Scholarly articles

Rosenberry, Jack. “Participatory journalism opportunities on major newspapers’ online sites.” AEJMC Annual Convention, Aug. 2006, San Francisco. 26 Aug. 2008. AEJMC Archives.

Jack Rosenberry presented this paper for the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the AEJMC Annual Convention 2006. The paper describes the different kinds of online journalism and their uses in various situations such as Hurricane Katrina and the London bombings. The focus of his paper is more on how major newspapers’ online sites can incorporate citizen journalism without relinquishing all power to the masses. He references the gatekeeper model and says that it can be upheld, but allowing a more participatory form of journalism through the use of the Internet.


Friedland, Lewis A., Hernando Rojas, Christopher Long, Eulàlia Puig Abril, Victoria Hildebrandt, Nak Ho Kim, Eunsun Lee, Seung-Hyun Lee and Yong Jun Shin. “Surveying Citizen Journalism: Describing emerging phenomena that posit a renovation of the public sphere.” AEJMC Annual Convention, Aug. 2006, San Francisco. 26 Aug. 2008. AEJMC Archives.

Lewis Friedland, et al., submitted this paper for the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the AEJMC Annual Convention 2006. The paper defines the concept of citizen journalism based on a logical criteria within the parameters of the standard definitions of publishing, journalism, and the media. The paper uses data from case studies, surveys of citizen journalists and the analysis of the aforementioned to assign the definition. From that data also gauged the general attitude of citizen journalists to governments, corporations, and other institutions. The findings are interesting because citizen journalists often have different goals and motivations for their writing.


Bentley, Clyde H. “Sense of Community as a Driver for Citizen Journalism.” AEJMC Annual Convention, Aug. 2006, San Francisco. 26 Aug. 2008. AEJMC Archives.

Clyde H. Bentley submitted this paper for the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the AEJMC Annual Convention 2006. The paper delves into the reasons why people became citizen journalists in an age where everything is user-driven. Bentley surveyed the people who volunteered as citizen journalists for mymissourian.com. The main draws were politics and interest in the local community. An interesting point he made was his definition of community journalism, which is “a journalist-moderated community blog.”