We the People: Citizen Journalism in the Era of Social Media

Radsch presents a definition of citizen journalism and explains how and why citizen journalism develops as a form of activism in repressive societies. In Egypt, blogging was a way to bring attention to issues ignored by the mainstream media and helped shift the informational status by chipping away at the state’s monopoly on information. She shows through a series of case studies that citizen journalism is most powerful, or successful, when it influences the mainstream media, public policy, and public perception, and offers a framework for understanding when this is likely to occur. She shows how being designated a journalist enables access to certain resources, and the role that certification by media outlets and transnational activist networks plays in this process. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.