Citizen journalism, also recognized as public. participatory or democratic journalism is a notion made practicable by the Internet and the arrival of blogging. It is the combining of research and reporting by volunteers to progress journalistic news stories or to critically look into existing ones, particularly stories from the mainstream media. The participating citizens can also discuss, question, and further develop their own findings in a continuous way.
The aim behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the internet to create argument or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others, for example, you might write about city council meeting in your blog or in an online forum. You could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. You might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online.
In countries like Iran where government control the media, limit and suppress the publishing information, news and different websites, citizen journalism is the best way to get the new data out to the wider world.
