Institutional citizen journalism outlets as news? News Values comparison between Peopo and Public Television Service in Taiwan

Scholars have been debating the credibility of citizen journalism, with some arguing that it is a legitimate news source and others arguing that it should only be considered user-generated content (UGC). This study seeks to determine whether citizen media should be considered news.This study revisits the relationship tested by Tse and Spiezio (2021) that uses content analysis of 400 news headlines from Taiwanese citizen media outlet Peopo and local media outlet Public Television Service to compare the news values. The findings indicated that citizen media in Taiwan pay different attention to news values than mainstream media. The differences in news values between the two media agencies suggested that citizen media in Taiwan cannot be considered news. However, citizen media has its own unique values, including more stories featuring Common Man, and provides more Good News than the mainstream media. The function of citizen media in Taiwan is seen as complementary to the mainstream media.