Reporting Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis in a Hybrid Media Environment: How Citizen Journalists and Traditional Media Collaborate and Compete

Abstract

This study examined how Cameroonian legacy media and citizen journalists have collaborated or competed to report on the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon since October 2016. Using Chadwick’s hybrid media system theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 41 Cameroonian legacy media reporters, editors and citizen journalists. The results show that when reporting on political crises, new relationships are established between legacy media and citizen journalists that grow into formalised collaborations. Mainstream media reporters and citizen journalists either collaborate or compete to report on the crisis. Some citizen journalists both cooperate with traditional media and run their own reporting platforms, while professional journalists working for established media outlets create platforms of their own to freely report issues that would otherwise be censored on traditional media outlets. The findings reveal professional journalists acknowledge the important role of citizen journalists but are cautious about fully collaborating with them at every stage of the news production chain.