ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004, the term “citizen journalism” quickly gained currency with news organizations finding themselves in the difficult position of being largely dependent on “amateur content” to tell the story of what had transpired on the ground in the most severely affected areas. The term was widely perceived to capture the countervailing ethos of the ordinary person’s capacity to bear witness, providing commentators with a useful label to characterize an ostensibly new genre of reportage. “Mainstream news organizations should consider the tsunami story as the seminal marker for introducing citizen journalism into the hallowed space that is professional journalism,” Steve Outing (2005) of Poynter.org maintained at the time, an observation that has proven remarkably prescient.
