ANALYSIS OF JOURNALISM STANDARDS IN CITIZEN JOURNALISM CONTENT: A CASE OF TANZANIA BLOGS

Tanzania saw the emergence of online platforms in the 2000s, leading to the proliferation of online media initiatives. Unfortunately, many of these initiatives often disregarded journalistic principles and ethics and disseminated distorted news. To protect the public from inappropriate content, the Content Committee of the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA-CC) oversees and regulates electronic media through The Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) (Amendment) Regulations, 2022. However, scientific research in Tanzania has yet to fully explore the adherence of online media, mainly blogs, to the ethics and principles of journalism. This study, with its three specific objectives, presents a novel approach by investigating the news values of citizen journalism about professional journalism standards, assessing citizen journalism content against the professional journalism code of ethics, and examining the language used in citizen journalism about professional journalistic standards. This study employs content analysis of 10 blogs and incorporates interviews with five respondents to gather insights on the experience of using blogs. The study, which is of significant importance to the field of journalism, employed a purposive sampling method to select blog accounts pertinent to news, along with five respondents possessing experience in applying blogs within journalism practices. This study employed content analysis and interviews to obtain information on news values and ethics in journalism. The results indicate that all 10 blogs comply with the principles and ethics of journalism. In terms of language, the blogs employ a combination of Swahili and English, particularly in advertisements.