The best example of citizen journalism that I can think of – it is probably the same for many Turkish people- is the emergence of civic media during Gezi Park Protests in Istanbul, Turkey. Citizen journalism was the primary source of information due to the censorship on the mainstream media by the government. What happened during the protests proved that civic journalism becomes more visible where the censorship takes place. My writing builds on an existing post and talk by Zeynep Tufekci in the MIT Center of Civic Media Blog, therefore I will try not to repeat what is already published there.

During the protests, I was in Boston and desperately looking for ways to learn about what is actually going on in Istanbul.This was the first time, I realized the power of social media and importance of sharing information online. My working definition of ‘citizen journalism’ is collective building of information on a particular topic. The case of Gezi Park raises questions on the relationship between citizen journalism and mainstream media. Do they co-exist? Does the absence of mainstream media create the citizen journalism ? (I believe that the absence of mainstream media has the same effect of biased media.). Does citizen journalism make media less biased? In the case of Turkish media, biased media empowered the citizen journalism and citizen participation does not change the practice of journalism.

What was the tool that Gezi Park protesters used for citizen journalism? We often talk about specific tools, online platforms and mobile applications to explain the type of civic participation. However, Gezi Park created a “toolkit” by using numerous different mediums of media collaboratively and creatively. The toolkit comprised interviews on Youtube that were recorded by civil reporters, web mappings showing location based data of activities, social media entries and street graffitis.

The case of Gezi Park also draws attention to the correlation between citizen journalism and civic participation. Does citizen journalism and civic participation mean the same and does any of them enable the existence of other one? I don’t believe that there is a yes or no to these questions. When you share an information that has a news value, it doesn’t mean that you are also practicing in civic participation. However, during Gezi Park Protests collective knowledge produced by citizen journalists built a new public realm and affected the decision-making process of politics.

I have briefly mentioned two main relationships: citizen journalism and mainstream media, and citizen journalism and civic participation, and tried built some ideas through Gezi Park case. Additionally, numerous micro relationships exist in the concept of citizen journalism. The contribution of digital media to the civic media opens up a new space for discussion. Many examples of citizen journalism are enabled by online platforms and we often do not mention offline civic media. During the protest, street graffitis were much more powerful than tweets although the only way to distribute the graffitis was taking the picture of them and sharing them online. We can also unfold the employment of technologies by simply asking what type of technology is used, which brings us to questions such as how does the mobile experience change citizen journalism?