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Purpose: This article attempts to highlight the defining role that community media engagements play during times of the pandemic. It is argued that the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic forced community news media houses to reinvent their news reporting practices to cover issues pertaining to the marginalized and underprivileged sections of the society. It explores the role of community media in engaging and empowering the citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: Central to our study is the analysis of the news model of "Video Volunteers" (henceforth VV), an independent community-based online news platform based in India. To understand the level of citizen participation and engagement in the making and dissemination of news during the pandemic, the authors conducted 13 interviews with different stakeholders of VV, including founders and news audiences. Findings: It seeks to reveal that when the mainstream media have failed to represent the issues of a local community, it is the independent media platforms like VV which function as a veritable source of information and sharing of knowledge. Most importantly, this paper emphasizes that the communicative model of independent community-based online platforms has been most successful in the coverage of the pandemic and the level of engagement with the citizenry. Originality/value: The study contributes to the aspects of reciprocity and collaborative journalism in community news media and its potential impacts on news creation and dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dharamshala is home to the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Its small-town journalism landscape is unique due to specific forms of community journalism practice adopted by Indian and Tibetan journalists. The Tibetan press there faces a paradox: simultaneously "local and community specific" for Tibetans-in-exile, "refugee voices" for the international community, and "foreign journalism" for Indians. This framing study identified interpretive packages in news coverage of conflict and integration between Dharamshala communities, by examining stories from community news outlets. Indian Hindi journalists enact a "community booster" role by actively framing issues of conflict in favor of the community, while Tibetan journalists' approach was comparatively more balanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative media in the Indian sub-continent is still an under-researched and underrepresented topic especially in the area of citizen journalism. There is a dearth of qualitative literature about how citizen journalists view their work and potential for social change. Using the theories of James W. Carey's ritual view of communication which conceives of communication as a process that enables and enacts societal transformation [Carey, J. W. 2005. "Historical Pragmatism and the Internet." New Media & Society 7 (4): 443–455] and the Most Significant Change Technique (Davies, R., and J. Dart. 2005. "The 'Most Significant Change' (MSC) Technique." A Guide to its use. 10.13140/RG.2.1.4305.3606. Available at (accessed July 2018)), a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation that involves the collection of significant change stories emanating from the field level, this study looks at how reporters of the CGNet Swara, a dedicated citizen journalism site in India, define the impact of their work in bringing social justice in their communities. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with 70 participants and ethnographic field visits, this analysis seeks to contribute to the area of research focusing on the implications and effects of citizen journalism on resource-poor communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community broadcasting is a nascent and unique sector now operating together with the commercial and national players in India and is identified by three significant characteristics—community participation, non-profit making, and community ownership and management. The overarching philosophy of community radio, acknowledged worldwide, is that it is a tool for social justice and a platform for community voices. Community radio seeks to counter the hegemony of the mainstream media and move away from the commerce-driven negative tendencies of media and journalism such as sensationalism, tabloidization, celebrity-worship, the unrestrained use of hidden cameras and paid news. Ordinary people, through participation in management, content production and organization, produce information relevant to them, choose their own stories, express their voice and define their identity. As India witnesses an endeavour to erect a nationwide network of thousands of autonomous, locally orientated community radio stations, it becomes necessary to build a set of codes of practice for this third tier of broadcasting so that it does not become a clone of mainstream media. This paper looks at some of these principles that the community radio sector in India must hold as sacred in order to strengthen civil society, journalism practices and democracy in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges faced by rural communities in India in both access to mainstream media and coverage by it have major implications for democracy and civic participation. CGNet Swara, a citizen journalism initiative, attempts to address this problem by enabling rural or tribal communities to obtain and report news, and, to facilitate coverage of their concerns, by acting as “a bridge” between those communities and professional news outlets. Our research on the project’s relationship with mainstream news outlets in central India finds that while at least some professional journalists endorse the ideals of citizen journalism, they reject the idea that CGNet Swara can assist them. These findings lead us to re-evaluate the potential of citizen journalism as a transformative and democratizing force. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article assesses the potential of online news reporting to create discursive spaces for emphatic engagement - of bearing witness - at a distance, especially where human rights violations are concerned. Taking as its focus the emergent forms and practices of citizen journalism, it examines the spontaneous actions of ordinary people compelled to adopt the role of news reporter in order to bear witness to human suffering. Specifically, findings derived from three case studies of citizen journalism are presented: 1) the 2004 South Asian Tsunami; 2) human rights abuses in India's north-east region; and 3) the Palestinian Crisis in the Occupied Territories. In each instance, it is argued, citizen journalism engendered new approaches to eyewitness reporting, a process shown to have important implications for challenging familiar 'us and them' dichotomies in news reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]