Citizen journalism; the process of members within the public playing an independent role in collecting, reporting and distributing, current and breaking news events, has recently become very popular(i). New media technology such as social networking eg: Twitter, Facebook and Blogger, have given everyday citizens the ability to transmit information globally; a power which was once only reserved for large media corporations (ii).
In addition, the increasing presence, speed and accessibility of advanced cellular phones and other media sharing devices has allowed citizen journalists to report on breaking news not only to a larger, global, audience, but also more quickly than traditional news reporters. Many believe this form of news coverage is fundamental to Journalism today; citizens’ being relatable, unrestricted and available to capture images and footage of worldwide news as it breaks.
DANGERS
the term its self was coined during the US election
its not just recent ......Some examples of citizen journalism include the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004
link below has some good points and facts about processional journalism vs citizen
Critics of the phenomenon, including professional journalists and news organizations, claim that citizen journalism is unregulated, too subjective, amateur, and haphazard in quality and coverage.
Fake news also undermines serious media coverage and makes it more difficult for journalists to cover significant news stories.[7] An analysis by Buzzfeed found that the top 20 fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than the top 20 news stories on the election from 19 major media outlets.[8]Anonymously-hosted fake news websites lacking known publishers have also been criticized, because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for libel.[9]
try this link for some mind blowing stats on fake news and its reach during USA elections!
what was the impact on the result?
Nice conclusion- ignore the satirical cartoon.
Advantagers
Citizen journalism is a branch of reporting that is led by the public. ... Advantages and disadvantages of citizen journalism exist. Some of the major advantages are that citizen journalists can report events as they unfold, report from closed regimes, capture the unexpected, challenging the media, and offering multiple perspectives on an event, give a voice to the masses.
3 good points made in the first section of this link:
list of citizen journalist web sites
Now Public is A multimedia news site with 5 million readers puts it in the top bracket of citizen journalism news coverage. NowPublic.com says that it receives news from 6,000 cities in 160 countries. The crowdsourced news site accepts news, views, photos, and videos from its legion of contributors.
I like the idea of crowdsourced news its a good term ( crowd funding, wiki shaping our understanding)
2 points from this next link
1) traditional news institutions are buying into citizen journalism as a source of news E.g
People around the world posted more than 100,000 stories on CNNiReport.com last year. Out of that, 10,789 were vetted for CNN, which means they were fact-checked and approved to be broadcast on CNN TV or featured on CNN.com. '
also it has some links to some examples of stories covered.