Aside from the actual news, everything I hear about news wise; I tend to find on social media. From local news to international news, all you have to do is looks at the trending page on Twitter, and it will tell you everything that is going on globally, with no barriers or sugar coating. There are pros and cons to both forms of journalism, and each have revolutionised our way of thinking.

Mainstream news is informative and give you information quickly and is extremely detailed, we seem to trust this form of journalism more. Yet, news companies tend to only tell us half of the stories happening globally, they only tell you information that they want you to hear and tend to sugar coat. For example, disaster is happening in Syria, a country in War, or the concentration camps in China for Muslims that killing millions of innocent people, yet mainstream media has not brought any of this information to light. Instead, it seems that they are covering up these stories and are in fact ran by governments. Whereas, online journalism is nearly just as quick and gives you real and tough journalism. Citizen journalism gives you information that is definitely not sugar coated and tells you every gritty bit including photos. They give you tough reality checks and make you open your eyes to severe circumstances. Twitter, Instagram and TikTok were all platforms that lighted the flame after the horrific death of George Floyd in America, every day citizens rallied around each other spreading news of disastrous events mainstream news had not made people aware of. Along with this impactful change in journalism, it still holds its faults. With everyone being able to spread news through a simple tweet, Instagram or Facebook post, people are able to twist stories into a new version, simply lie or too strongly voice their opinion. It impossible to tell whether some stories told online through media are true or just a rumour and with there being bias, it can shift the way people view a story all together.

Many people argue that the two forms of journalism are equal, as mainstream news gives us factual information in a timely manner and media gives us 100% of stories happening globally with real facts. It is here we hold the question: what news is actually real and what manipulated, changed or false?

An example of citizen journalism is the recent tragedy in Beirut which later lead to a security lockdown in Lebanon, when the government started to refuse using their resources to further investigate and dig for survivors. The world was unaware of how what the Government was doing hence citizens took to social media such as Twitter and Facebook to take a stand. The citizen journalism extended to helping them rally around each other and start protesting to protect their rights. The New Arab article stated “Activists would share cellphone footage of these incidents, accusing broadcasters of deliberately not showing up to the scenes or the government and ruling parties from preventing journalists from entering”.

BBC News. 2020. Mainstream Media ‘Still Dominate Online News’. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27772070&gt; [Accessed 18 August 2020].

Chehayeb, K., 2020. ‘We Will Not Be Silenced’: Journalists Are Also Victims Of Lebanon’s Security Clampdown. [online] alaraby. Available at: <https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2020/1/20/journalists-are-also-victims-of-lebanon;s-security-crackdown&gt; [Accessed 18 August 2020].