Society, community journalism, and democratic news.

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to give support for an important research program that investigates the effects that citizen journalism and social news have on democratic institutions. This essay makes the case for a more expansive meaning of the term "citizen journalism," one that not only encompasses "metajournalism" and conventional journalistic procedures but also keeps away from constraining this idea to news sources that are dubbed "alternative." It has been argued that the democratic repercussions ought to extend beyond the horizontal public realm of citizen journalism networks and incorporate the capability of citizen engagement to cultivate a culture of news consumption that is more reflective. This is a response to the fact that a significant amount of attention has been focused on the public domain of citizen journalism networks that are horizontal in nature. Through the utilization of three separate websites as case studies, this study emphasizes the need of distinguishing between official and informal status, as well as the underlying software code that drives the production of contemporary news. In addition to this, it provides a research technique with the objective of investigating existing power structures within citizen journalism and social news networks that are involved in gatekeeping and agenda-setting

KEYWORDS: Setting the goal, Newsgathering, Democracy, Gatekeepers, Social news, Web 2.0