citizen journalism

In the shifting dynamic of news gathering and dissemination, mainstream news organizations can no longer count on being first to report on major disasters. Increasingly, social networks such as Twitter offer a first response of information, not from professional journalists but from witnesses, even victims, themselves.As the unfolding disaster in Mumbai illustrated, social media and the citizens who use these tools bring unprecedented immediacy to the story, and that immediacy may foster understanding of tragedy in far away places that we have never had before.