ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book attempts to conceptualize, theorize, and test citizen journalism practice as civic participation. It offers theoretical, methodological, policy, and practical implications for citizen journalism scholarship. The book explains the theory of communicative action offers a useful theoretical and analytical framework to further understand citizen journalism, which lies at the intersection between the lifeworld and the system. It provides a comprehensive systematic review of citizen journalism scholarship since the mid-1990s. The book presents three theoretical perspectives to model communication and citizen journalism as civic participation: the communication mediation model, the social capital perspective, and communication infrastructure theory. It examines how news audiences perceive citizen and professional journalism as credible. The book aims to assess predictors of mainstream, or professional, news media credibility and citizen, or alternative, news media credibility.
