An Ethical Evaluation of Citizen Journalism on Instagram in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

Citizen journalism: the act of participation and involvement of the citizens in the journalism field has become predominant by the presence of social media such as Instagram. Problems develop when there are unverified viral messages spreading amongst the public. Since the social media allows users to express their opinions, biased opinions may cause harm and disrupts the harmony of the society or community. These can cause misinformation, resulting in confusion or misunderstandings. The purpose of this paper is to determine how Bruneian citizen journalists participate in citizen journalism, to investigate the Islamic ethical practice and the factors contributing to the act, in order to design and develop a mobile application prototype of a guideline in Islamic ethical practice in citizen journalism. The effectiveness of the mobile application prototype is also determined. This study uses mixed method approach, begins with qualitative for the first three objectives then quantitative to measure the effectiveness. A purposive sampling with interviews and document analysis were used for the qualitative method while a questionnaire was used to collect from a simple random data sampling. It was found that Bruneian citizen journalists commonly reshare information using the Instagram stories, discuss matters with their audience using Instagram stories and privately, and share their opinions through Instagram stories. They practice Islamic ethical conduct where they gather information from reliable sources and aware of the contents of viral messages. If they happen to share the wrong information, they practice accountability. Factors contributing to citizen journalism include citizen’s responsibility to inform others and social interaction. As a product from this research, the data obtained from the interviews and the questionnaire were used as part of the requirement analysis for the mobile application prototype development.