A Preliminary Study Of Grassroots Journalism In Network Communication

As the prosperity of new media technology represented by Internet and mobile phones, Grassroots journalism comes to face its great boom ever. grassroots journalist participate in the social public issues via grassroots journalism like PeoPo, personal blog and the fashioned micro blog, which has a huge influence to the media industry and all the fields of the whole society.This article emphasizes on the qualitative research and contributes to have a quite systemic and global statement on the theory and practice of grassroots journalism.The definition of grassroots journalism ; the impact it has on the traditional journalism ,the traditional media theory or even the whole society ;and the problems to be solved and outlook to be explored are the main aspects to be discussed in this article.The article has quiet a clear and accurate definition of grassroots journalism through the discrimination of assembled conceptions. A global analysis and statement is made on the difference of the traditional and grassroots journalism via the modes of production, transmission , narration and the formation of public opinions in the angle of practice. As to the impact grassroots journalism has on the traditional journalism, this article demonstrate it in theory with the change and evolution on the social responsibility theory, the right of accessing to media and the discursive power of the public. Additionally, it was discovered during the research that grassroots journalism should not only affect the media industry itself, but to broaden the view of the whole society. We can have a brief glimpse of the influence grassroots journalism from the cultivation of the social democratic consciousness, the formation of pubic domain and the development of the grass-rooted culture. Inevitably, grassroots journalism has its disadvantages and has caused problems like network violence, the lack of protection over privacy and the decline of sense of responsibility on media industry. To enhance the navigation and supervision over grassroots journalism while maintain its grass-rooted and free traits is more than an revolution of journalism, but the involvement of morality ,laws and the guidance of government.