The Impact of Citizen Journalism on Gate Keeping Process: a Case Study of Kenya Broadcasting Corporation Television

Abstract

This study focused on the impact of citizen journalism on gate keeping process using the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation Television as a case study. The Information Super Highway has created a new order of information overload where the citizen as a nonprofession

is making contributions to media content. Traditionally, a journalist is the professionally trained person with the skills to decipher the information the audience should receive. However this trend is changing in the wake of online journalism. This research project may lay a foundation on the extent communication revolution has weathered any measures or controls on gate keeping process. The research was therefore founded on the gate keeping theory as a mass communication theory that describes the process by which news and information is gathered and filtered to audiences. This study was also informed by the normative theory concerned with examining how media ought to operate given the watchdog role in society. The research employed a descriptive survey, purposive and stratified sampling techniques to collect data on the elements of citizen journalism practices and how these are appropriated in news and i nformation programmes. Data was analyzed with the help of Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 17 technique for descriptive statistics. From the findings most of the respondents were aware of citizen journalism. Short Messages Services (SMS) were the main aspects of citizen journalism contained in Good Morning, followed by opinion polls while twitter was the least element observed. The main challenges facing citizen journalism were reported to include inaccurate and difficult to verify reports, poor quality pictures and most reports lacked objectivity. Most of the respondents supported introduction of guidelines that adhere to the editorial policy in citizen journalism.