Citizen Journalism, Social Media and Malaysian Socio-Political Climate

Palestinian Youth Engagement with Online Political Contents Shared by Citizen Journalists—The Case of Save Sheikh Jarrah

“…2, 2022 Cyberspace spawned new styles of representation and interaction that included many social and political aspects (Gibson 1996). It is represented by the internet and new information communication technologies, it allows for a new style of social and political interaction and activism, which affects the nature of human experience as it allows for a more efficient, fast, and cost-effective communication tool accessible to the general population (Chinnasamy, Ramli, and Hashim 2017). As a result of the existence of cyberspace and the continuous development of information communication technologies and social media platforms, and in order to keep pace with the times and communicate and live in the required modern and technological way, ordinary citizens in the Middle East were able to experience new cultures, forming new levels of consciousness, and becoming highly engaged in various political and social issues in cyberspace, forming a whole new experience that overcame the traditional political system and authorities (Bayat 2017).…”

“…For example, traditional journalism has a variety of news sources based on official sources where citizen journalism identities are being communicated more freely (Miller 2019). Furthermore, Chinnasamy, Ramli, and Hashim (2017) examined the relationship between the phenomenon of citizen journalism and news reliability, claiming that as a result of the increase in audiences' trust in the news provided by citizen journalists, their ability to freely share their experiences online, and their ability to highlight sensitive issues and imposed them to the news agenda, all of this has impacted the trust and credibility of traditional-official journalists and news sources. Simultaneously, it has helped to strengthen the concept of "citizen journalism," which emphasizes the process of gathering, reporting, evaluating, and disseminating news and information in several existing definitions of "citizen journalism" (Muhamed, Omar, and Krauss 2021).…”