Channels and tools
Citizen journalism is news produced by ordinary citizens, often eyewitnesses, who become primary sources with a smartphone and a connection.
The first large experiment was South Korean: OhmyNews, founded in 2000 by Oh Yeon-ho with the motto ‘every citizen is a reporter’. The American journalist Dan Gillmor theorised it in We the Media (2004), and in 2006 Jay Rosen spoke of ‘the people formerly known as the audience’. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 London bombings were reported by witnesses before newsrooms; in Italy it happened in the hours after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. It arrives before professional journalists, but without their verification: that is why it lives alongside the risk of false news, and why newsrooms created teams dedicated to verifying user content.
An example
In the hours after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake the first updates came from residents, not from newsrooms.
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