The next time you watch user-generated news content—say, a street demonstration filmed on a smartphone—you might recognize that clip as part of a wider democratic movement. Citizen journalism, also called crowdsourced or participatory media, has complemented professional news-gathering to highlight under-reported stories from around the world.
People on the ground have long brought their own perspective to breaking news, but the surge of camera-enabled phones and social media networks has lifted citizen journalism from a niche practice to a major sector leveraged by long-standing outlets such as BBC News and The New York Times. But it’s not without its challenges, such as verifying facts shared by citizens who may not have the journalism education or experience of beat reporters.
In an effort to share multiple perspectives and historical views of a powerful facet of journalism, this guide features a range of academic journals and book chapters on how citizen media has helped give a voice to marginalized communities and opened dialogue between news producers and consumers.
Stefanie Markovits, “Rushing into Print: ‘Participatory Journalism’ during the Crimean War,” Victorian Studies 50, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 559–586.
Bringing on-the-ground voices to war reporting is highlighted in this poignant paper on how citizen journalism contributed to coverage of the Crimean War in the 1850s, acting as “supplementary narratives” to stringers on the front lines. Markovits also draws parallels between the nineteenth-century publication of soldiers’ letters to videos shot during more recent conflicts and disseminated through online platforms.
Inkyu Kang, “Making Room for Citizen Journalism against User-Generated Content: Situating South Korea’s OhmyNews in the History of Journalism,” in Eyewitness Textures: User-Generated Content and Journalism in the Twenty-First Century (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024), 213–233.
Anyone working in the citizen media space recognizes the influence of OhMyNews, the South Korean start-up launched in 2000 that invited hundreds of citizen reporters onto their platform and notably fact-checked all content before its publication. This paper tells the story of citizen journalism’s sway across the world in the 2000s but warns how OhMyNews’s success was often supplanted with academic discussion of user-generated content with little editing protocols. “This has hindered a constructive understanding of citizen journalism as a potentially beneficial way to practice journalism,” Kang writes.
David Beers, “The Public Sphere and Online, Independent Journalism,” Canadian Journal of Education 29, no. 1 (2006): 109–130.
Through the lens of educating students about the phenomenon of citizen journalism, Beers presents a thorough overview of the increasing number of independent media outlets in Canada and how citizen reporting has invigorated several of those networks with this flowering of “emergent democracy.” He also introduces readers to the idea of a “justice-oriented citizen” in relation to his discussion on citizen journalism, namely describing such an individual as someone who seeks to understand and address the root causes of problems.
Janet Jones, “Changing Auntie: A Case Study in Managing and Regulating User-Generated News Content at the BBC,” Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship? (2010): 150–167.
This book chapter dips into a specific example of citizen journalism. First framing the tension between the BBC’s traditional top-down reporting model and the democratic, bottom-up potential of crowdsourced news, Jones speaks to the BBC’s embrace of citizen media by citing several key factors. First, the BBC hopes user-generated content will reclaim the lost audience of younger demographics and establish a sense of connection and relevance with their offerings. Second, the public broadcaster has supported creating an online “civic common” to inspire public participation and debate. But Jones is quick to lay out the negatives of folding participatory journalism into the legacy broadcaster’s channels. For one, such a staid outlet may be uncomfortable with reporting that could be offensive or misconstrued as reflecting its editorial line.
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Stéphane Sadoux, “Citizen Journalism and Gentrification: Local Community Views and Discourses on Urban Change in Brixton, London, 2011–2022,” in Gentrification and the Media: Building and Propagating Discourses on Exclusive Urban Change (Amsterdam University Press, 2025), 225–250.
Diving deep into a UK case study, Sadoux analyzes gentrification in the Brixton neighborhood via material posted on hyperlocal news blog Brixton Buzz. The blog examines symptoms of gentrification such as rising house prices, evictions of residents and businesses, and the transformation of community spaces and takes advantages of citizen media’s ethos of giving a voice to the voiceless tenants of an area that’s increasingly losing vital community spaces. In Brixton, we learn that “poverty and inequalities are seldom regarded as newsworthy to warrant sustained attention.” The blog aims to upend that norm and give a refreshing look at issues important to everyone living in the community.
George lăzăroiu, “The World-changing Potential Of Crowdsourced Journalism In A Corporate-dominated Mass-communications Environment,” Geopolitics, History, and International Relations 2, no. 2 (2010): 248–255.
Pithy and concise, this paper gets to the heart of what has attracted readers and publishers to citizen journalism and why its disadvantages have held it back from mass adoption. Challenging the news industry is a heady battle, we learn, due to the gate-keeping role of publishers. Mainstream publishers are often still beholden to the bottom line and have to balance newsworthy stories with content that will attract both readers and advertisers. What would have added more meat to the bones of this are specific examples of that kind of blockage and how certain citizen media outlets have made inroads to contribute to democratic communication. While it’s still a strong report, readers may have felt the theme’s messaging more strongly with case studies relevant to upstart news trailblazers.
Sadaf R Ali and Shahira Fahmy, “Gatekeeping and Citizen Journalism: The Use of Social Media During the Recent Uprisings in Iran, Egypt, and Libya,” Media, War & Conflict 6, no. 1 (April 2013): 55–69.
With this paper, we see a strong example of the power of citizen media during moments of great upheaval. The authors track how social media fostered a deep sense of community and activism in Egypt, Libya, and Iran. But the roadblock of gate-keeping even rears its head here. “Television stations also seem to filter UGC [user-generated content] based on gate-keeping processes that they consider valuable to their audiences,” the authors write, underscoring how participatory journalism may be beneficial but is still beholden to publishers and editors driven by market forces and their editorial leanings.
Chad Elias, “Emergency Cinema and The Dignified Image: Cell Phone Activism And Filmmaking In Syria,” Film Quarterly 71, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 18–31.
Training the lens tighter on Syria during its 2011 uprisings, Elias writes on how the smartphone camera has been a crucial tool for protestors and citizen journalists to capture images and video the mainstream press can’t access. The report examines how, say, the cellphone is often giving a one-sided perspective of a story brimming with multiple angles and voices. Also, interestingly, Elias discusses how certain citizen journalists bring into the conflict “emergency cinema,” which aims to counter the deaths of Syrians by creating short films that emphasize the more idyllic aspects of Syrian life and “affirm the individual’s right to a dignified representation.”
Greg McLaughlin, “From Luckless Tribe to Wireless Tribe: The Impact of Media Technologies on War Reporting,” in The War Correspondent (Pluto Press, 2016), 63–90.
Is the citizen war reporter truly individual and independent of political or institutional restraints? That’s the question vital to this book chapter on war reporting and how new technologies have upended the usual structure of this area of journalism. From the blurring of lines between amateur and professional journalism to the quick spread of propaganda via agenda-fueled citizen journalists, this paper is educational and insightful, offering examples of reporting from the Falklands War, the Vietnam War, World War II, and the Egypt uprising to buttress its arguments.
Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin, “We Predict a Riot?: Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist,” The British Journal of Criminology 60, no. 6 (November 2010): 1041–1059.
Using the 2009 G20 Summit protests in London as a case study, the authors express their support for participatory journalism during events where policing has a tight rein on who’s permitted to chronicle news and who’s excluded. When someone died during this G20, the police-supported narrative clashed with citizen-generated photographic and video evidence, leading the authors to stress how integral it is for everyday people to understand Howard S. Becker’s “hierarchy of credibility,” which states that in any community, higher-status groups are typically granted the authority to define reality. When more alternative media outlets and citizens on the ground drive the story with smartphone-shot accounts of violence against protestors, there’s often increased public scrutiny on authorities and official accountability.
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Denveater, “The Virtual Roundtable: Food Blogging as Citizen Journalism,” World Literature Today 83, no.1 (January–February 2009): 42–46.
The writer behind a blog on the Denver food scene reveals what motivates him to review restaurants and dissect recipes, a discussion that dovetails into a column on how citizen journalism frees him from corporate stakeholders and enables him develop a sense of community with his readers and commenters. He brings a sassy flair to his writing, which nicely sets it apart from the denser entries in this guide. Also, a warning: you’re bound to get very hungry when he cites particular dishes he’s reviewed.
PJ Annand, Michael “Spike” Hudson, Maame Esi D. Yankah, Martin Burrows, Stan Burridge, Michelle Cornes, Sujit D. Rathod, Paniz Hosseini, Lucy Platt, and Andy Guise, “Going Remote: Using Technology to Co-Produce Homeless Health Research,” in COVID-19 and Co-production in Health and Social Care Research, Policy, and Practice: Volume 2: Co-production Methods and Working Together at a Distance (Policy Press, 2021), 113–122.
A paper discussing a UK study that monitored COVID-19 education among unhoused people may not seem like a ripe source of insight into citizen media, but an approach to data-gathering harnessed that exact methodology: community members acted as “mobile reporters” to spread and analyze news related to COVID-19 outbreaks during 2020. Such an approach also ensured that stories were generated from lived experience, which elevated the voices of those particularly vulnerable to the disease. The paper concludes with recommendations for community members seeking to merge citizen journalism with public health initiatives, such as ensuring access to the resources they need to conduct the work, including technology, phone credit, training, and moral and psychological support.
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