Citizen Journalism

In the world of blogging globalization, the flow of information becomes faster and gets more freedom. Following the birth of web blog and social networking sites is the issue of citizen journalism, or participatory journalism. To my understanding, what considered as citizen journalists are ordinary people without any special education in journalism who create reportage and news coverage in any issue. These “journalists” mainly post their writing through the Internet, especially blogs.

In the era of digital media, citizens are enjoying the freedom of expressing their views about anything without the need to be professional journalists. Considering the fact that even professional or investigate journalists are banned and sentenced jail for being critical, a platform for greater freedom of expression is surely needed. The case of Sayed Perwiz Kambkhash gives a clear outline of how politic and religion are the dangerous areas the media could not really touch.

On the contrary, citizen journalism is claimed to be a scandalous and contradictive platform of information. The case of Mayhill Fowler has got me an impression that citizen journalism is about privacy crossing the way in which she tried to get the story. If I were Clinton, I would like to know whether my words are recorded or gonna be published.
Another problem with citizen journalism is that the reportage are unfiltered and unedited. The risk of falsity and inaccuracy is big. A false report about Steve Jacob for instance, where the reportage became more of sensationalism rather than accuracy. CNN should be the one who is responsible in terms of filtering and editing the posting. In fact, CNN was unsuccessful in finding the author of the false report. It indicates the power of communication technologies (in this case, the Internet) not only as a platform of information and free but also its danger as a facility for unguaranteed news and damaging report.  
It is undeniably true that freedom of expression gets more guarantees through this form of participatory journalism. Changing information and perspectives in the media reaches wider audience too. However, the fact that citizen journalism’s reportage brought some problems exists here and now. And what are the rules? There are no exact rules in citizen journalism - not to say that the ethical codes applied in professional journalism are effective. Interestingly, unfiltered and maybe unprofessional reportage have become the source of information in this globalized world.