Lecture 01 | Civic Journalism: An overview

Much of the attention to civic journalism has been paid by the scholars of media studies in the start of current century. This focus of study peaked by 2010. Despite of it, it is still a challenge to define civic journalism. Because the definition is somewhat unclear and fluid. Definitely a valid question arises here why the definition of civic journalism is still unclear and fluid.  With the passage of time and advent of modern technologies, the concept of civic journalism is applied to a wide variety of activities. And some times, even most of the times it becomes difficult to distinguish among those activities. In his famous blog PressThink, media critic Jay Rosen states civic journalism as "“When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.”

When we think of civic journalism in the way Rosen has stated we must keep in mind that this context encompasses a wide range of activities such as citizens sharing content on their own, citizens' mobilization for sharing a particular content on a given date, citizens sharing content as part of a project coordinated by professional journalists, sharing of contents by citizens through a site with professional editors filtering content, to linking to content produced by professional journalists, to individual blog posts or personal posts on social media that may only be of interest to a limited audience.

However, a most important part of the definition of citizen journalism is 'the involvement of citizens' in journalism process which is meant to distinguish it from the work done by a professional journalist. 

Civic journalism includes everything and every act of journalism provided it is done by a citizen not by a professional   journalists. For instance, a spontaneous, one-time act based on a citizen’s presence at a newsworthy event, citizen as as a witness of police misconduct/brutality. Or a regular endeavour to disseminate information to general public via a blog, Twitter feed, or other medium. Makin comments on news/news stories, tagging, mentioning others and rating content are perhaps the lowest-stakes ways of participating in the process of civic journalism. 

Rosen, J. (2006, June 27).The people formerly known as the audience. [Blog post]. PressThink. Retrieved from http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html