The next ICA speaker is Aljawhara Almutarie, whose focus is on citizen journalism via Twitter in Saudi Arabia. Twitter has become an important space for such citizen journalism in the country, in part in response to the economic crisis in the country that followed the 2014 collapse in oil prices.
Aljawhara interviewed both professional and citizen journalists for this study, and on the citizen journalism side these are largely focussing on hyper local matters. For them, Twitter serves as a kind of unofficial ‘Saudi Parliament’, where citizens are able to discuss current issues and make their voices heard. This has …