Journalism is not the profession of stringent regulations but it has been practiced by appointed journalists of newspapers or media houses for hundreds of years. The terminology of citizen journalism was fixed by ‘letter to the editor’ or post editorial by a sensible ordinary resident in south Asian countries. poverty, lower literacy rate, and the insufficiency of the practice of democratic citizen activities were rarely seen in South Asia.
However, the scenario has changed in the past several years. Increased literacy rate of last decade and the spread of internet facility has overblown using a mobile phone, it has also significantly increased ordinary people activeness in social media. People are uploading Photos and videos with information on social media, sometimes they write on blogs and share other events through the social platform.
In that way, south Asian ordinary people act as news sources on a nearly global scale. As citizen journalism grasps all practices of social media platforms, common people are able to implement the roles exclusively executed by professional journalists.
The power of citizen journalism sometimes indicates more influence compare to traditional journalism. In a few cases, media depends on social media information, and some movement of the social issue was instigated by ordinary internet journalism in south Asian countries. This is also an example of using minimal resources with the latest information, they are able to create potential changes in a restricted atmosphere in their home country.
To read the full text of the study:
http://dl6.globalstf.org/index.php/JMC/article/view/1685
RAI, Nareshchandra. Citizen journalism: A South Asian perspective. GSTF Journal on Media and Communications (JMC), [S.l.], v. 3, n. 1, May 2018.
