Citizen journalism has been aroused much discussion about its definition and impacts. According to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, citizen journalism means that there are a group of people who is "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information". I think this is a very concise definition of what citizen journalism is.
From my knowledge, citizen journalists are people who are not trained or profession but publishing news stories or information by modern technology and distribute them through internet. The topic of citizen journalism can be anything from public discussion, latest trend, music or film review, opinion about the government, neighbourhood stories, etc. There are such a large variety of topics that citizen journalists can write about.
Some people will ask who can be the citizen journalists? The answer is everyone, students, teachers, housewives, homeless, immigrates, domestic workers, people you name it, they can be a citizen journalists. However, the name 'citizen journalist' is controversial, people who participate in citizen journalism usually call themselves as bloggers, forum members, discussion leaders, instead of citizen journalists.
I think citizen journalism is crucial in today society, everyone can be a watchdog of the society, people can speak freely and criticise government polices or everything happened around them. In this way, we can know more about things happened in the world, and be more aware things around us. However, when we read those information online, we have to be very careful and should consider the origin of those news. We should always be critical about the authenticity of the information.
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