Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Citizen Journalism in Egyptian News Websites and Its Challenges An Applied Study

This research aims to identify the factors influencing the effectiveness of citizen journalism on several Egyptian news websites, the challenges it faces, and mechanisms for its development. The study particularly focuses on the role of citizen journalism in shaping a virtual public sphere around issues of common concern. The research draws upon the theoretical frameworks of Public Sphere Theory and Participatory Democracy Theory. It adopts a descriptive-analytical approach and analyzes content from the citizen journalism sections of the Al-Gomhuria Online portal, and the digital platform of Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The sample comprised 112 topics.In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with seven individuals who supervise the citizen journalism sections on the aforementioned websites.
The results highlighted a current decline in audience engagement with this journalistic format, largely due to editorial policies—chief among them the limited freedom of expression, which varies according to the ownership type of the studied websites. Other contributing challenges included issues related to journalistic have hindered citizen journalism's ability to foster a democratic public sphere for discussing shared concerns.
From the perspectives of the interviewed individuals, several development mechanisms were proposed. These include increasing the freedom granted for discussing public issues, updating the infrastructure to provide an advanced digital environment, introducing legislation to regulate the relationship between media institutions and citizen journalists, and implementing executive measures by media management to develop this journalistic model.