The political economy of citizen ‎journalism at war conditions: an ethnographic research on the exploitation by media institutions of citizen journalists in Syria

What motivated amateur civilians to become citizen journalists during the Syrian War, and how did the media institutions rob them of their rights? In this research we examined the political economy context of the practice of citizen journalism as a profession, which has been changed by the conditions of war together with the possibilities of new media technologies, with the ethnographic method. In the research, phenomenological design, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used. Within the scope of the research, Citizen Journalists and representatives of media institutions were interviewed. Data were collected through interviews with twenty-seven participants within the scope of the research. Participants were included in the research ‎voluntarily. ‎An interview form with 9 questions developed by the researcher was used as a data collection tool in the research. Qualitative data analysis methods were used in the analysis of the research data. In this context, data were analysed by content analysis. In addition, it was stated in the research that the most important reasons for the emergence of citizen journalists in Syria were that the regime did not report the events and that the international press was prevented from entering such events, and that the civilians were reporting the events to the world. In this context, citizen journalists define themselves as activists who document violations and learn journalism over time and through the events they experience. Then these people cooperated with international media institutions, but these media institutions did not give them all their due rights.