Abstract
It has been argued that the internet has increasingly led to blurring of lines between the production and consumption of news. This has forced most journalists to provide more participatory and audience-centric news to keep the news business afloat. This means that reporters are increasingly seeing themselves as convergent journalists involved in both ‘pushing’ the story out to the audiences in whatever form they prefer and the ‘pulling in’ of information from members of the public who want to share their experiences with others. Ultimately, the whole relationship between the producers (journalists) and consumers(readers or audiences) has shifted from what Rosen called vertical (top-down—one to many), to horizontal (bottom-up—citizen to citizen, with the journalist more or less playing the role of the facilitator of the conversation of the networked community. This new process changes the role of the audiences from passive consumers of news to active producers and consumers while enjoying their democratic freedom of expression and participation. However, as this chapter seeks to demonstrate using frame analysis of the online coverage of the controversial sacking in September 2015 of the Sierra Leone Vice President, which provoked demonstrations in London and Washington, the news agenda of cyber-activists on social media is still largely set by mainstream journalists. This raises the question of the potential of citizen journalism and digital activists in their attempts to address the democratic deficit of mainstream journalism.
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Shaw, I.S., Luo, D. (2016). Citizen Journalism, Cyber-Activism, and ‘Crowdsourcing’: Discussing the Sacking of Sierra Leone’s Vice President Sam Sumana on Facebook and Twitter. In: Mutsvairo, B. (eds) Digital Activism in the Social Media Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40949-8_5
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