CITIZEN JOURNALISM, DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE: HYPE ANDHOPE

Silvio WaisbordGeorge Washington University

In Stuart Allan and Einar Thorsen, Editors, Citizen Journalism, forthcoming

CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS

Let’s clarify the meaning of citizen journalism,development, and social change before we analyze theirlinkages.

Citizen journalism (CJ) is a relatively straightforwardconcept. CJ refers to “random acts of journalism” practicedby ordinary people Stuart Allan (2013, p. 9) defines it as“first-person reportage in which ordinary individualstemporarily adopt the role of journalists to participate innewsmaking, often spontaneously during a time of crisis,accident, tragedy or disaster when they happen to be presenton the scene.” In recent years, the concept gainedpopularity with the spread of easy-to-access digitalplatforms that allow anyone to report and disseminateinformation and opinion. CJ is different from “industrialjournalism” (Anderson, Bell & Shirky 2012) produced by newsbureaucracies – it doesn’t follow standard rules, isn’tproduced by paid labor, and isn’t housed in news companies.It’s non-professional journalism, understandingprofessionalism as the ability of an occupation to control a

1

certain social jurisdiction that provides a specific socialservice (Waisbord 2013). The rise of digital CJ signalscracks in the control that industrial journalism had in theprovision of information for mass publics.

Unlike CJ, neither development nor social change can bedefined succinctly. “Development” remains the subject oflong discussions. As a concept identified with politicaldemocracy, market economy, and social indicators, it hasbeen a central category in the analysis of the evolution ofmodern societies as well as a normative horizon of “humanprogress”. During the postwar years, governments, academicsand private foundations embraced the narrative of“development” to characterize world societies based on aparticular construction of the Western experience and offersolutions to a host of global problems such as poverty,economic growth, authoritarianism, health and education. Asa modernist narrative, “development” was premised on ateleological, optimist vision that anticipated a brightfuture ahead for the “underdeveloped” world if it embracedthe Western historical path and policy recommendations.“Developed,” then, became associated with “Westernprogress,” industrial capitalism, liberal democracy, andrising social conditions.

Critical scholars have questioned this line of argument onvarious grounds (Escobar 1995). In their mind,“developmentalism” offers an ethnocentric perspective thatreflects a profoundly misguided and narrow interpretation ofhuman history. By elevating the “Western experience” as themodel of “good development”, it ignores the complexhistorical linkages between the North and the global South.

2

“Development” was the product of a long history ofcolonialism and exploitation of social and naturalresources. It is also premised on externally-driven model ofhuman improvement that posits the West as the engine ofglobal change and the repository of appropriate resourcesand knowledge. In doing so, it sidelines alternative modelsof social development that reflect local knowledge,experience, and aspirations.

This line of argument pushed the debate to redefine“development” in terms of emphasizing local knowledge andvoice, rights, social reforms, and collective action.Although this critique was responsible for important changesin international aid, such as the adoption of participationas central to human improvement (Cooke and Kothari 2001),the discourse of “development” still undergrids global aidand international cooperation. It remains institutionalizedin academia (“development studies”), government (departmentsof “social” and “rural” development), and international aid(“development” agencies).

“Post-development” arguments prompted calls to findsubstitute concepts unburdened by the ideological baggage ofdevelopmentalism. The notion of “social change” has emergedas a plausible alternative endorsed by activists, non-government organizations, scholars, donors, and governments(Servaes 2008). Social change, however, is a semanticallydiffused concept that lacks clear definitions. It is looselyused to refer to transformations in norms, attitudes, socio-economic structures, policies, beliefs, information, power,and behaviors. Unlike “development”, it lacks specificnormative implications. It has a positive resonance yet its

3

meanings are in the eye of the beholder. Someone’s necessary“social change” is somebody else’s unimportant change.Although social change is commonly associated withaddressing a range of social ills, it is not obvious whichare those problems, or if they fit a broad vision about the“good society.” “The social question”, to use the ideacoined by critics of the social consequences of theindustrial revolution in the 19th century, is fragmented ina world of social problems: poverty, discrimination, genderinequity, access to health and education services, publicsafety, food insecurity, water scarcity, labor slavery, poorsanitation, climate change and so on.

Rather than adopting a “thematic” understanding of socialchange, my sympathy lies with the notion that social changeis about social justice - redressing power inequalities,strengthening individual and social rights, improving andexpanding opportunities, particularly for socially excludedpopulations. Social change shouldn’t be viewed in terms ofconventional divisions between problems and solutions ofdeveloped and developing countries. Certainly, socialproblems may have different significance and urgency acrossthe world. For example, access to safe water and sanitation,infectious diseases, and child and maternal mortality aresignificantly bigger problems in the global South than inthe West. Also, societies have different institutional andeconomic resources as well as political opportunities andobstacles to address various social problems. Despite thesedifferences, it is possible to find valuable insights acrossthe world in the way societies identify social problems andimplement solutions through collective actions.

4

Social change shouldn’t be confused with its cognate“political change” which refers to transformations inpolitical regimes, structures, actions, and dynamics. Thishas been the analytical focus of recent discussions aboutprotest movements that have used CJ for information andorganization for political action (Earl & Kimport 2011).Soldiers who distribute classified information and picturesthat challenge official narratives, citizens who producevisual documents of violence and natural disasters, andactivists’ reporting about uprisings and protests in theMiddle East, the Occupy movement, and the Indignadosillustrate the contributions of CJ to political change andactivism. In this chapter, the focus is not on politicalchange, but on the contributions of CJ to giving visibilityand addressing social problems.

The range of topics discussed in this book demonstrates thatthere is no single question about CJ. Instead, scholars haveexamined various issues, such as its relationship withmainstream/legacy journalism, political uses, innovations innews production and distribution, and continuities withjournalistic traditions and forms of public expression.

How should we think about the relationship between CJ anddevelopment/social change?At first glance, CJ can be correctly considered amanifestation of positive social change. CJ seemingly meet acondition for social change: the expansion of opportunitiesfor citizens’ voices. Long before the arrival of Web 2.0,participatory communication theorists emphasized theimportance of community spaces and citizens’ media (e.g.low-powered radio stations, grassroots video, public access

5

television) for human emancipation and the improvement ofsocial conditions (Rodriguez, Kidd & Stein 2009).

One can reasonably argue that CJ follows this tradition. Itempowers ordinary citizens by leveling opportunities tospeak, define issues, and make demands in the public sphere.Despite persistent inequalities in digital access in theglobal South, digital CJ enables incalculable numbers ofpeople to be heard. It redefines “news as activecitizenship” rather than passive consumption of pre-digestedinformation. Everyone is potentially a protagonist ratherthan spectator or audience. Citizens are able to relayinformation to massive numbers of people through blogs,social media and other digital platforms, bypassing themediating position of media and journalistic organizations.

It is mistaken, however, to view CJ simply as participatorycommunication. The questions about public expression insocial change are not only who talks or whether citizenshave opportunities for speaking up. Other questions need tobe asked, too. What kind of public conversations take place?What are they about? Who participates? How are problemsdefined? How is dialogue linked to decision-making? Thesequestions refer to the institutional architecture ofinformation resources and communication actions foraddressing social problems. Social change demands propitiousconditions for citizens’ dialogue and action. It’s notmerely a matter of individuals voicing ideas into an emptyvoid, but rather, whether different voices have a chance tobe heard in conversations and decisions about commonaffairs.

6

My argument is that to understand how CJ contributes tosocial change is necessary to examine its connections (orlack of) to information and communication organizations.Social change is not merely citizens blogging, participatingin social media, and uploading information across the vastdigital universe. It is about how CJ is linked to theorganizational scaffolding of public dialogue and opinionformation, politics, and collective change. Withoutconsidering these issues, the analysis easily falls into acelebration of CJ as the crystallization of individualexpression divorced from a sociological analysis ofcommunication rights and opportunities for collective actorsas well as the institutional contexts for participation anddecision-making.

My interest in this chapter is to analyze two questions inthe relationship between CJ and development/social change.One question is whether CJ offers better opportunities forcovering development/social change issues and actions. Thisis an important question given that CJ may help to addressthe shortcomings of traditional journalism’s coverage ofsocial problems. A second question deals with CJ as a formof collective action driving social change. CJ is more thanjournalism. It blurs key concepts in media and communicationstudies such as journalism, participation, interpersonal andmediated communication, public expression and collectiveaction. “Social media” postings and blogging can belegitimately considered actions by which citizens try toinfluence public awareness about specific issues anddemands.

SOCIAL CHANGE NEWS IN A DIVERSIFIED NEWS ECOLOGY

7

Undoubtedly, CJ offers opportunities for expanding newscoverage and bringing public visibility to social problems.Its open-ended architecture, constant innovation, andbottomless capacity offer endless opportunities for news. Itchallenges the elitist premises of “professional” news bybringing voices from the margins to the center. It putscitizens and communities as central actors rather thanjournalists as “self-appointed” representatives of the newsinterests of the people. It undermines the mediating rolethat journalism monopolized in the past and its power totell millions what is (and what isn’t) news. CJ has swungthe doors open for citizens with Internet access to producenews and information and provide information andperspectives missing or distorted in industrial journalism.The diversification of information about social problemsenriches the information resources of societies, and mayhelp to raise public awareness and knowledge, shape publicagendas, and inform policy debates and legislation.

How should we assess the contributions of CJ to news aboutsocial change? One approach is to assess whether CJ helps toproduce sustained and contextualized news aboutunderreported social problems in the mainstream press. Thisissue matters for two reasons. First, scholars and activistshave long criticized legacy news for their limited andsporadic coverage of social problems, particularly as theyaffect socially marginalized communities (Thakurta &Chaturvedi 2012). Social issues are more likely to getcovered if journalists find standard newsworthy elements.Attention by political elites and celebrities, event-drivennews, social and geographical proximity, accidents/disasters

8

and other conventional news values are likely to drivecoverage on issues such as poverty, displaced peoples,gender-based violence, environmental problems and others.Second, the impact of CJ on legacy news matters because,although the Internet is more open and leveled than the oldnews system, news usage remains lopsided in favor oftraditional news companies that attract the lion’s share oftraffic. Successful bloggers may have a few thousandfollowers, but CJ as a whole can hardly match the reach ofselected national and global news organizations. Despiteexamples of amateur content suddenly becoming viral news, CJcan’t get the attention that legacy newsrooms attract daily.For example, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof and thenewspaper’s “Fixes” blog regularly spotlight local andglobal social problems (from gender-based violence toteenage depression) as well as the “invisible” work oforganizations in front of a massive audience. The vastmajority of citizen journalists lack a similar perch fordigital storytelling. In fact, organizations working onsocial change typically yearn for attention from newspowerhouses to elevate the presence of their causes in newsand political landscapes (Waisbord 2008, 2010).

CJ influences mainstream news through formal collaborationsbetween citizens and legacy newsrooms in which the formerproduce information and facilitate access to sources, orinformally as citizens act as “crowd-sources” and feed RSSand Twitter entries about social problems that areeventually picked up by the mainstream press. In so doing,citizens enrich the work of “professional” journalists andhelp to improve news coverage of social problems.

9

The relation between CJ and traditional news could beexamined by analyzing whether the former effectively steersthe latter to cover social change news even when specificissues lack conventional news values. Can CJ influence majornews organizations to cover social problems that lackobvious news pegs – official pronouncements, streetdemonstrations, newsy visuals, and predictable and routinenews? This would mean, for example, covering poverty withoutstatements from major political figures, gender-basedviolence without high-profile rapes, environmentaldegradation without weather emergencies, climate changewithout unusual heat waves, public safety without crimes inwell-to-do neighborhoods, racial relations without minority-on-white homicides, and diarrheal diseases without choleraepidemics. The question, then, is whether CJ change routinenews on social problems (Waisbord 2010). As a measure of itsimpact on news conventions, this is also important toaddress the selectivity bias of news organizations that drawon CJ to report on conventional news events such asdisasters, natural emergencies, wars, and violent protests.Countless citizen journalists routinely cover issues but,arguably, only a minuscule fraction gets attention frommainstream news.

We still lack answers to many questions. Does CJ contributeto expanding the coverage of topics and perspectives onsocial change and development in the legacy media? AreWestern news organizations more likely to pay sustainedattention to global social problems because they have easyaccess to CJ information? Do newsrooms bring out socialissues by partnering with CJ or regularly checking newsfeeds produced by ordinary citizens or development/social

10

change organizations? Does CJ successfully addresstraditional bottlenecks for social news, particularly asthey affect citizens who rarely make news? Because thesequestions involve two large and fragmented actors, newsorganizations and citizen journalists, it is hard to producecategorical answers. We can find evidence of CJ’s positiveimpact as well as minimal effects on legacy newsrooms.

If recent conclusions about the relationship between CJ andindustrial journalism are applicable to social change news,it is doubtful that there have been major transformations.Old journalistic values have guided the “managed transition”into a new news ecology and the gradual opening of newsroomsto citizens’ participation (Hermida & Thurman 2008; Meikle &Redden 2010; Paterson & Domingo 2008; Karlsson 2011).Although attitudes have been gradually changing, journalistsinitially didn’t think bloggers and other forms of CJ havethe credentials and expertise to produce quality reporting.To navigate the Internet, they resort to standard newsvalues – conventional definitions of newsworthiness (trust,facticity, timeliness) and authority) to determine the valueand the quality of information by citizen journalists(Pantti & Bakker 2009; Lewis, Kaufhold & Lasorsa 2010;Örnebring 2013; Reich 2008; Volkmer & Firdaus 2012).

Supporters of CJ has rightly criticized traditionaljournalism for ignoring a digital world brimming withdemocracy, half-heartedly accepting its inevitable ascent,and desperately seeking to reestablish a lost order. Unsureabout the future, legacy newsrooms stick to conventionalideas to reaffirm their authority and insist on modernnotions of “asymmetric” expertise (“we know, they don’t”) to

11

survive in a postmodern environment. Some news organizationshave promoted a “culture of collaboration” with CJ, but oneshouldn’t conclude that “participatory news” has triumphed.As demonstrated by reporters’ use of Twitter forcrowdsourcing and verifying information to experiments with“open source” reporting, “professional” journalism has beenmore receptive to citizen news and participation (Paulussen,Greene & Vanderbrand 2011). These examples, however, aren’tindications of the dawn of the “age of participatoryjournalism” and the passing of professional reporting. Welack solid evidence to conclude that CJ fill the gaps oflegacy newsrooms. The relationship between CJ and development/social changealso needs to be examined by analyzing whether CJ enrichesthe news ecology. There is no question that this is true. Aquick search about news/information about any social problemwould likely produce long lists of sources. ConsiderHIV/AIDS, an issue that remains a critical global healthchallenge. Digital news include massive amount of dataproduced by technical and scientific associations,information and research produced by activists’organizations and testimonies from bloggers living with thedisease. There is an impressive amount of information aboutpolicies, drug treatments, vaccine development, and lifeexperiences that rarely make it into industrial newsrooms.Even social problems that haven’t received as much attentionas HIV/AIDS in the past decades in global and domesticcontexts, such as water access, poor sanitation and foodsecurity, are also widely covered by CJ. Citizens feedinformation about potential natural disasters, climate

12

change, agricultural conditions, and disease surveillance topersonal sites and open source networks.

These examples show that the news digital ecology is moremultileveled, open, complex, and diversified than the oldnews order. Information about social problems is abundantand easily available in a fragmented and chaotic newslandscape. It is mistaken, however, to simply conclude thatCJ’s expansion of information about social problems settlesthe question about the diversity of news quality andperspectives. How sustainable is this information given thatcoverage of development/social problems, particularly theirtechnical and political complexity, requires time andresources which, arguably, most individual CJ lack?Certainly, bloggers who inform about their experiences andconduct original reporting make important contributions, butthey are unlikely to have resources for producing regular,in-depth coverage or investigating the responsibilities andactions of governments and corporations. Sites dedicated toa range of “development/social change” news confrontchallenges to churn out quality information in a sustainablemanner (Waisbord 2010).

Therefore, the crucial question shouldn’t be whether CJoffers more opportunities for covering social problems,which undeniably it does. Although it expands newsofferings, it is questionable whether CJ effectively matchesthe power of legacy newsrooms equipped with reporters,expertise and monetary resources. Nor is it obvious that CJreaches “beyond the choir,” that is, people who are alreadyinterested in certain social problems and find a wealth ofcitizen-produced information. What needs to be investigated

13

are the connections between CJ and effective actions towardssocial change – its impact on public knowledge,participation, and policy-making.

CJ AND COLLECTIVE ACTION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

A second issue to consider is the relation between CJ andcollective action. Just as CJ breaks down traditionaldistinctions between professionals and amateurs, it alsoerases conventional boundaries between journalism andactivism, reporting and participation, witnessing andvoicing demands. Not only “anyone can be reporter” (Bromley2010), but anyone is potentially also an activist. Open-source technology makes it possible to link journalistictasks such as reporting and data analysis to variousdimensions of social activism such as organizing, petition,and voting. Citizens’ reporting on social problems can beturned into evidence for advocacy. Crowdsourcing platformsmay become springboards for digital activism. Unshackled byconventional notions of impartial, fact-based reporting, CJcan easily turn into mobilization.

To its defenders, here lies the enormous, innovativedemocratic potential of CJ - bringing out a wide spectrum ofvoices and engaging citizens in collective action (Shirky2011). CJ attests to the dramatic reduction of obstacles forpublic organizing and acting without physical co-presence orconventional organizations. To its critics, the blurring ofthe distinctions between journalism and collective action isa major pitfall of CJ. It jettisons cardinal journalisticstandards such as facts, verification and evenhandedness.For them, neither a “journalism without journalists” nor

14

“journalism as collective action” are reasons for rejoice.Ideological agendas trump core journalistic ethics, aparticularly worrisome trend at a time of the resurgence ofpartisan news.

Recent examples show that certain uses of CJ straddlereporting and collective action for social change. Citizens’digital postings sparked protest and other demands forattention and solutions to social ills (Agarwal, Lim &Wigand 2012; Antony & Thomas 2010; Harlow 2012). Otherexamples of effective CJ are the uses of open-sourceplatforms in water access (www.nextdrop.org), climate change(climatecolab.org; iseechange.org) and disease surveillance(healthmap.org). Innovations are found worldwide: from oilspills in the Gulf of Mexico and conflict management inAtlanta in the United States to electoral monitoring inKenya, from crime in the slums of Brazil to disastermanagement in Haiti. Citizen reporters produce and analyzedata about local situations, discuss courses of actions,alert residents, and make evidence-based decisions (Zook,Graham, Shelton & Gorman 2010; Heinzelman, Brown & Meier2011; Hirsch 2011; de Oliveira 2012).

While these cases illustrate the democratic uses of CJ bypromoting participation and critical citizenship skills, weshould not conclude that CJ necessarily leads to collectiveaction. The problem here is similar to what I saidpreviously regarding arguments about the impact of CJ onlegacy newsrooms: it is difficult to generalize givenmultiple examples and contexts. Just as one finds examplesof CJ enriching industrial journalism and digital news,there are also cases showing CJ’s ability to organize andmobilize citizens. Yet we can’t categorically affirm that

15

these examples are representative of the unwieldy world ofCJ. Not every citizen journalist is an activist who prefersto report about the humdrum of everyday life and personalinterests rather than public issues. Also, accidentalcitizen-reporters document social realities yet their workdoesn’t necessarily materialize into activism. We should notcherry-pick cases to prove convictions, argument, and hopes.Random evidence shouldn’t be interpreted as unquestionableproof that CJ is necessarily linked to collective action forsocial change. Instead, we need to explore under whatconditions CJ is effectively linked to collective action andsocial change.

Enthusiastic views about CJ as collective action miss acrucial sociological dimension of social change: the role oforganizations in collective action and the activation ofnetworks of participation and policy change. Just asordinary citizens posting family pictures or sharing digitaldiaries on social media aren’t examples of participatoryjournalism, not all forms of CJ are similarly linked toorganizations promoting social change. CJ needs to beanalyzed in the context of how citizens mobilize (or failto) for change.

Even if we consider it “organizing without organizations”(Shirky 2008), CJ doesn’t make traditional organizationssuperfluous. Citizens using digital networks to organize andmitigate the impact of natural disasters and coordinateassistance attest to the blending of CJ with traditionalhumanitarian organizations. CJ has been intelligently usedto mobilize citizens to report conditions, solicit input,define goals, and implement actions. Similar lessons come

16

out of recent advances in global health, such as theexpansion of AIDS and TB treatment worldwide, tremendousprogress towards polio eradication in India, the remarkablereduction of malaria incidence and notable reduction inchild and maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Whilethese actions have incorporated old and digital forms ofcommunication, none of these advances have been possiblewithout collective actions involving government,international agencies, local organizations, andmobilization by technical experts and activists (Obregon &Waisbord 2012).

CJ may complement and facilitate the work of brick-and-mortar institutions such as government agencies and civicorganizations. While CJ may lead and become part ofcollective action, sustainable social change demandsinstitutions. Indeed, the contemporary professionalizationof communication politics and social change attest to therenewed significance of institutions. Effective socialchange demands savvy, strategic organizations able to risefunding, implement data-driven actions, and navigate thecomplicated politics of social change. CJ may successfullyarticulate collective action in specific circumstances, andcontribute to social change by document and bringingawareness about social problems. Sustainable change,however, particularly around highly political issues demandsinstitutional resources and appropriate conditions. The CJof dissident movements has played important roles inpolitical change, but it is not sufficient for socialjustice. Transforming policies and structures demandsorganizations. Long-term institutions and participation are

17

needed for changing public priorities, social norms,policies, institutional performance, and/or power relations.

Nor is it clear that CJ is necessarily conducive toeffective changes in governance and policy-making. Recentexperiments in e-activism render a more complex pictureabout its contributions to deliberative democracy that fallsshort from original optimism (Davis 2010; Moss & Coleman2013; Loader & Mercea 2011). Instead of techno-romanticismand overblown predictions, caution is warranted to assesswhether and how CJ promotes citizens’ participation inpolicy-making. CJ in support of crisis communication orprotests is different from the kind of mobilization neededto foster social change. Mobilized citizens andinstitutions, not technologies, drive social change. Labelssuch as “the Facebook/Twitter” revolutions are appealing,particularly to Western media companies and audiences, asthey reinforce apolitical visions of purely technology-driven “solutionism” for human improvement (Morozov 2013).Such labels, however, are deceiving. They neglect theconstellation of factors that drive change, hide thelaborious strategic and organizational work, and gloss overthe messy political process that leads to social justice.

CITIZEN JOURNALISM AND NETWORKS OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Because social change comprises endless social problems aswell as opportunities and obstacles to address them acrossthe world, it is impossible to draw empirical conclusionsabout the lessons from recent CJ experiences. CJ should not be narrowly seen as a form of reporting thateither complements or challenges industrial journalism.

18

Truly, as set of innovative and empowering practices, CJ isa valuable source for legacy newsrooms and a welcomeaddition to digital news. CJ produces staggering amounts ofinformation about social problems that are ignored or barelycovered by the mainstream media, and it helps to reportstories with more depth. Yet CJ is more than a complement tolegacy newsrooms or an alternative supplier of informationto the ever-expanding universe of digital news. Because itstraddles reporting and collective action, it offerscommunication linkages during ordinary and extraordinarytimes. It is used to map out social conditions, identifyproblems, and discuss solutions. It contributes toorganizing protests and coalescing critical discourse. Itserves to connect citizens and organizations during naturaldisasters and other time-sensitive emergencies.It is important, however, to examine CJ beyond examples ofcitizens’ resistance and crisis management to assess itscontributions to social change. Future studies are needed toanalyze how different forms of CJ are used to mobilizeopinion, pressure authorities, and promote for legislativedebates and policy changes.

To understand the impact of CJ, the analysis needs to focuson the links between CJ and institutions and networksengaged in social change. News organizations aren’t lesssignificant for covering social problems because CJcontributes to diversifying coverage. Nor should we assumethat trending Twitter topics, clicktivism, or digitalorganizing necessarily catalyze social change by overturningpower inequalities. The analysis needs to be based onnuanced understanding of processes that contributes tosolving social ills. We need to explore further its

19

connections to conventional newsrooms as well as social andpolitical organizations. Placing CJ within the politics ofsocial change and examining how movements and networksharness CJ to advance social justice are necessary to refineconclusions and advance theory-building.

REFERENCES

Agarwal, N., Lim, M. & Wigand, R.T. (2012) “Online Collective Action and the Role of Social Media in Mobilizing Opinions: A Case Study on Women’s Right-to-Drive Campaigns in Saudi Arabia” in Web 2.0 Technologies and Democratic Governance, eds C. G. Reddick and S. K. Aikins. New York: Springer pp. 99-123

Allan, S. (2013) Citizen Witnessing: Revisioning Journalism in Times of Crisis. Cambridge: Polity.

Anderson, C. W., Bell, E. & Shirky, C. (2012) “Post-industrial journalism: Adapting to the present.” Tow Centrefor Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School, Centennial Report.

Antony, M.G., Thomas, R.J. (2010) “This is citizen journalism at its finest: YouTube and the public sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident.” New Media & Society, vol. 12, no. 8, pp. 1280-1296

Bromley, M. (2010) “Anyone can be a reporter: Citizen journalism, social change and OhmyNews” in An introduction to communication and social change, eds P. Thomas & M. Bromley. St Lucia, Qld, Australia: UQP, pp. 187-201

Davis, A. (2010) “New media and fat democracy: the paradox of online participation.” New Media & Society, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 745-761.

Earl, J., & Kimport, K. (2011) Digitally enabled social change: Activism in the internet age. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

20

de Oliveira, R. G. (2012) “Citizen journalism and its democratic potential-Brazilian case studies: Viva Favela and Índios Online.” Selected Papers of Internet Research, (12.0).

Harlow, S. (2012) “Social media and social movements: Facebook and an online Guatemalan justice movement that moved offline.” New Media & Society, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 225-243.

Heinzelman, J., Brown, R., & Meier, P. (2011) “Mobile technology, crowdsourcing and peace mapping: New theory and applications for conflict management” in Mobile Technologies for Conflict Management, Law, Governance and Technology Series 2, ed. M. Poblet. Springer Netherlands,pp. 39-53.

Hermida, A. & Thurman, N. (2008) “A Clash of Cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professionaljournalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites.” Journalism Practice, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 343-356.

Hirsh, T. (2011) “More Than Friends: Social and Mobile Mediafor Activist Organizations” in From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing, and mobile technology to support citizen engagement, eds M. Foth, L. Forlano,C. Satchell & M. Gibbs. MIT Press

Lewis, S. C., Kaufhold, K. & Lasorsa, D. L. (2010) “ThinkingAbout Citizen Journalism: The philosophical and practicalchallenges of user-generated content for community newspapers.” Journalism Practice, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 163-179.

Loader, B. D., & Mercea, D. (2011) “Networking democracy? Social media innovations and participatory politics.” Information Communication & Society, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 757-769.

Meikle, G., & Redden, G. (eds.) (2010) News online: transformations and continuities. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Morozov, E. (2013) To Save Everything, Click Here. New York: Public Affairs.

Moss, G., & Coleman, S. (2013) “Deliberative manoeuvres in the digital darkness: e‐Democracy Policy in the UK.” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, pp. 1-18.

21

Obregon, R. & Waisbord, S. (eds) (2012) “Capacity building (and strengthening) in health communication” in The Handbook of Global Health Communication, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford:UK.

Örnebring, H. (2013) “Anything you can do, I can do better? Professional journalists on citizen journalism in six European countries International.” Communication Gazette, vol. 75, no. 1, pp. 35-53.

Thakurta, P. G., & Chaturvedi, S. (2012) “Food and nutritionjustice: How to make it more newsworthy?” IDS Bulletin, vol.43, no. s1, pp. 58-64.

Paterson, C. & Domingo, D. (eds) (2008) Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production. New York: Peter Lang.

Reich, Z. (2008) “How citizens create news stories: The ‘news access’ problem reversed.” Journalism Studies, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 739-758.

Rodriguez, C., Kidd, D. & Stein, L. (eds) (2009) Making Our Media: Global Initiatives Toward a Democratic Public Sphere. Cresskill,NJ: Hampton Press.

Servaes, J. (ed) (2008) Communication for development and social change. London: Sage Publications.

Shirky, C. (2011) “The Political Power of Social Media | Foreign Affairs.” Home | Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations vol. 90, no. 1, pp. 28-41.

Shirky, C. (2008) Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. Penguin.

Volkmer, I., & Firdaus, A. (2012) Between networks and ‘hierarchies of credibility’.” Rethinking Journalism: Trust and Participation in a Transformed News Landscape, pp. 101-113.

Waisbord, S. (2008) Advocacy journalism in a global context:The 'journalist' and the 'civic' model. In Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch eds., Handbook of Journalism Studies, 371-385.

Waisbord, S. (2010) “Can NGOs change the news?” International Journal of Communication, vol. 5, pp. 142-165.

Waisbord, S. (2013) Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and News in global perspective. Cambridge: Polity.

22

Zook, M., Graham, M., Shelton, T., & Gorman, S. (2010) “Volunteered geographic information and crowdsourcing disaster relief: a case study of the Haitian earthquake.”World Medical & Health Policy, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 7-33.

23