From Reader to Writer: Citizen Journalism as News Produsage

Abstract

Today, participatory or citizen journalism – journalism which enables readers to become writers – exists online and offline in a variety of forms and formats, operates under a number of editorial schemes, and focuses on a wide range of topics from the specialist to the generic and the micro-local to the global. Key models in this phenomenon include veteran sites Slashdot and Indymedia, as well as news-related weblogs; more recent additions into the mix have been the South Korean OhmyNews, which in 2003 was “the most influential online news site in that country, attracting an estimated 2 million readers a day” (Gillmor, 2003a, p. 7), with its new Japanese and international offshoots, as well as the Wikipedia with its highly up-to-date news and current events section and its more recent offshoot Wikinews, and even citizen-produced video news as it is found in sites such as YouTube and Current.tv.