Citizen Journalism

At first glance social media social media doesn’t seem to provide any real value to our society. Social media seems like a toy that is only used for the purpose of amusement. The website that Facebook was not the first social media website but it was and remains the website that initially brings users into the realm of social media and social networking. However Facebook is simply a stepping stone for the further use of user driven social media online. In this blog post I want to discuss the opportunities social media has given the individual to convey personal opinions and thoughts on the internet.

Citizen journalism and social activism has seen a dramatic change since the introduction of the internet and social media. Websites like Twitter, Blogger, Storify, Reddit, and Facebook are among the more popular websites that give an opportunity for citizen journalism and social activism. These websites can be used for a variety of different purposes and can be used together for a single purpose. For example you could uses stority.com to produce an article on absolutely anything in the world. Then you can use Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit to promote the article that you wrote using Storify. Or you could post your comments about other stories on all the different websites.
Social media is more than just one website, social media websites work together to produce a variety of different thoughts and opinions of an article. Unlike conventional journalism social media provides producers and consumers with a wider range of opinions of certain subjects. Websites like Reddit give the community the ability to vote on which comments are the most relevant or controversial to that specific community. Essentially social media give everyone the opportunity to have their opinions heard and interpreted by others that are interested about the subject without any bias toward who you are because on the internet you are simply a username.

http://rwconnect.esomar.org/2011/06/16/we-are-all-citizen-journalists-now/

 The emergence of this new opportunity has encouraged me to participate in citizen journalism and social activism. I have not taken the opportunity to produce my own stories, the way that I like to contribute to the online discussion is by commenting and reading the opinions of others.