ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ideas and asks, to what extent have audiences actually started to blur the borderline with journalism? Journalists have often seen a rather different picture in which "prosumers", enjoying the chance of creative activity, or the opportunity to "have a say", gradually erode the opportunities for those who derive income from working as journalists or other media workers. Most of the tasks that Adrienne Russell, T. Glaser and J. Rosen describe as the defining attributes of citizen journalism are in fact activities that are regularly performed by journalists and can be performed by almost anyone else. Throughout the history of news production, there have been journalists dedicated to producing an account of events that is at odds with the established power hierarchy. The ideas of "open journalism" have kept going in liveblogs, which incorporate the audience voice, via material from social media. Activist media has both gained and lost from the Internet and social media.
