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This article draws on the case of La Gordiloca, a Facebook-based journalist from Laredo, TX, to interrogate the increasing role of social media within news-making processes. Applauded by The New York Times as a paragon of twenty-first century journalism and under scrutiny from local businesses and law enforcement for defamation and misuse of official information, she occupies a space between digital journalist and social media celebrity. Combining a content analysis with focus groups of Laredo residents, we argue that her work reflects a constitutive paradox unique to social media journalism: Whereas new technologies expand opportunities for citizens to participate in the process of news production, they also enable the corrosion of norms/practices that oriented previous forms of news production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen journalism is increasingly practiced worldwide due to the expansion of the Internet, new media technologies, and social media platforms. This study investigated Malaysia's citizen journalism through young journalist’s perspective by understanding the concepts and roles of citizen journalists. The analysis demonstrated that young citizen journalists view opportunities and empowerment from a new angle. The results illustrated that citizen journalism in Malaysia provides a potential prospect for citizen journalists as well as a role in inspiring young people. Based on the present paper, it is suggested that future research should explore the guidelines to distinguish Malaysian citizen journalists from the conventional keyboard warriors and cyber troopers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marca Community is arguably one of the most popular online sports communities in Spain with over 400,000 members. In its forum, users can comment on the news published by the sport-based newspapers Marca while interacting with other members. Drawing on the existing literature on virtual communities, this study empirically examines the engagement in online discussion in order to determine the degree of “community building" promoted by the members. We propose a methodological approach taking under consideration the singularities of the sports fans and of the online conversation. A structural analysis focusing on the user interaction was conducted over the members (N=4,967) who posted comments in 8 selected articles. The findings suggest that Marca Community is a non-hierarchical liquid network wherein members participate in an equal footing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considered by some authors (Gilmor, 2005; Rosen, 2008) as one of the traditional journalism greatest challenges, the so called "citizen journalism" is far from delivering its original promises. Regardless of their location and dimension, some of the most promising online media projects developed by citizens or created with this aim, lost their initial dynamic or closed down completely. In Portugal, the online versions of the major daily newspapers also created sections for citizens participation, some of them using the word "journalism" or "reporter" in their denomination. But can we consider "journalism" the texts published on these spaces? To answer this and other questions, an analysis of contents published by readers in the specific sections of four Portuguese daily newspapers was carried out. The main goal is to verify if there are characteristic elements in journalistic practice, i.e. if citizens do journalism in the spaces denominated as "citizen's journalism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Television networks in many European countries have launched web participation channels in recent years, so that viewers can send a variety of news content. For some authors, they are a new form of "citizen journalism"; a more proper term for this concept, it is argued, seems to be "user generated content". This article deals with the essential aspects of this kind of participatory journalism in television websites, by analysing the initiatives of several television networks in Spain, Great Britain and France. It examines the nature of user generated content in those television websites case studies, and it enquires to what extent these initiatives can be regarded as "citizen journalism" and what kind of content they promote. Finally, it explores the challenges and opportunities posed by citizen journalism and user generated content to professional online television news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic study of day-to-day practices of citizen reporters, compared to their mainstream counterparts, suggests that ordinary citizens can serve as a vital complement to mainstream journalism, however not as its substitute. The paper develops a version of the “news access” theory, which sees citizen journalists as hindered by their inferior access to news sources, unlike mainstream journalism, where the problem is seen as the superior access of some of their sources to extensive and favored coverage. There are several symptoms for citizen reporters' limited news access: their modest use of human sources; the high proportion of one-source items; their reluctance to interactively negotiate versions with sources; and their contacts with sources tend to be ad hoc exchanges, rather than long-term role relationships. On the other hand, citizen reporters have adopted several mechanisms that help them make up for their comparably limited access. They are much more likely to pursue stories at their own initiative. They tend to predicate their stories on firsthand witnessing, technical sources (mainly Internet), personal acquaintances, and on their own experience. Data were gleaned from a series of interviews in which reporters from Israeli citizen and mainstream news websites explained how they formulated their sampled items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mainstream online news media face accusations of being slow to respond to so-called 'grassroots' or 'citizen journalism', which uses the world wide web, and in particular blogs and wikis, to publish and promote independent news-related content. This article argues that the adaptation of established news websites to the increasing demand from readers for space to express their views is driven as much by local organizational and technical conditions as it is by any attachment to traditional editorial practices. The article uses qualitative research interviews with the editors and managing editors of nine major British news websites to reveal the debates journalists are having about their changing roles, the challenges of meeting commercial expectations and legal obligations, and the innovations taking place in online newsrooms. It provides journalism and interactive media scholars with case studies on the changes taking place in journalism's relationship with its consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]