Revisiting citizen journalism scholarship in the Web Era (1994-2023): Past,present,and prospect

Abstract

The study revisits citizen journalism scholarship spanning 30 years of journal articles published in the fields of journalism, communication, media, technology studies, and beyond. Previous studies in this domain have endeavored to evaluate the landscape of citizen journalism research since the inception of the Internet and its associated web technologies in 1994. Nonetheless, it remains fully unexplored concerning the topology and knowledge network structure of citizen journalism scholarship. The study assesses the landscape of citizen journalism scholarship over the past 30 years by employing a variety of mixed methods, including topic modeling, bibliometric analysis, and manual content analysis. This study provides an exploratory examination of the realm of citizen journalism within the context of journalism and democracy and further discusses the past, present, and prospects for future directions of this field. The study aims to advance citizen journalism scholarship in terms of theory, research, practice, and policy implications with a focus on English language articles. While the study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on citizen journalism scholarship, it serves as a catalyst for continuous intellectual inquiry in an international and interdisciplinary environment.