What role can the ordinary citizen perform in news reporting? This question goes to the heart of current debates about citizen journalism, one of the most challenging issues confronting the news media today. In this timely and provocative book, Stuart Allan introduces the key concept of ‘citizen witnessing’ in order to rethink familiar assumptions underlying traditional distinctions between the ‘amateur’ and the ‘professional’ journalist. Particular attention is focused on the spontaneous actions of ordinary people – caught-up in crisis events transpiring around them – who feel compelled to participate in the making of news. In bearing witness to what they see, they engage in unique forms of journalistic activity, generating firsthand reportage – eyewitness accounts, video footage, digital photographs, Tweets, blog posts – frequently making a vital contribution to news coverage. Drawing on a wide range of examples to illustrate his argument, Allan considers citizen witnessing as a public service, showing how it can help to reinvigorate journalism’s responsibilities within democratic cultures. This book is required reading for all students of journalism, digital media and society.

This is the first authoritative reference work to map the multifaceted and vibrant site of citizen media research and practice, incorporating insights from across a wide range of scholarly areas. Citizen media is a fast-evolving terrain that cuts across a variety of disciplines. It explores the physical artefacts, digital content, performative interventions, practices and discursive expressions of affective sociality that ordinary citizens produce as they participate in public life to effect aesthetic or socio-political change. The seventy-seven entries featured in this pioneering resource provide a rigorous overview of extant scholarship, deliver a robust critique of key research themes and anticipate new directions for research on a variety of topics. Cross-references and recommended reading suggestions are included at the end of each entry to allow scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to identify relevant connections across diverse areas of citizen media scholarship and explore further avenues of research. Featuring contributions by leading scholars and supported by an international panel of consultant editors, the Encyclopedia is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers in media studies, social movement studies, performance studies, political science and a variety of other disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. It will also be of interest to non-academics involved in activist movements and those working to effect change in various areas of social life.

If everyone with a smartphone can be a citizen photojournalist, who needs professional photojournalism? This rather flippant question cuts to the heart of a set of pressing issues, where an array of impassioned voices may be heard in vigorous debate. While some of these voices are confidently predicting photojournalism's impending demise as the latest casualty of internet-driven convergence, others are heralding its dramatic rebirth, pointing to the democratisation of what was once the exclusive domain of the professional. Regardless of where one is situated in relation to these stark polarities, however, it is readily apparent that photojournalism is being decisively transformed across shifting, uneven conditions for civic participation in ways that raise important questions for journalism’s forms and practices in a digital era. This book's contributors identify and critique a range of factors currently recasting photojournalism's professional ethos, devoting particular attention to the challenges posed by the rise of citizen journalism. This book was originally published as two special issues, in Digital Journalism and Journalism Practice.

Citizen Media and Public Spaces presents a pioneering exploration of citizen media as a highly interdisciplinary domain that raises vital political, social and ethical issues relating to conceptions of citizenship and state boundaries, the construction of publics and social imaginaries, processes of co-optation and reverse co-optation, power and resistance, the ethics of witnessing and solidarity, and novel responses to the democratic deficit. Framed by a substantial introduction by the editors, the twelve contributions to the volume interrogate the concept of citizen media theoretically and empirically, and offer detailed case studies that extend from the UK to Russia and Bulgaria and from China to Denmark and the liminal spaces within which a growing number of refugees now live. A rich new domain of scholarship and practice emerges out of the studies presented. Citizen media is shown to embrace both physical and digital interventions in public space, as well as the sets of values and agendas that influence and drive the practices and discourses through which individuals and collectives position themselves within and in relation to society and participate in the creation of diverse publics. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in media and communication studies, particularly those studying citizen media, media and society, journalism and society, and political communication. Cover image: courtesy of Ruben Hamelink

Discusses how to work effectively with any one, in any part of the world, by realizing our global common ground and explores the basic skills necessary to fix the problems facing all of humanity.

Global Media Ethics Global Media Ethics Problems and Perspectives “The book pleads convincingly that news media outlets and practitioners should urgently reconsider their practices and norms in a world gone global and digitally convergent. The various contributions broach the topic from completely different perspectives to create a very stimulating and constructive framework to identify and face the new ethical challenges of journalism and the news media.” François Heinderyckx, Université libre de Bruxelles “News that crosses boundaries of culture and geography means rethinking media ethics. The demands of role, audience, digital transmission, and an industry under fierce economic pressure require the insightful approach to ethical thinking this volume provides. From theory to practice, this book has something for scholars and professionals alike.” Lee Wilkins, Journal of Mass Media Ethics Global Media Ethics is a cross-cultural exploration of the conceptual and practical issues facing media ethics in a global world. Focusing on the ethical concepts, principles, and questions in an era of major change, this unique textbook explores the aims and norms that should guide the publication of stories that impact across borders, and which affect a globally linked, pluralistic world. Through case studies, analysis of emerging practices, and theoretical discussion, a team of leading journalism and communication experts investigate the impact of major global trends on responsible journalism and lead readers to better understand changes in media ethics. Chapters look at how these changes promote or inhibit responsible journalism, how such changes challenge existing standards, and how media ethics can develop to take account of global news media. In light of the fact that media journalism is now, and will increasingly become, multimedia in format and global in its scope and influence, the book argues that global media impact entails global responsibilities: It is therefore critical that media ethics rethinks its basic notions, standards, and practices from a more cosmopolitan perspective.

The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies offers an unprecedented collection of essays addressing the key issues and debates shaping the field of Digital Journalism Studies today. Across the last decade, journalism has undergone many changes, which have driven scholars to reassess its most fundamental questions, and in the face of digital change, to ask again: ‘Who is a journalist?’ and ‘What is journalism?’. This companion explores a developing scholarly agenda committed to understanding digital journalism and brings together the work of key scholars seeking to address key theoretical concerns and solve unique methodological riddles. Compiled of 58 original essays from distinguished academics across the globe, this Companion draws together the work of those making sense of this fundamental reconceptualization of journalism, and assesses its impacts on journalism’s products, its practices, resources, and its relationship with audiences. It also outlines the challenge presented by studying digital journalism and, more importantly, offers a first set of answers. This collection is the very first of its kind to attempt to distinguish this emerging field as a unique area of academic inquiry. Through identifying its core questions and presenting its fundamental debates, this Companion sets the agenda for years to come in defining this new field of study as Digital Journalism Studies, making it an essential point of reference for students and scholars of journalism.

Mapping Citizen and Participatory Journalism in Newsrooms, Classrooms and Beyond assesses citizen journalism within the context of hyperlocals, non-profits and large global news organizations, critically examining various forms of participation by citizen contributors to the news. The essays included within the book answer questions such as: Does citizen journalism close the news participation gap between the Global North and South? How can citizen journalism enable the socially excluded to overcome marginalization? What are the obligations of professional news outlets to citizen reporters in war zones? Furthermore, some contributors critique the ways traditional journalism makes use of non-professional content, while others propose new analytical frameworks such as reciprocal journalism, connective journalism and the Appropriation/Amplification Model. The book also investigates efforts to teach ordinary people journalism skills in Europe, the Middle East and both North and South America. Some of the programs scrutinized here instill under-represented groups with semi-professional news values. Other projects support citizen journalism infused with activism such as the photographers of the favela-based jornalismo popular or the volunteer digital humanitarians covering global crises and, in doing so, demonstrate new ways to respond to the rise of grassroots participation in the production of news. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues of Journalism Practice.

This book investigates the role of citizen journalism in railroading social and political changes in sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies are drawn from research conducted by leading scholars from the fields of media studies, journalism, anthropology and history, who uniquely probe the real impact of technologies in driving change in Africa.

Citizen Journalism as Conceptual Practice provides a conceptualization of citizen journalism as a political practice developed through analyses of an historical and postcolonial case. Arguing that citizen journalism is first and foremost situated, embodied and political rather than networked and technology-based, the book offers a grounded analysis of the colonial newspaper, The Herald, published in St. Croix (Virgin Islands) 1915-25 by a descendant of enslaved people and independently of the colonial ruler, Denmark. The analysis is informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to knowledge production and formulates a critical reading of citizens’ and subjects’ mediated political engagements then as well as now. The book discusses current approaches to citizen journalism before turning to The Herald, which is then read against the grain in an attempt to show the embodied politics of colonial history and cultural forms of citizen engagement as these politics evolve in this particular case of journalism