Blurry and Centered or Clear and Balanced?

Contemporary photojournalists are seeing their fellow photojournalists being laid off, are struggling to defend their professional values, and all the while having their own hard-fought photographs displayed next to blurry and grainy amateur images taken by mere happenstance. Professional photojournalists and citizen photojournalists are performing similar work, but have very differing understandings of photojournalism values and—importantly—of each other. The purpose of this study was to glean an insight into professional photojournalists' and citizen photojournalists' perceptions of photojournalism values through a coorientational framework. The results revealed that professional photojournalists may dislike citizen photojournalists and generally do not understand them accurately, hinting toward a sense of professional threat. Citizen photojournalists, on the other hand, are more accurate and may seek to model themselves on professional photojournalists.