Are citizen journalists and bloggers real journalists What does it mean to be a real journalist - Essay Example

Due to introduction of technologies that are digital in nature, individuals have unrestricted access to various tools of production and distribution. Citizen journalism is a field that consists of reviews regarding a particular motion picture that are generated by individuals and then submitted all over the internet and it even comprises of news that are based on wikis (Poynter 414). Currently a conflict between traditional journalism and citizen based journalism has been taking place, though this conflict can result in an evolution of journalism through the internet.

The profession of journalism has not experienced tremendous amount of alterations, but it has experienced certain kind of expansion. Traditionally, journalism used to be conducted in a linear manner, nowadays; journalism has become more connected and networked (Peters 95). Karp states that journalism in traditional era used to be conducted by a few individuals, today it is conducted by a huge number of people (Coombs, 2013). Under certain situations, there is hardly any difference between both traditional and citizen journalism, an in-depth analysis reveals that there are several aspects that differentiate between traditional and citizen journalism (Siapera 108).

One of the underlining difference between two forms of journalism is that, professional journalist are paid for all the work they perform, while the citizen journalist might be doing their form of journalism as a hobby or they may get paid in accordance to the number of visitors or the number of viewers they have attracted (Anderson 124). When academic journalist are conducting research, they use the views and opinions of the common population (citizens) in order to create and prove that their findings are objective in nature and they were not biased towards the subject matter or the issue (Herbst 122).

Blogging is even considered as a professional or valid type of journalism as in this