Analysis On Citizen Journalism In China

Citizen journalism, which also can be named grassroots journalism or participatory journalism, isincreasingly showing its boundless vitality and great influence in recent years along with the great develop-ment of new media and technology, so it has attracted a lot of concern in the field of journalism and comm-unication.The emergence and popularity of new media have made more and more ordinary people own theequipments of dissemination and acceptance and have a growing sense of democracy and rights awareness,such a fact makes a new journalism mode basing on the theme of non-professional journalism and commu-nication appear and be popular soon, therefore now anyone can be a reporter. Now, this mode has beenused in a number of major events and emergencies and has caused a huge burst of energy, it has occupiedan increasingly important position in the field of journalism and communication.The rapid development and popularization of new media and internet technology spawned themode of citizen journalism, and also promoted its continuous development.It has changed the “broadcastmode” of traditional media from the top to the bottom into the “mutual broadcast mode”with the flow ofinformation from the bottom to the top while it’s appearance and development follow the natural laws.Fortraditional media,it is a good assistant, they advance each other in many important events, but they aremutually exclusive sometimes. The relationship between traditional and new media has become a newconcern.“How can they coexist?” requires our consideration. The author here makes a simple analysis inthis paper.McLuhan speaks highly of the role of the media in the history in his famous thesis of “themedium is the message”. He believes the truly meaningful and valuable “message” is not the content the media disseminate but the nature of the communication tools and what they can bring to the changes of oursociety. We should pay more attention to what they can bring to us, and this is the most important value ofour research.In recent years, citizen journalism has been deepening continuously in China, and some reportsof citizen journalism are influential highly. Such as the Most Powerful Nail House in Chongqing and theevent of South China Tiger in2007, the Earthquake in Wenchuan and the event of “Going abroad”of ourcivil servants in2008,“Hide and seek event” in2009,and the Diary Crisis in2010and so on, Citizenjournalism plays an important role in Social supervision and the guidance of public opinion.It has made so much contribution to social changes and progress. And it has made up for someshortcomings of the mainstream media and contributes to the display of the objective social panorama. Ithelps people get more and more speaking rights and provides a convenient platform for people toparticipate in public affairs. There are still many troublesome difficulties and problems because citizenjournalism is still in its infancy in China. For instance, the media literacy of the reporters is not high enoughand the credibility of the reports is not high either. Besides, there are many loopholes in the managementand the check-in.This paper makes some analysis on citizen journalism from the following aspects:The first part is combing its definitions, exploring its development course, Meanwhile, there aresome description of the background of its rise, the causes of its development and citizen reporters in China.The second part makes an analysis on the relation between citizen journalism and traditionaljournalism, the status and problems of the development of citizen journalism in China, several major formsof its practice. This section focuses on the analysis and outlook of the relationship between citizenjournalism and traditional media. In the third part, there is some interpretation about citizen journalism from the perspective ofCommunication and some compare on the modes of transmission of citizen journalism and traditionalmedia. The author here does some research on citizen journalism from four angles: the theory of Use andMeet, the hypothesis of The Spiral of Silence, The information environment of the media belonging topeople, The social function of the citizen journalism.The fourth part focuses on the prospects and forecasts of citizen journalism and makes a simpleinduction about its problems in China.In terms of the result of the research, the author has an optimistic outlook for the future of citizenjournalism, the development of citizen journalism and citizen reporters is unstoppable, therefore, I think itneeds technical support and a reasonable guide basing on such a fact that we should conform to its ownnature and policies,thus citizen journalism and traditional journalism can help each other well and have acontinuous development both,then we will be able to see a more objective and real world from variousmedia so that this information can guide the decisions and actions of the people more correctly.