Reporting Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis in a Hybrid Media Environment: How Citizen Journalists and Traditional Media Collaborate and Compete

ABSTRACT

This study examined how Cameroonian legacy media and citizen journalists have collaborated or competed to report on the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon since October 2016. Using Chadwick’s hybrid media system theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 41 Cameroonian legacy media reporters, editors and citizen journalists. The results show that when reporting on political crises, new relationships are established between legacy media and citizen journalists that grow into formalised collaborations. Mainstream media reporters and citizen journalists either collaborate or compete to report on the crisis. Some citizen journalists both cooperate with traditional media and run their own reporting platforms, while professional journalists working for established media outlets create platforms of their own to freely report issues that would otherwise be censored on traditional media outlets. The findings reveal professional journalists acknowledge the important role of citizen journalists but are cautious about fully collaborating with them at every stage of the news production chain.

KEYWORDS:

• Cameroon
• Anglophone crisis
• citizen journalism
• hybrid media
• political crisis reporting

Introduction

Covering political crises, like every other facet of media coverage of events, has witnessed a progressive change over the years (Allan 2013). With the growing number of citizens becoming key actors in the news chain, conventional media outlets have come to acknowledge more than ever that they are not the sole providers of information to audiences who have also progressively become interested in content from fellow citizens. Audience participation in news has been greatly influenced by modern technologies (Pavlik 2000; Singer et al. 2011). In this environment where newer and older media coexist and report on similar events, there exists what has been described as a blurring of boundaries (Domingo and Heinonen 2008). Regarding the reporting of similar events by both legacy media and audience, the interaction and interrelationship that ensue reveal a hybrid media system (Chadwick 2013).

The Cameroon Anglophone separatist crisis, since 2016, has witnessed not only extensive reporting by local media (Fai and Stubbs 2023) but also increased audience reporting on digital platforms and participation in mainstream media. This surge in audience reporting (Allan 2013; Thurman 2008) facilitates the emergence of citizen journalists—untrained individuals who distinguish themselves by consistently reporting events and sometimes commit to specific news outlets. This study provides an opportunity to apply the hybrid media system theory to this political crisis in a Central African context, specifically that of Cameroon. Several prior studies have tested the theory within the context of election campaigns (see Blach-Ørsten, Eberholst, and Burkal 2017; Giglietto et al. 2016; Marchetti and Ceccobelli 2016; Zhang et al. 2018).

The current research will add breadth and depth to the few scholarly findings on citizen journalists’ contributions to news in crisis reporting in Africa, a continent with growing internet penetration and several areas experiencing political and security crises. Most similar studies (Ali and Fahmy 2013; Farinosi and Treré 2014; Fico et al. 2013; Örnebring 2013; Wall 2015) have focused on Western countries with liberal democracies. However, Western dominance in journalism scholarship is often not applicable to contexts in the southern hemisphere (Hanitzsch 2019; Paterson 2013). At the same time as this research highlights the “routines and practices of journalism” (Paterson 2013, 1) in the context of the Cameroon Anglophone crisis, it also examines the nature and impact of the collaboration and competition of two actors in the hybrid media environment, thereby advancing earlier studies that have concentrated on only one of the actors (e.g. Brandtzaeg et al. 2016; Fai and Stubbs 2023; Ngange and Mokondo 2019; Nounkeu 2020).

Navigating a changing media environment

Andrew Chadwick’s (2013) hybrid media system theory is the theoretical basis for this study. Chadwick propagated the theory to explain a change in media production patterns in which individuals without training in journalism use “newer” media to create and disseminate content. He postulated that the “hybrid media system is built upon interactions among older and newer media logics: technologies, genres, norms, behaviours, and organizational forms” (Chadwick 2013, 4). Scholars have asserted that hybrid media systems have become an integral part of journalism studies in response to rapid digital, social and economic changes (Gulyas 2017; Witschge et al. 2019). Actors within the hybrid media system operate in a system of fading boundaries (Lewis 2012) that describes a process of the blending of older and newer media (Deuze 2011) and the workings of the news cycles that surround important and fast-moving news (Chadwick and Stromer-Galley 2016). As Chadwick (2013) said, the media are always in a state of flux. At no point can we expect to have non-hybridised media. As new information technologies continue to evolve, all stakeholders seem to see the need to adapt to the change (Voltmer, Selvik, and Høigilt 2021).

Edgerly and Vraga (2020, 417) suggested five principal questions to consider when dealing with issues of news-ness in a hybrid media environment: What is communicated? How is it communicated? By whom is it communicated? Where does the communication occur? Who receives the communication? Answers to these questions will reveal that the usual and well-known relationship between “communicators and recipients, between professional and non-professional utterance, is also changing” (Loosen 2015, 78). The internet and social media oblige a rethink of journalism practice as blurring of the boundary between the media and the audience (Castells 2009) is inevitable.

The impact of technology on newsroom work has been a key topic of discussion in scholarly research (Deuze and Marjoribanks 2009; Paulussen 2012; Reich 2013). Örnebring (2013, 49) noted that technological and economic factors have made the collective nature of everyday journalistic work more visible, as both audiences and journalists now produce news content. Although at every point of media work there has been some kind of technological influence on the news, the internet and its wide possibilities created alternative media practices that present a significant change to legacy media work (Hirst 2020; Burgess and Hurcombe 2021) and contribute to fundamental changes in communication by transforming the context in which information is handled from collection to distribution (Loosen and Schmidt 2012). The world wide web complements the coverage of traditional platforms in its capacity to convey witness accounts, enable exchange and foster reflection (Min 2016). In this environment, mainstream media practitioners are adopting ways to integrate citizen content into regular newsroom practices while maintaining ethical standards.

Technological advancements and news consumption patterns compel creativity in newsrooms like never before (Koivula, Villi, and Sivunen 2023) and challenge the longstanding practices and identities of legacy media workers (Hendrickx and Picone 2020). Inasmuch as the role of citizens in providing information is increasingly viewed as indispensable, especially in the wake of events of high interest, it is arguably even more important for newsrooms to maintain professional standards (Wasserman and Madrid-Morales 2019).

Although Thurman and Hermida (2010) opined that technologies that facilitate media participation have only been used by a minority, increased digitisation in the last decade has expanded the number of citizens participating in news processes (Hayes and Lawless 2015; Ugille 2017), and their contribution cannot be considered negligible. Citizen journalism has become an integral part of contemporary newsroom practice: “indeed, we would be missing events both global and local without access to citizens willing to produce this content” (Wall 2015, 797), and nowadays, highly respected media outlets leverage audience content in their programmes (Min 2016).

As audience members become increasingly involved in newsroom processes, the traditional information hierarchy has given way to new and varied forms of information flow (Heinrich 2012). Van der Haak, Parks, and Castells (2012, 2934) stated that with this, there is an increase in the value of journalism since audiences no longer deal with “dictatorial, scheduled information flows and can access the information provided by journalists whenever and wherever they want”. In this interconnected environment, audience participation has provided an interactive sphere where audiences also become news producers (Kaufhold, Valenzuela, and de Zúñiga 2010), and receivers of information can share ideas and opinions about what they see on the news. By embracing the virtues of citizen participation, media outlets take advantage of the ability of ordinary citizens to be present at the scene of events, something that traditional media cannot always do (Moyo 2009).

Traditional media outlets, while benefiting from the opportunities provided by citizen journalists, must manage the challenge of having some of them as competitors. Ordinary citizens not only provide information to newsrooms. They also have the ability to break news to audiences that, for the most part, are on the internet. Carpentier, De Brabander, and Cammaerts (2009) considered the online distribution channel to be an alternative source that provides quicker and cheaper information to a wider audience. As audiences leverage the online space, there is less dependence on mainstream media (Noor 2016). Even though citizen journalism enables possibilities for increased participation in news production, it also runs the risk of populism (Min 2016). In an environment that seems uncontrollable, people who depend on citizen content will also be prone to fake news, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda (Giglietto et al. 2019).

While not denying the role that citizen journalism has played in the present context of news production, legacy media practitioners have struggled to maintain control over the process of news gathering, treatment and dissemination. Örnebring (2013, 42), in studying journalists’ perceptions of the role of citizen journalists, revealed several attitudes stemming from a desire to showcase their expertise, legitimacy and autonomy in the news process. Journalists still see their task as a “collective” process, as opposed to “a perceived problematic individuality and lack of institutional constraint among citizen journalists” (Kaufhold, Valenzuela, and de Zúñiga 2010, 48). Since citizen journalism does not fit with the principles that are tied to the historical approach to journalism, some traditional journalists look upon it with a degree of “disdain and mistrust” (Banda 2010, 22).

Scholars (Beckett and Mansell 2008; Carpentier, De Brabander, and Cammaerts 2009; Vos and Russell 2019) have noted that the media have been working to build communities of users around their activities while making sure that users play only the role of information providers; that is, traditional media professionals maintain their role as gatekeepers. Taibi and Na (2020, 375) found that journalists see the need to change the angle of their reports to keep up with the interest generated by the citizen journalists’ content while not compromising ethical principles that are so often flouted by citizen journalists (Watson et al. 2014).

In attempting to conceptualise citizen journalism, scholars have focused on the professional standing of the actors (Örnebring 2013), platforms used (Miller 2019), and the speed and accuracy of content (Taibi and Na 2020). Others have attempted to distinguish between accidental journalists, advocacy citizen journalists and citizen journalists (Banda 2010). Empirical studies show that while citizen journalists are asserting their role and gaining popularity among growing audiences, traditional media outlets still consider themselves indispensable, with the obligation to maintain professional standards (Darbo and Skjerdal 2019; Lewis 2012).

Background

Cameroon is a bilingual country with English and French as official languages, inherited from the colonisation by France and Great Britain. Since the reunification in 1961, the country has had various changes in governance structures. The two-state federal system adopted in 1961 was changed to a more centralised one in 1972 and later in 1984. Multipartyism was introduced in 1990 but the governing party has maintained dominance. Recent decades witnessed increased calls for decentralisation and a return to the federal structure or outright independence from parts of the English-speaking population (Agbor 2019).

In October 2016, lawyers and teachers of English expression launched peaceful protests against what they perceived to be the marginalisation of the Anglophone judicial and educational systems. Their revendications were an offshoot of longstanding general grievances of the English-speaking population, which comprises 2 of the 10 regions of Cameroon (Amin 2021; Pommerolle and De Marie Heungoup 2017). The resulting radicalisation of part of the population has been blamed on the government’s response to the grievances. The peaceful protest steadily became a separatist insurgency, characterised by the multiplication of armed groups, killings, and attacks on institutions (Bang and Balgah 2022). The escalation into an armed conflict is what is referred to in this study as the Anglophone crisis.

The crisis is taking place in a highly polarised media environment. The liberalisation of the media landscape in the 1990s, following a return to multipartyism, was marked by the multiplication of media outlets. In addition to the state-owned national bilingual daily Cameroon Tribune and the national broadcaster Cameroon Radio Television, there are more than 600 newspapers, about 200 radio stations, and more than 60 TV channels (“Cameroon | RSF” 2023). Radio remains the most widely used medium due to its accessibility and wide reach. Cameroonians are increasingly active on social media and Facebook has been the most popular social media platform among citizens. As in many other African countries, increased connectivity has facilitated the use of social media platforms as a tool for both information and socialisation (Kunock 2023, 8). The use of digital technology among Cameroonians has greatly favoured grassroots reporting of the crisis, and traditional media seems to have lost its monopoly on information gathering, processing and dissemination.

The purpose of this study is to examine how Cameroonian mainstream media and citizen journalists have collaborated or competed to report on the crisis, and to highlight the legacy media reaction to the action of citizen journalists. My research questions were as follows:

• How have citizen journalists and traditional media collaborated to gather, process and disseminate information on the Cameroon Anglophone crisis?

• Why and with what impact have the online activities of citizen journalists led to competition with legacy media in reporting on the Anglophone crisis?

The Cameroon Anglophone crisis presents an ideal case to study this interrelationship between citizen journalists and traditional media because political crises are periods of high information flow with great potential to elucidate phenomena that may not be obvious in periods of lower flow.

Methodology

A semi-structured interview guide was used to collect data in English or French depending on the first language of the interviewee. The choice of this method was aimed at maintaining the same structure for all participants but providing the opportunity to modify the questions as needed (Lichtman 2014). A purposive sample was used to select the first set of participants in this study. Respondents were deliberately selected to provide unique information that could not be obtained elsewhere (Taherdoost 2016). A snowball sampling technique was later used to progressively select other research subjects. Respondents included those who had reported on the Anglophone crisis since its escalation in October 2016, until December 2021 when a significant drop in reporting on the crisis was noted. Thirty-five legacy media practitioners (journalists and editors from public and private print, broadcast, and online news sources) and six citizen journalists agreed to participate in the study. Traditional media reporters were drawn from media outlets based in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions, and the French-speaking Littoral and Centre regions that host most of the country’s media that have national and international coverage. Citizen journalists were also selected from these regions. In this study a citizen journalist is considered anyone without formal training in journalism, who has been collecting information and reporting on the Anglophone crisis using online platforms and/or sending information to traditional media outlets. This category of reporters, in addition to being difficult to access, also showed a high level of fear, when contacted to participate in this study. This explains the disparity in the numbers of traditional media reporters and citizen journalists.

Interviews were conducted remotely, for security reasons due to the sensitive nature of the topic under study. Data from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders shows that at least nine journalists have been detained at different times for their reporting on the Anglophone crisis, having been charged under the antiterrorism law. One reporter died in detention. Broadcast programmes and some publications have been banned for varying lengths of time. Separatist fighters are also reported to have abducted some journalists and killed at least one (CPJ, n.d.; RSF 2023). With these realities in mind, an ethics review from the university’s ethics committee that approved the research protocol was requested. Following the research guidelines, each respondent received an information form and a consent form by email and was expected to provide verbal or written consent regarding their participation in the study. Less confident interviewees were therefore able to deliver information without the pressure of the physical presence of a researcher (Weller 2017). Interviews were conducted between December 2022 and May 2023. The interview sessions ranged in length from 28 min to 1 h and 36 min (avg. 1 h and 6 s), depending on how explicit the respondent was. In total, all 41 interviews lasted 41 h and 4 min. Interviewees answered questions on their perception of each other’s work in reporting on the crisis, whether they considered each other as competitors or collaborators, and whether they perceived a long-term relationship.

Thematic analysis (Riger and Sigurvinsdottir 2016) was used to analyse the data. Following the process suggested by Christians and Carey (1989), Icarried out an initial reading of the whole data set. A second reading was conducted and, using descriptive and in vivo codes, words and expressions related to the research questions were highlighted, leading to the creation of over 600 codes. From this list of initial codes, duplicates were dropped and related themes were grouped under mutually exclusive titles to best reflect the analysis. The data was pseudonymised during transcription. Thus, the interview subjects are identified based on their roles, media type and work city. No references have been made in the presentation of the results to specific media outlets and names. Only essential direct quotes have been highlighted, and they are modified in some cases to effectively convey the meaning.

Results

The first research question was: How have citizen journalists and legacy media collaborated to report on the Anglophone crisis? The following results show to what extent collaboration occurs, the factors that facilitate collaboration, and the nature of that collaboration.

Levels of collaboration

The first level identified was impromptu collaboration. This was usually a one-time information service from citizen journalists. Many citizen journalists in the crisis-affected areas established this form of collaboration with news outlets. At the outbreak of events in their locality or neighbourhood, they gathered information using amateur information collection methods and, in their excitement to raise awareness, sent it to media organs.

Team player collaboration is the second level. Some citizen journalists over time became committed to working with specific media outlets but were not (yet) considered stringers or freelancers within the newsroom. What characterizes this level is the news outlets assigning additional fact-checking responsibility to citizen journalists. In other cases, the latter were asked to write full reports following guidance from the newsroom.

The third and highest level highlighted is information sharing. Not only did traditional media organs receive information from citizen journalists, they also volunteered information to citizen journalists. Two main expressions of this were revealed in the Anglophone crisis. First, legacy media reporters gave citizen journalists information that had been censored by the media outlet. By so doing information that could not be disseminated via traditional media outlets was still published. Second, citizen journalists provided information to legacy media, and waited for media to process the information professionally before they disseminated it on their own online platforms.

Factors that facilitated collaboration were categorised under three broad themes: difficult terrain, finance, and relationships with people in the field. Most traditional media outlets in Cameroon are based in major cities. However, the epicentre of the Anglophone crisis is in the suburbs of the English-speaking regions, with sporadic separatist attacks in the major cities. These areas are, for the most part, inaccessible to traditional media reporters due to their difficult terrain. Citizen journalists, being members of the communities in question, become key actors in driving the collaboration with traditional media as they provide on-the-spot information. According to some of the interviewees, some media organisations gained popularity at the outbreak of the Anglophone crisis, because of their consistent collaboration with citizen journalists. With content from citizen journalists, some media outlets were able to break the news ahead of others who did not leverage the role of citizen journalists.

Participants also cited limited finances for traditional media, which raised the level of importance of the citizen journalists of the Anglophone crisis. Considering that most media outlets in Cameroon function with limited means, the fact that citizen journalists who are based in or close to the crisis-hit areas are able to provide information at no cost to media organs makes up for legacy media's restricted coverage.

Separatists, according to some interviewees, were more welcoming towards citizen journalists than traditional media reporters. At a certain point in the crisis, separatists were said to be in control of entire localities and were unwilling to provide information to media organs. However, they would volunteer information to citizen journalists. Traditional media reporters took advantage of their relationships with citizen journalists to obtain information for their newscasts and programmes. “Armed groups don’t consider them [citizen journalists] as a serious threat to their work, so they can access many areas. … but we of the state media need to be very cautious” (Reporter for state-owned radio, Bamenda).

Nature of collaboration

For some of the respondents in this study, collaboration between legacy media outlets and citizen journalists has been “cordial and very professional” (Private broadcast reporter, Douala). In this section, what is presented as the nature of collaboration are concrete actions that the respondents highlighted as existing in this relationship. This interrelationship between citizen journalists and traditional media created what some research participants described as “reliance”, “dependence” and “trust” (Broadcast reporters, Douala, Bamenda and Buea).

Gateway to collaboration

In reporting on the Anglophone crisis, the starting point of the collaborative relationship was the creation of contact between citizen journalists and traditional media. At the escalation of the crisis in 2016, media outlets saw the need to liaise with citizen journalists to ensure comprehensive coverage. Three main ways in which traditional media created collaborative relationships with citizen journalists were highlighted.

First, media organs took advantage of the presence of English-speaking employees, who might have contacts with friends, family, moral authorities, and traditional rulers in the Anglophone regions. Some of these individuals became key information sources for the news outlets. Second, traditional media reporters shared their contact details on social media platforms to enable citizens to provide them with information about events related to the Anglophone crisis from their localities. This gave those who had first-hand information platforms to share such information. Third, citizen journalists contacted newsrooms to provide information on the crisis happening around them. Some of these persons later became key sources of information. Noticing that some media outlets reported on the crisis without detailed knowledge of events on the ground, these citizen journalists sometimes took it upon themselves to collect information and contact a news outlet that they considered credible to disseminate the information. “Most of them have realised that mainstream media is relying on them, so most times, they will get to us. They’ll just call and say, “Oh, we [have] some strategic information. We [have] some good footage for your news organ?” (Private TV reporter, Yaounde).

Information collection

In gathering information on the Anglophone crisis since 2016, collaboration between legacy media and citizen journalists has been expressed in different ways. It is expressed in the citizens’ voluntariness and the media’s response to keep the relationship afloat. The first expression of collaboration in information collection is through alerts. Alerts received from citizen journalists at the scenes of events served as the starting point for the work of traditional media reporters. Content from citizen journalists went through different processes, the rigour of which depended on the media in question. “They [citizen journalists] first give us alerts to know that something has happened somewhere. And then, we do … cross-checking work, whether by cross-referencing with other citizen journalists who have relayed the same information or by contacting the authorities of the regions” (Online reporter).

Once citizen journalists provided tipoffs, their task ended at that level for some while others proceeded to provide pictures and videos from the scene of events.

Another expression of the collaboration in information collection on the Anglophone crisis between citizen journalists and mainstream media is shown in the fact that newsrooms offer encouragement and tips to citizen journalists for providing information. Citizen journalists who have become “team players” in providing information on the Anglophone crisis receive financial incentives to motivate the collection of information on the Anglophone crisis from their different areas. “When the crisis escalated to an armed conflict, guns started firing left and right. … We needed to contact citizens in those localities … and offer to give them airtime [money for communication credit] so that they would … send information to us” (Private TV reporter, Yaounde).

Additionally, media outlets gave supplementary assignments to citizen journalists who became regular contributors. Having built a certain level of mutual trust and warded off the fear of manipulation common in crisis situations, newsrooms became increasingly comfortable assigning some citizen journalists for further coverage of events.

Sometimes we have some citizen journalists whose name we have saved, as for example, John Kumba, which means someone who has been sending information from Kumba. So [if] you have a story from Kumba, you contact John Kumba and then ask him, “Are you aware of something happening like this?” … Definitely, John will know people in meeting houses, in mortuaries, hospitals … and then John will confirm or refute. (Publisher of online news site)

To provide content on the Anglophone crisis that meets editorial standards, traditional media opted to deliver training or mentorship to citizen journalists who regularly provided content to their newsrooms. Such training was both beneficial to the citizen journalists who gained insight into ethics of reporting as well to the news organs that received information as still pictures and videos that could be disseminated without significant changes. A popular television newscaster presented this guidance:

We tell them how to handle the phone, how to shoot the images … by putting the camera on the landscape mode to have full-screen images, so to say. We always advise them not to take close-up pictures of … victims or dead people … because close shots would not be very, very good for the eyes. … We even tell them to avoid shooting impacts like blood … (Private TV reporter, Douala)

Information processing

Some of the traditional media reporters interviewed did not collaborate with citizen journalists in information processing. Citizen journalists are said to rarely commit themselves to fact checking. Following information from newsroom reporters interviewed, some of the citizen journalists consulted them to verify information because they believe it is difficult for traditional media to be manipulated. Having noted that most citizen journalists were less interested in information verification, the few who saw the need to verify information consulted professionally trained journalists. On the other hand, professional journalists and editors are said to trust only a few citizen journalists to act as sources for fact checking.

Also, some interviewees highlighted a relationship of interdependence whereby traditional media depended on citizen journalists for tip-offs and citizen journalists depended on the traditional media for professional processing. This is also only possible with citizen journalists who were patient and disciplined to wait for the information they provided to go through the routine editorial processing. The quote below from a television news anchor reveals how collaboration in information treatment is handled.

I advise those who collaborate with me … not to hurry and put information … on social media. They should get their information to me. … I do the normal professional treatment of the information and send it back to them. They are free, after I … have sent back the images, … to put them on their social media platforms. (Private TV anchor, Douala)

Information dissemination

In information dissemination, results show two expressions of collaboration. First, in disseminating information provided by citizen journalists on the Anglophone crisis, news anchors attribute the content to specific citizen journalists. Citizen journalists who collaborate with media organs are said to appreciate the fact that their names are mentioned on newscasts when information is disseminated as a way of giving credit to their work. This has been a regular practice in TV programmes spoken in a local creole language known as pidgin English.

During many of our newscasts, we had to use images and information that came from these people. It is true that we talked about amateur images and cameras, but these are people who, by their presence and by their proximity to the theatre of events, were able to contribute and help. We acknowledge them on air for their work. (Private TV reporter, Douala)

Acknowledgment of the work of citizen journalists on air, according to newsroom editors, acted as an incentive for citizen journalists of the Anglophone crisis to continue providing information, even though they receive very little—sometimes no—financial support for the work. For other media organs, this content from citizen journalists on the Anglophone crisis acts as the basis for news analysis, talk shows and debates. They considered that citizen journalists lacked a platform to disseminate their content effectively.

Another avenue of collaboration in information dissemination, as revealed by some of the respondents in this study, was in the fact that some citizen journalists using social media decided to relay information on the crisis from trustworthy media sources. This study thus revealed another genre of citizen journalism, represented by social media platforms whose aim is to relay content from traditional media sources. The Anglophone crisis presented an opportunity to transmit information from trustworthy traditional media sources and help some less well-known media outfits gain popularity. The following quote is from one of the citizen journalists who manages a social media page used to convey information from legacy media.

What mainstream media broadcast as information on the Anglophone crisis—we help them to amplify their content on social media. Now, there are … journalists and media organs that contact us to say, “Please, I would like you to relay this report that I produced” or “I would like you to relay this article that I published”. (Citizen journalist, Yaounde)

As much as some citizen journalists needed traditional media to relay their content, traditional media in some cases also needed citizen journalists, using social media to get their information to a wider audience.

The second research question is as follows: Why and with what impact have the online activities of citizen journalists led to competition with legacy media in reporting on the Anglophone crisis? The results presented below outline reasons why citizen journalists and traditional media practitioners have competed to report on the crisis and the reaction of traditional media to the increased parallel role played by citizen journalists.

Reasons for competition

One of the main factors that triggered competition in reporting on the Anglophone crisis was the excitement to break the news. At the beginning of the crisis in 2016, crisis reporting was new to many Cameroonian reporters because the country had not previously been faced with such events—characterised by killings, abductions, the exchange of gunfire between separatist fighters and soldiers, the razing of government buildings and schools, or a mass exodus from the Anglophone regions. With the influx of information, the media reported everything pertaining to the crisis. Citizen journalists, on the other hand, also found an opportunity to make their voices heard. There was therefore a rush to see who would be the first to break the information to the audience, because the speed of information dissemination also gave one the opportunity to win the audience.

In addition, growing social media use heightened the competition between citizen journalists and legacy media. The Anglophone crisis is said to have popularised the use of social media among citizen journalists, who became key actors in not only informing audiences but also challenging traditional media. For most citizen journalists, fact checking and information processing did not matter. Citizen journalists using social media, accused of little or no fact checking, had the ability to break the news on the crisis almost immediately, while mainstream media, following editorial policies and ethics, had to ascertain the veracity of information before disseminating it. The influence of social media also came with the desire to increase followership, likes and shares. Citizen journalists of the Anglophone crisis using social media also saw an opportunity for monetary gain, driving them to publish unverified information.

They break the news, maybe 30 minutes or an hour after something has happened in a neighbourhood in a war zone area—in a crisis-torn area. So, [we] of the traditional media … those of us that are trained … try to verify [the information] in order to report the facts, to really get the information across to the public. (Radio news editor, Buea)

Furthermore, audience influence was another trigger for competition. Audiences became more demanding in their quest for quick information on happenings in English-speaking regions. Reporters were then faced with the challenge of satisfying the audience’s growing need for information. Audience members, in effect, tended to be more prone to accept sensational information. Because traditional media were out to maintain standards of professionalism, the audience seemed to shift their trust from traditional media to citizen journalists who spared no effort to provide them with the kind of information they craved.

People didn’t understand the necessity of having confirmed and verified information. … When you are broadcasting or when you are streaming, you will see comments online like, “Is it now that you people are talking about it? Too late, too late, you guys. We already learned about it, too late … ” That gives you an exact understanding of the psychology. (TV anchor, Douala)

Reaction to competition

The seeming edge that citizen journalists using social media have had over traditional media in reporting on the Anglophone crisis led legacy media practitioners to find ways to overcoming the challenge. With traditional media, there were obvious limitations regarding what reporters can disseminate, considering editorial policies. A few of the reactions adopted by traditional media practitioners to meet the rising competition are presented here.

First, some legacy media reporters resorted to post-publication editing to keep pace with citizen journalists’ speed. They opted to publish unverified information that was later edited if the information in question turned out to be false or incomplete.

They  … publish before they get the real side of the story, and then they go [and] edit it. And you can imagine what damage this can [do] to the population … This happens also to trained journalists. You have trained journalists who are so excited to break the news because the more you break the news, the more you become popular. (Radio reporter, Douala)

Secondly, some reporters decided to leverage their online presence. Being employed by traditional media outlets seemed to present some limitations to what some considered free reporting. This category of reporters turned to social media which gave them the opportunity to freely report (without hindrance from their editors) and thereby effectively compete with citizen journalists using the same platforms. “I started as a broadcast media journalist and later created a platform of my own, a social media platform where I could [report] a little more, a little bit freely … without being told what to do and what not to do” (Publisher, online news site). Other reporters using their presence online saw it as an opportunity to counteract what they thought were excesses from citizen journalists who were going against professional ethics but were being applauded by the end users of information.

In 2017, I saw how citizen journalists were writing about the crisis. And then I saw how professional reporters were shying away from it, and I said to myself … how can we allow citizen journalists to take this media space to spill hatred, give unverified information and fake stories—and see that people are clapping for them? So, what motivated me to create that website was countering some of these narratives from the citizen journalists. (Publisher, online news site)

Discussion

This study set out to apply hybrid media system theory to the Cameroon Anglophone crisis. The results revealed hybridity at different levels. First, there is an interrelationship between the traditional media and citizen journalists in reporting the crisis, and the various actors play their roles. Delmastro and Splendore (2021, 7) described the hybrid media system as “a stage” that gives the opportunity for various actors to play out their independence, with interdependence being unavoidable. Second, media practitioners expressed some level of hybridity by fulfilling their regular duties and expanding into social media to freely report what their media organs did not permit, hence corroborating Chadwick (2017, 190): “Journalists can now break stories ‘off air’ through blog posts and Twitter updates”. At the third level, we find citizen journalists who both collaborated with traditional media and found ways to report on the crisis using different mediated channels. Indeed, the relationship between traditional media and citizen journalists in reporting the crisis is hybridised. Depending on the events and the actors involved, reporting information is expressed as either a collaboration or a competition.

In the hybrid media environment exemplified by this study, there is a possibility for actors to evolve in their collaborative relationships. It is logical—and even safer—for media outfits to progress in their relationships with citizen journalists by taking them from being impromptu contributors to team players to information sharers rather than having hitherto unknown individuals joining the process at higher levels. Trust is built on longevity in information provision. Advancing earlier studies that show traditional media have found ways to accommodate citizen content (Deuze, Bruns, and Neuberger 2007; Jewitt 2009; Mythen 2010), this study further suggests that there is a high level of dependence of traditional media on citizen journalists in political crisis reporting, not only in providing information but also in amplifying traditional media content through social media and disseminating information that would otherwise not pass through traditional media. Moyo (2009, 563) noted that

in moments of high tension and uncertainty, when the mainstream media take long to verify and send out information to the public, a parallel market of information in the form of citizen journalism is proving to be effective in keeping the information flows.

An evolving relationship portrays the convergence of traditional media and citizen journalists.

Cameroonian media outlets are faced with limited resources compounded by security concerns. It is in this environment that citizen journalism thrives (Mutsvairo and Salgado 2022), making media dependence even more obvious. However, amid this dependence is the consciousness that traditional media must maintain professional standards. In striving for professionalism over speed, trained journalists have found themselves grappling with information overload, the impact of which on the audience they cannot control, because conventional newsroom gatekeeping does not cover the work of citizen journalists using social media to report on the crisis. Since Cameroonian newsrooms are also careful to observe government guidelines or face sanctions, media professionals, feeling the need to provide counter narratives to citizen propaganda and manipulation, use social media and blogs not only as news gathering and fact checking tools (Brandtzaeg et al. 2016; Weaver and Willnat 2016) but also to report freely in a bid to regain audience confidence.

Furthermore, political events provide an opportunity for legacy media and citizen journalists to express interrelationships. Within a Global South context, such as Cameroon’s, new actors come into play on the stage provided by the ever changing hybrid media system. This supports findings from Marchetti and Ceccobelli (2016) who studied election campaigns in Italy and concluded that there is continuous competition, negotiation and interdependence among a plurality of actors in the hybrid media system. Cameroonian journalists are caught between maintaining strict newsroom regulations as a way of keeping the standards of the profession, on the one hand, and accommodating the role of citizen journalists, the new players in the media landscape, on the other. As Chadwick (2017) notes, in the hybrid media system, traditionally “slower” media forms have now adapted to and are adopting realities from the fast-paced online environment to meet up with the challenge posed by new actors.

Conclusion

The current study shows a high level of collaboration in reporting the Cameroon Anglophone crisis between legacy media and citizen journalists. True, there exists the desire for each of the groups to prove their authority, in the case of mainstream media, and their indispensability in the case of citizen journalists. This, however, does not hinder the significant level of interdependence expressed in the process of news gathering, processing and dissemination, giving way to new roles. This study adds an aspect of collaboration to earlier studies: the fact that legacy media reporters can entrust censored newsroom content to citizen journalists, and that some citizen journalist platforms exist only to amplify information from mainstream news outlets. Whether this form of collaboration happens only in political crisis or in other kinds of reporting is a good subject for further research. Future research could also consider audiences’ perceptions of news on the Anglophone crisis in the hybrid media environment, the tools used for fact checking, and the challenges to fact checking.

Based on the results of this study, I suggest that if newsrooms established more formalised policies of integrating citizen journalism content into regular work, there would be a greater potential for coverage of events. Notwithstanding the disparity in the number of professional journalists and citizen journalists and the limitations of online interviews, the findings of this study make a significant contribution to the subject on which future research can build.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Jyväskylä.