If Everyone with a Camera Can Do This, Then What? Professional Photojournalists' Sense of Professional Threat in the Face of Citizen Photojournalism

Abstract

Today, citizen photojournalists armed with mobile phones can perform many of the tasks of a photojournalist, calling into question whether photojournalists perform a unique and essential service–characteristics of professionals. Photojournalists defend their professionalism through their professional values and skills, but even as they attempt to defend their occupational turf, the resource-poor news organizations for which they work are soliciting and publishing these citizen-shot news images. This study uses a field experiment that manipulates a photo credit line and open-ended responses to assess whether this sense of threatened professionalism exists. Further, this study examines whether citizen photojournalists' assessment of news image quality is impacted by the presence of a professional credit line. This study adds to the current understanding of photojournalism values, citizen-photojournalism values and professional threat

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