Citizen Journalism: Their only escape!

What Is Citizen Journalism?

Put very simply, citizen journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do - report information - without being professionally trained or educated.That information can take many forms, from a podcast editorial to a report about a city council meeting on a blog. It can include text, pictures, audio and video. But it's basically all about communicating information of some kind.
The other main feature of citizen journalism is that it's usually found online. In fact, the emergence of the Internet - with blogs, podcasts, streaming video and other Web-related innovations - is what has made citizen journalism possible.
The Internet gave average people the ability to transmit information globally. That was a power once reserved for only the very largest media corporations and news agencies.



Revolts and today's uprising demonstrations in the Arab world pushed people to rely heavily on citizen journalism, also referred to as, street journalism. Let's take a look on the case in Syria.

Syria today is undergoing a series of demonstrations non-stop. The Syrian Government ever since have tried to silence those massive protesters/rebels, and one of the ways it is relying on is stopping all the regional and international media companies from covering the Syrian news. No reporters of any news channel are allowed to Syria, keeping everything secretive and away from the public's eye in order to be able to manipulate the truth.

People, in response to that, pushed themselves to the ultimate point of tension; they are struggling to convey the truth to the outside world about the current situation in Syria, which is greatly manipulated by the Syrian Arab News Agency; the only authority in charge of presenting the country's news, and since it is a governmental agency, it is expected to be showing one side of the stories, and neglect many important facts that might cause uncertainties or result in pointing out blaming fingers towards the government.




Social media is not only influencing our day to day lives; it is not only helping us to share ideas, interact with people across the globe, or communicate easier and cheaper, but it is now the major influence on the political scene in the Arab world. The 2011 Egyption revolution has been called, "The Facebook Revolution!" It has originally started by a group of young adults who has assembled and shared their political views in a simple facebook group. The group grew bigger in number day by day, and ended up breeding this whole, entire revolution. Today, Youtube is packed with low-quality and highly pixled mobile videos from amateurs on streets who tried to capture the truth with their mobile phones - low quaility but atleast the truth! Contradiction of stories has developed, and today, difficulties are facing the Syrian government which is being forced to clarify many stories to the public... All due to the fact that people cannot be fooled any longer. People now can know the truth not from biased news channels, or non-objective newspapers...

People know the truth from citizen journalism; their only escape!