Condemned to be connected : Moroccan journalists' attitudes towards citizen journalists

Sammanfattning: This bachelor's thesis is based on a Minor Field Study (MFS) conducted in Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco, April and May 2015. The aim is to study Moroccan journalists' attitudes towards citizen journalism and its impact on the role of the journalist: 1) With what claims do they define citizen journalists and journalists respectively? and 2) In what ways do these claims relate to the impact citizen journalists can be expected to have on the role of the journalist and freedom of expression in Morocco? In the discussion, theories on discourse, professionalism, journalistic ideals, and development journalism are applied. Semi-structured interviews in French were conducted with five journalists working within five different print and online publications. The material was analyzed according to a model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The interviewed journalists give accounts of how they are "condemned to be connected" to the vox populi that citizen journalists constitute. There is a prevalence of professionalism discourse where verification and objectivity are described as what characterizes a journalist. But respondents also emphasize "teamwork", and that "all journalists are citizen journalists", and these themes are interpreted as characteristic of development journalism. Within professional discourse in a development journalism context, the reliability of citizen journalists is downplayed. At the same time, citizen journalists are described as freer than professional journalists. In conclusion, it is considered likely that development journalist discourse sets an obstacle to the liberalizing impact of citizen journalism.