PRACTICES OF AND CHALLENGES FOR CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA OF BANGLADESH

In the past few years, it is observed that social media was the first to respond to some issues that become the talk of the town. Broad and easy access to mobile devices and social media has created immense opportunities for the public to share and publish their works on open forums. The audience as the prosumer (producers and active consumers) generates ‘user-generated content’ that undoubtedly influences the mainstream media’s content production procedure and manner through distributing them to many news or social platforms. This process leads to citizen journalism as a parallel mode of journalism where collection, collaboration and dissemination of the information go through a single channel. This study is based on both primary and secondary data sources to understand the impacts, challenges, and opportunities of citizen journalism needed beside the journalism. The qualitative data are collected from seven in-depth interviews with senior journalists, editors, academics and news managers. And two semi-structured interviews were conducted with citizen journalism project coordinators. Their analysis regarding this citizen journalism practices in mainstream media creates access to information by opening a new door to more significant resources. However, the concern remains whether incorporating citizen journalism into mainstream journalism poses any threat or not. It is observed that the absence of practicing journalistic rules and regulations in social media makes their credibility questionable and generates confusion. Online news sites use mobile technologies to create and disseminate their media products, gradually attracting the audience and readers. As a result, people are often used to accessing news from online sites rather than print media. With this current demand, mainstream news media is focusing on more interactivity on their online platforms and encouraging their audiences to join in the news production process.