The citizen journalist in the media sphere : A case study on democracy on social media

Digital interactivity has changed the dissemination and availability of information. Traditionally, editors have acted as gatekeepers to ensure quality information flow within the mass media. With social media, the citizen can publish and disseminate information, which has created the term citizen journalism. The goal of The Media Inquiry (Swedish government official reports) is to support freedom of expression and diversity of subject areas, which is a problem when publishers reduce pluralism in opinion. Previous research shows that scientific attention to alternative media has increased in recent years but there are few studies on content in alternative media. The purpose of the study is therefore to find out what the information environment around alternative media in Sweden looks like today: how citizen journalists discuss news topics, what areas of interest are visible, to what extent affordances are used and how tendencies towards eco-chambers is manifesting. To answer the questions, a case study has been used focusing on three Twitter accounts. A streaming API was used to capture tweets for a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of posts made on and in connection to three accounts by citizen journalists. The results showed that a significant portion of information activities are concentrated on mediating and communicating news and opinions. Areas of interest were news, social information, and criticism of power. Mentions and retweets were the most used functions and opinion-reinforcing information was a confirmation of eco-chambers.