Chia-Lien Lee, Tasi Chen

Citizen Journalists, Citizen Journalism, Participation motives, Social exchange theory, PeoPo citizen journalism platform

The emergence of citizen journalism broke the informational dominance of professional journalism institutions. However, the citizen journalists would not be paid for their works. The number of video reports submitted to the online PeoPo citizen journalism platform, which was established by Public Television Service (PTS), has declined in recent years. Therefore, it is urgent to understand participation motives of senior citizen journalists as well as effectiveness of various programs offered by the platform, in order to achieve sustainable development goals of PeoPo platform. A research was conducted. The research method was in-depth interviews with semi-structured questions with nine senior citizen journalists and three PeoPo workers.
The results showed that extrinsic reward, skill learning, knowledge enhancing, career development, fun, social relations, life enrichment, sense of purpose, and sense of achievement are the participation motives of senior citizen journalists. PTS’s Reputation and interactive mechanism of PeoPo platform, as well as various programs offered by PeoPo, such as training session, outing event, “OnTV”, and reportage award, contributed to the strong relations between the platform and its journalists. However, as online video platforms proliferate, the uniqueness of PeoPo seems fading. It may pose a threat to the further development of this platform.