Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism allows people to express their opinions and ideas that might have been ignored by the “Big Media.” People tend to passively follow and accept the information from the “Big Media”, which might have been biased or twisted in order to satisfy certain groups of people. However, through citizen journalism, every voice is shared and heard. It allows everyone to express his or her opinions and thoughts freely on a certain matter.
Citizen journalism, however, has problems as well. Because of its small scale, only strong voices are heard by its community. People with negative opinions usually tend to express more about their feelings than people with positive opinions about the information from the mainstream journalism. It is hard to support and assess the validity in one’s claim. Citizen journalism includes information with emotions and subjective ideas combined; therefore it might not be true at all.
In the end, it is very important to balance the citizen journalism and the traditional journalism to reduce miscommunication, and to select certain information that are “true” and accurate.