Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives

The idea that citizen journalism can help victims of crisis is also the focus of Vis’s (Chapter 4) assessment of the performance of Wikinews in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the US coast in 2005. She illustrates how collaborative citizen journalism acted as a clearinghouse for disaster relief information, including messages from individuals willing to help the homeless. Moreover, Vis demonstrates how the Wikinews community, in striving to report on the crisis and its aftermath, dealt with issues such as the perceived “bias” of certain eyewitness reports submitted by ordinary citizens. The site’s Neutral Point of View policy, she argues, was sorely tested, especially in relation to the first-person reporting of lawlessness during the relief effort.

Author: Farida Vis