Abstract
This article offers critical insights into new digital forms of citizen-led journalism. Many communities across western society are frequently excluded from participating in newsgathering and information dissemination that is directly relevant to them due to financial, educational and geographic constraints. News production is a risky business that requires professional levels of skill and considerable finances to sustain. Hence, ‘hyper-localised news’ are often absent from local and national debates. Local news reportage is habitually relegated to social media, which represents a privileged space where the diffusion of disinformation presents a threat to democratic processes. Deploying a place-based, person-centred approach towards investigating news production within communities in Cornwall, UK, this article reflects on a participatory action research project called the Citizen Journalism News Network (CJNN). The CJNN is an overt attempt to design disruptive systems for agenda setting through mass participation and engagement with social issues. The project was delivered within four communities via a twelve-week-long journalism course, and a bespoke online app. CJNN is a platform for citizen journalists to work collaboratively on investigating stories and raising awareness of social issues that directly affect the communities reporting on them.
Highlights
The long hailed digital dawn of the Internet where all voices are well-received within an egalitarian framework, and all available channels of representation for participation are clearly signposted, appears to have been delayed and overshadowed by the desire to secure profits through proprietorial systems that enforce subscription models of access
Governments attempting to address the effects of financial precarity and meet the growing demands of diverse societies have encouraged organisations and agencies to develop and deliver digital social innovations to ameliorate a range of social issues
We argue that citizen journalism provides an opportunity for publics to engage with local democracy and the politics of the public sphere (Harte, Williams, & Turner, 2017)
Summary
The long hailed digital dawn of the Internet where all voices are well-received within an egalitarian framework, and all available channels of representation for participation are clearly signposted, appears to have been delayed and overshadowed by the desire to secure profits through proprietorial systems that enforce subscription models of access. Contemporary debates about collective responses to a range of social issues reflect the ways in which human societies both create and adapt to new challenges, experimenting with policy and practical innovations in order to solve collective concerns (Moulaert, Mehmood, MacCallum, & Leubolt, 2017). We argue that citizen journalism provides an opportunity for publics to engage with local democracy and the politics of the public sphere (Harte, Williams, & Turner, 2017). This is achieved through the deployment of a co-designed digital social innovation (DSI) platform: Citizen Journalism Network (CJN). We discuss how DSIs can contribute to social change before going on to explore their role in citizen journalism
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