Citizen journalism, like the term ‘wiki”, is a phrase that has been reborn online. But unlike ‘wiki”, which we know translates to ‘fast’in Hawaiian and now refers to websites that anyone can edit, the definition of ‘citizen journalism’remains vague and contested.

One explanation for the controversy surrounding ‘citizen journalism’is the various synonyms it has. ‘Participatory journalism”, ‘stand-alone journalism”, ‘networked journalism”, ‘open source journalism”, ‘crowdsourced journalism’– without reflection, they all mean the same thing and are used interchangably to describe when citizens help collect, report, distil and broadcast news.

But to me, all these terms refer to different acts. They are related to ‘citizen journalism”, but each is a unique species that has evolved out of the larger family of social media.