Citizen Journalism in Sri Lanka: Content Creators on Facebook

Abstract

Social media has become more popular among online users nowadays. Facebook is the most popular social media platform among users in the world as well as in Sri Lanka. Moreover, Facebook users have become influential content creators. Therefore, there are challenges and opportunities in citizen journalism at the local and international levels. The main purpose of the study is to examine the citizen journalism practices in Sri Lanka. The specific objective is to identify the opportunities and challenges of citizen journalism. Uses and Gratifications theory was used to examine the citizen journalism practices in Sri Lanka. A qualitative approach was adopted to collect data using interview method and observation method. The qualitative data were thematically analyzed. The results showed that content creators play a vital role in creating, editing, sharing, commenting, distributing etc. on Facebook. Moreover, the content creators in Sri Lanka use Facebook for their socio- economic, cultural, political and educational needs in day-to-day life. In addition to that, there are opportunities and challenges of citizen journalism. Therefore, media and information literacy should be increased among the citizens in the country to avoid disinformation, misinformation, mal information, hate speech, cyber harassment, bullying etc. Moreover, the citizens should be educated to use social media efficiently and effectively. It is also important to introduce a code of ethics for journalism including citizen journalism by practicing self-regulation or co-regulation within a democratic framework.