy, or journalism-themed citizen forums, as a site of legitimate citizen journalism.

Citizen journalism today is thus more varied and complex than ever. There is now a plethora of new formats, genres, and new actors that merit a broadened conceptualization of citizen journalism (Mutsvairo and Salgado, 2022). As Goode (2009: 1291) argues, citizen journalism is a “complex and layered mix of representation, interpretation (and re-interpretation), translation, and, indeed, remediation, whereby news and comment, discourse, and information is reshaped as it traverses a range of sites and varying media platform.” Therefore, it would be useful to think of today’s citizen journalism on a spectrum: At one end sits full-blown independent citizen journalism with original content and a strong counter-hegemonic discourse, and on the other end of the spectrum lie more casual citizen media activities, which include not only content creation, but also such acts as commenting on, tagging, and labeling news stories already in circulation. Broadly defined, citizen journalism can be any act or conversation in between that may or may not contribute to democratic self-governance (Min, 2018).

In studying varied ideas and practices of citizen journalism, researchers would also need to employ diverse methods. The most dominant method of studying citizen journalism has been one-shot case studies, which typically involve content analysis of citizen-produced materials and interviews of citizen journalists (see Nah et al., 2024 in this issue). While such methodology has produced important insights on citizen journalists and their behaviors and impact on journalism, more complex, multiple, and longitudinal methods to understand the varied contexts in which citizen journalism takes place and the evolution of its practices would certainly advance the field. For example, ethnographies examining the deeper context of citizen news production have been helpful but sporadic (e.g., Robinson and DeShano, 2011; Tshabangu, 2021). More in-depth ethnographic studies of citizen journalism would be key to advancing the field. Advanced quantitative social scientific methods, which are the dominant research paradigm of media and communication but have been rather marginal in the study of citizen journalism, would also provide new insights. Articles in our special issue feature as varied methods as ever, ranging from traditional case studies and ethnography to participatory action research and computational social science methods.

Studies of citizen journalism would also benefit if researchers paid more attention to a system-level social order, as Nah et al. (2024) argue. Previous studies tend to focus on individual citizen journalists and organizations. Studying individual actions is no doubt important, but citizen journalism certainly is more than individual citizens producing and distributing news content personally through social media. An examination of interactions and impact at the community, cross-community, national, and international levels would provide important insights as well. For example, how does citizen journalism of the Global South compare to that of the Western hemisphere? How do the cultural, historical, political, and economic factors contribute to varying degrees of citizen journalism practices around the world? In what ways do different communities approach citizen journalism? These are all valuable questions still waiting for answers.

Overview of the articles included in this special issue

This special issue represents an attempt to encourage discussion and provide answers to some of the questions raised above. In addition to this article, it features 10 other articles about the conceptualizations, roles, operations, and impact of citizen journalism across the world, accommodating newer developments in the field for the past years and focusing on parts of the globe where less in known about how citizen journalism is practiced and perceived.

The first article by Nah et al. (2024), titled “Revisiting Citizen Journalism Scholarship in the Web Era”, explores three decades of research on citizen journalism and consolidates the academic discourse on the subject matter, which can serve as a foundation for further theoretical, practical, and policy-oriented discussions in the field. With their meta-analytical study, the authors have drawn conclusions, for example, about the major themes found in citizen journalism scholarship and revealed the apparent shift in citizen journalism literature from digital technology and social media to community building and democracy.

Peifer and colleagues (2024), in their article “Conversations on ‘making the news’: A citizen journalism-oriented tool for empowering citizen advocates of journalism”, examine how community dialogues and forums can serve as tools to foster a broader model of citizen journalism. The “Citizen Academy” model suggests a shift beyond traditional citizen journalism models, advocating for community-based dialogues that strengthen ties between citizens and professional journalists. Their main perspective is that bringing citizens and news producers into conversation with one another can strengthen citizen journalism, and this entails educating both citizens about newswork and journalists about a community’s needs.

The idea of citizen journalism is further broadened and augmented with Dvořák’s (2024) article “The Uncompromising Way: Several Lessons from the Homeless Journalists”, which draws on over 3 years of ethnographic observation of homeless individuals engaged in participatory journalism, suggesting journalists can learn valuable lessons from the marginalized group’s approach to journalism and highlighting the radical role of media in challenging norms, advocating for justice, and amplifying marginalized voices. The article also enumerates the many reasons why professional journalists should embrace more dialogical and participatory practices involving marginalized populations.

Cohen and colleagues (2024) look into another marginalized community, the community of Kibera in Kenya—the largest urban slum in Africa—and find an active network of citizen reporting, showing that citizen journalists there can uphold traditional journalistic principles while offering alternative narratives that challenge mainstream media representations. In their article titled “Citizen Journalism Revisited: A Case Study of Kenya’s Kibera News Network”, the authors demonstrate how, freed from the political and financial burdens that shape mainstream media’s narratives in the country, KNN’s citizen journalism is able to provide a diverse representation of events and stories, thus contributing to further democratic representation through the media.

In “Aren’t We All Journalists? Citizen Journalism and the Weaponization of Social Media in Strife-torn Mali”, De Bruijn et al. (2025) demonstrate the central role played by conflict-based citizen reporters using social media to drive their message in the mediation of the prevailing conflict in Mali, blurring the lines between citizen and professional journalism. Utilizing multiple methods, ranging from digital ethnography to social network analysis, and to participatory action research, the authors reveal that both citizen and professional journalist groups rely on each other within a networked conflict, with state and non-state actors, along with Malian citizens abroad, competing on platforms like X (Twitter) in a bid to control the narrative, which is a common motivation of citizen journalists more or less everywhere.

In their article “Diasporic citizen journalism: Exploring the discussion on the 2022 blank paper protests in the Chinese Twitter community”, Zeng and Cheng (2024) expand the understanding of citizen journalism by focusing on translocal and transnational dimensions. Their study shows how diaspora communities, through digital social media platforms, can challenge state censorship and create an alternative information ecosystem, offering a nuanced perspective on the intersection of citizen journalism and activism. This article also suggests extending academic inquiries on citizen journalism beyond the nation-state framework and proposes a broadened perspective on “locality”.

Likewise, researchers focusing on Hong Kong examine how community newspapers have persisted in an authoritarian environment. Fang et al.’s (2024) “Hyperlocal citizen journalism in Hong Kong: Resilience through community newspapers” provides another nuanced perspective on the convergence of citizen and hyperlocal forms of journalism, showcasing how localized efforts can sustain democratic values and community spirit even amidst political constraints.​ Their research is motivated by understanding the resilience of community newspapers in Hong Kong after the implementation of the National Security Law. These community newspapers represent, in the authors’ view, an intersection of citizen journalism and hyperlocal journalism, which results in a resilient form of journalistic practice, particularly in environments where freedom is limited.

Nevertheless, citizen journalism in authoritarian regimes comes in different shapes. In their article, “Interlopers by choice, or interlopers by circumstance? Alexei Navalny and alternative journalistic projects in contemporary autocratic Russia”, Glazunova and Schapals (2024) analyze the case of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident, who adopted investigative journalism practices through YouTube to challenge the Russian government. By positioning themselves as “explicit interlopers”, Navalny and his team adopted journalistic roles without being traditional journalists, showcasing how socio-political constraints can push activists to assume journalistic roles. The authors analyze instances in which Navalny and his team adopt journalistic identities, providing an alternative journalistic project to bypass the largely monopolized and authoritarian Russian public sphere, which forces a reconsideration of what journalists and journalism are. This can happen when politicians and activists are denied access to mainstream media and they realize they need the legitimacy that comes from journalistic practices.

Citizens of some Southeast Asian countries are also faced with not-so-favorable political environments that suppress press freedom, in which citizen journalism is often perceived as a beacon of hope for democracy. In their article “Citizen journalism under pressure: The case of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines”, Prawira and Mahamed (2024) explore citizen journalism practices in these three countries, delivering a comparative overview that documents prevalent economic, political, and cultural pressures on citizen journalism and explain how citizen journalists navigate the treacherous waters. This research shows that where citizen journalism has emerged as an alternative source of information, it could face political, economic, and cultural pressures, and interestingly, their formats could be integrated into traditional news media, creating additional challenges.

Lastly, in “Cross-national civilian reporting of the everydayness of war: Emerging citizen journalism practices in Palestine and Kashmir”, Majeed et al. (2024) explore the practice of citizen journalism in conflict zones and look at how citizens temporarily adopt the roles of war correspondents, contributing to the broader conflict narrative. Their study illustrates how Palestinian and Kashmiri civilians adopted the roles of war correspondents and how their reporting serves as a powerful tool for resistance, community building, and peace advocacy. The authors see this form of citizen journalism as constructive journalism that responds to authoritarian regimes’ extensive control over mainstream media and facilitates reconciliation and peace.

From this small sample of studies devoted to understanding what citizen journalism has become in recent years and some of the situations in which citizen journalism remains relevant, we can see that it holds a key role in environments with limited freedom, being war and conflict zones, or authoritarian regimes. Citizen journalism has also emerged as an important instrument for disadvantaged communities and different kinds of marginalized/excluded groups, giving voice and empowering individuals and groups who otherwise would not have the means to express their views and have their concerns voiced. This demonstrates that, despite the challenges of lack of professionalization and of contributing to spread misinformation and biased views, citizen journalism—including in its newer forms—has been and still is connoted with democracy. The sense of community, so important in an era of growing populism and erosion of trust, is an extremely relevant outcome to be further explored, particularly considering the crisis of traditional forms of journalism and the potential to both integrate the best of each other.