Author(s)

Célestin Messanga Obama

Department of Advertisement, Advance School of Mass Communication, University of Yaoundé 2, Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Citizen journalism (in French Journalisme citoyen) is a form of journalism exercised by the public (the readers, the audiences and tele-viewers), specifically on the internet. Theoretically, it could be seen as a kind of revolution within the public getting into a trade long held jealously mainly by conventional journalists. What accounts for the fact that a trade, whose mastery requires training on its techniques and specific norms, gets invaded by untutored minds? That appears to be the central issue we are seeking to resolve in this article. We go from the hypothesis that citizen journalism has developed as a result of the publics’ lack of satisfaction, both at quantitative and qualitative levels with the delivery of conventional journalism. In effect, conventional journalism raises myriad issues that require the consumers to proceed to a kind of selection, which itself could be a problem. However, by their nature, issues that constitute news are complex, and this leads to some manipulation in their treatment. These two axes appear to reveal the main sources of discord between conventional journalism and revolted-publics.

Citizen Journalism, Conventional Journalism, Revolution, Dissatisfaction, Problematization, Normativity

Obama, C. (2016) Normativity and the Problem of Look in the Emergence of Citizen Journalism. Advances in Journalism and Communication, 4, 1-7. doi: 10.4236/ajc.2016.41001.