Abstract

This project portrays the effects of citizen journalism on the agenda of conventional journalism in Cameroon-Buea and equally goes a long way to suggest some solutions to the problems faced by conventional journalism which has untrained individuals, with the interest to become professional journalists.

It is worthy of note that, though citizen journalism has speed in breaking news through the advent of new technologies like Facebook, WhatsApp, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter just to name a few. Conventional journalism still and will always stand out because of its professionalism in disseminating news through the news of professional devices and thorough editing, investigative steps to verify the information before it is broadcast.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Citizen journalism’s rise is paradigmatic of how journalism and the media are evolving. Citizen journalism which is also called network journalism, participatory journalism, web 2.0 journalism; collaborative media democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism, or street journalism is based on public or unprofessional citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information”.

The advent of new media technologies like Facebook, Skype, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and the adoption of 3G and 4G technologies has seen a rapid growth of citizen journalism. This growth has been accompanied by the mushrooming of media start-up companies and the unprecedented circulation of user-generated content. The decentralized nature of the Internet has allowed more information to be imported to citizens with less gatekeeping.

Thus, citizen journalism, see an opportunity to become gatekeepers and watchdogs, constantly monitoring corporate and political power only replacing them under scrutiny and surveillance.

Glaser argues that “people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.”

Furthermore, according to Hughes citizen journalists are individuals with different histories and backgrounds that commonly practiced journalism on the side, having no proper journalistic experience; otherwise, education. Hughes states that citizen journalism has been around longer than the profession of journalism itself.

Due to the advent of new media technologies, the effects of citizen journalism on traditional or conventional media are evident. New technologies such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, 2GO, Tik Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube help citizen journalists to impact the agendas of conventional or traditional media’s monopoly to define, produce and disseminate news especially as the relevant technologies are cheaper and easier to learn and adapt to. As a result, citizens without training or experience in journalism now have many ways to work as professionals.

Furthermore, due to the practices of citizen journalism on social media and other forms of technologies like blogging, so many people are able to record an incident that is happening and upload it immediately to online sites where people can watch it within seconds.

In addition, citizen journalists post as much content as they want whenever they want. Consequently, conventional or traditional media are forced to stay competitive.

Moreover, citizen journalists do not answer to anybody but themselves in most cases. As a result, they cannot be controlled like conventional media, which now have to adjust to the new structure of journalism.

Again, a key idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.

Forms of Citizen Journalism and their implications on Conventional Journalism

• Institutionalized (semi-independent) and non-institutionalized (fully independent). Institutional citizen journalism refers to that type of citizen journalism that has a form of organizational structure.
• Non-institutional forms of citizen journalism are extra-institutional, placing the individual at the core of the practice. This appears to be the noting of citizen journalism that readily lends itself to different forms of social networking, where private citizens use a combination of platforms to generate content and disseminate it as widely as possible. Non-institutional citizen journalism revolves around individuals.
• Semi-independent citizen journalism; involves citizens contributing in one form or another to existing professional news sites. For example, readers are posting their comments alongside stories written by professional reporters, essentially on the 21st-century version of the “letter to the editor”. A growing number of media organizations in Zimbabwe, allows readers to post comments. In an effort to prevent obscene or objectionable messages, some news websites (like the Herald), daily news, and news day) require that readers register in order to post.
• Independent citizen journalism involves citizen journalists working in ways that are fully independent or traditional or conventional or mainstream news outlets. These can be blogs in which individuals can report on events in their communities or offer commentary on the issues of the day.

An example of citizen journalism includes; websites like Zimbabwe sentinel.com, www.zimsentinel.com, Magamba network http://motorepublik. Co and open Parlyzw@openparlyzw) are run by a group of people that report on news events in the local community.

From the above, it can be denoted that citizen journalism is differentiated from conventional media as stated.

The merits and demerits of citizen journalism

• It is accessible to everybody who is digitally inclined.
• It is always where the news happens
• It travels wider
• It is often uninvestigated information that circulates on social media and the uninvestigated information is what damages the communication industry.
• Citizen journalism exposes to content that is not meant for the public, that is, it is acceptable in professional journalism practice.
• Citizen journalism does not investigate information before dissemination.

Similarly, there are similarities between citizen journalism and conventional media as listed below;

Driving or motivating forces: Both citizen journalism and conventional journalism have, to tell the truth, spreading information and upholding the truth as their driving forces.

Common values: Citizen Journalism must operate on the basis of accepted values of good journalism that promote journalistic integrity. The foremost of these values are objectivity, truthfulness, and fairness.

What is a state? Citizen journalism and conventional media, also share similarities in terms of what is at stake. What is at stake in both citizen journalism and conventional media is the free flow of information, which must not be hindered by laws, socio-economic conditions changing technologies, or failing systems.

Upon discussing and learning what citizen journalism is and what sets it apart from conventional media, it is important to single out the individual characteristics of this form of journalism. The main characteristics of citizen journalism include the following:

Citizen journalism is participatory: Citizen Journalism is an interactive form of journalism that allows average citizens to be active participants in the creation and spreading of news and information.

Citizen journalism creates on the basis of a decentralized bottom-up structure and process: The structure and workflow of citizen journalism are decentralized and typically occur outside and independent of the conventional newsroom. Like the internet itself, citizen journalism is self-organizing and structured from the bottom to the top. The means of creating and disseminating news and information is distributed across, geography, technologies and the knowledge of many individuals. Instead of being based on media organizations, information that circulates through citizen journalism is from the community, by the community, and for the community.

Citizen journalism is not profit-driven: Unlike the conventional media that is largely driven by the objectives of generating profit, the majority of citizen journalism activities are not conducted for profit.

Diversity of viewpoints: Citizen Journalism tends to produce a greater diversity of perspectives and expertise than conventional media and gives readers access to more viewpoints and information to draw their own conclusion.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Citizen journalism sometimes has negative effects on conventional journalism as there is misinformation, setbacks in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.

Furthermore, effects of citizen journalism on orthodox journalism practice is because of citizen journalism’s sensationalism, motivated by the public’s sensational attitude in the news because some citizen journalist is sensational.

This problem is actually solved by conventional media which is based on implementing professionalism in the practice of journalism.

1.3 Research Questions

This work has three questions

1. What are the effects of citizen journalism on conventional journalism practice in Cameroon?
2. What are the challenges faced by conventional journalists in the face of citizen journalism in Cameroon?

1.4 Objectives of Study

The objectives of this study are;

1. To study the effects of citizen journalism on conventional journalism practice.
2. To document the challenges faced by conventional journalism centered on citizen journalism.