 Dear students, now we are going to talk about citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is a form of journalism in which citizen play an active role. And citizen journalism is a kind of journalism in which citizens who play a significant role in the process of news collecting, reporting, editing and distributing it to the other public. By becoming the public of the internet and becoming the cost of smart telephones, a new change is that people have started to report the news on social media profiles. And they make videos of any incident from their mobile phones, which they edit and share on social media. And this behavior is called citizen journalism. And we may know it with other names as well such as network journalism, participatory journalism, street journalism and etc. Citizen journalism is different from professional journalism and traditional reporting. When we talk about citizen journalism, we get to know that it is completely different from professional journalism and it is completely different from traditional reporting as well. Because the citizen journalists don't have proper training, they don't study journalism, they don't have such experience. They only have access to events, incidents and happenings. And as it is recorded, they share the events, incidents and happenings with others. They don't frame the news or they don't report it professionally. And citizen journalists do not require professional degrees. So this is also a reality that you may find a citizen journalist who is not well educated or has not received any good education, journalism or any other subject. But you will find that citizen journalist in your community. Why? Because they share their information and events on social media. Citizen journalists are not the member of mainstream media. So most of the time, when we talk about the citizen journalists, they are not the part of the mainstream media. And they are community members, community stakeholders, local people who are reporting the issues of that community and they have no connection with mainstream media. Citizen journalists write the news from their own perspective. So when they share the news or generate the news, they are viewing the event or incident with their own lens. They are not seeing it professionally based on an ideology. They are reporting it according to their own understanding. What are the advantages of citizen journalism? Citizen journalism provides our first hand information during our critical instance. The advantage of citizen journalists is that they share their first hand information on the spot because of which a lot of things are recorded. And they are later very helpful to understand the incident or tragedy. And citizen journalism offers an opportunity for talented people who are not professionals. When we talk about citizen journalism, it opens the window of opportunity for the talented people. Today we see that you get a lot of citizen journalists in Pakistan who have made a name for themselves based on their talent in the online world. And they are considered to be credible journalists. It offers a good amount of space for marginalized groups. So such communities and marginalized groups whose news never comes to mainstream media, the local citizen journalists share their news with the whole country and with the mainstream media as well. So mainstream media is based on an agenda. It has its own motivation which is a commercial intent. So citizen journalism has nothing like that. People can easily share their problems with their community. And citizen journalists cover the problems that mainstream media don't. You have often seen that there are a lot of marginalized areas where the problems are not even a part of mainstream media reporting. Now this gap has been filled in citizen journalism. So you will get to see a lot of content on social media which is based on marginalized areas where the media never talks. But because social media is being talked about, a public sentiment is also generated on it. What are the disadvantages of citizen journalism? Citizen journalism has issues of ethics in reporting. Ethic issues are involved when citizen journalists report that they don't know for whom content is being made and how sensitive it is and how much they want to show or how they want to talk about it. So ethics issues can be reported. It confuses the audience on what to believe as there are a lot of opinions. It can be a topic, an event, an incident. You will get a lot of videos and they confuse you that which content is the right one. Sometimes the news reported are untrustworthy. Sometimes it happens that people use it as an act of personal gain and to blackmail others, they share the whole context because of which some harm can be done. Conflicts of interest and differences in opinion exist in citizen journalism. Whenever we talk about citizen journalism, there are conflicts of interest, difference of opinion and because of that, the reliability of this content is reduced.