In this emerging digital age, the proliferation of media technologies amid the online sphere has placed an immense amount of commercial pressure upon the profession of journalism. The technological revolution and the creation of the World Wide Web have collectively played an extremely pivotal role in influencing the way in which society produces, distributes and consumes content. This propagation of ‘new’ media technologies offers new platforms and spaces for consumers to communicate and therefore poses as a significant challenge to ‘old’ industries such as print media. Subsequently, the explosion of the Internet and its ever-growing body of consumers has lead to an unprecedented surge in citizen journalism, thus threatening the overall quality …show more content…
One major factor that explains the recent spike in popularisation of online news media in comparison to old print media is cost. People no longer see the need to purchase newspapers daily (or magazines weekly or monthly) when they can access the same content online free of charge. As the ideal role of journalism is to uncover the truth (Schaefer, 2015), there isn’t really a substantial difference between the work and purpose of professional journalists and citizen journalists/bloggers. New media provide platforms for citizen journalists to create and distribute their own news content and thus reduces the need of a journalist’s role in giving a voice to the voiceless. Citizen journalism is ‘progressively ingratiates[ing] itself into today’s differentiated news ecology’ (Allan and Thorsen, 2009 p. 12). This changing news media landscape has forced many journalists to adapt their craft and uptake new roles in order to compete with the large force of citizen journalists that pervade the web. Similarly, many news media organisations have surrendered into joining the online phenomenon to offer interactive malleability to consumers and thus avoid losing their target audiences to other online markets (Bivens,