Citizen Journalism vs. Mainstream Journalism: A Study on Challenges Posed by Amateurs

Citizen journalism is a rapidly evolving form of journalism, which has enabled ordinary people to report newsworthy situations around them. Nowadays mainstream media do not serve as the only source of news. The alternative news sources on the Internet, such as blogs, web portals and social networking sites give a good competition to mainstream media. The current study aims to assess how journalists perceive the impact of citizen journalism on mainstream journalism and their work. It endeavours to find out what challenges, if any, citizen journalism has posed to mainstream media and how does the latter respond to them. A survey was conducted among journalists working in Kashmir that helped to achieve the objectives of the study. The study found that citizen journalism does not pose any imminent threat to mainstream journalism since it is just in its formative years. In fact, citizen journalism holds potential benefits as a source of news. It proves to be useful to bring to fore the stories that are inaccessible to professional journalists.