The primary responsibility of the media is to provide information to the public. But civic journalism is the idea of providing information about the events and issues as well as engaging citizens and creating public debate. Through these debates, the public become empowered in a political system and thus participate in the process of policy-making.

This is why civic journalism is seen as an idea of integrating journalism into the democratic process.

Civic journalism is a movement to engage the journalists and the citizens as active participants in social and political processes. It is against the conventional idea of journalism where journalists and their audiences are mere spectators in the political and social system.

This movement is an attempt to abandon the notion that journalists and their audiences are spectators in political and social processes. In its place, the civic journalism movement seeks to treat readers and community members as participants.

To be precise, civic journalism started out as a movement with a view to empower the citizens by giving them a voice and a stake in the democratic process through which they can be an active part of the policy-making process, and the whole socio-political system as a whole.

So, we can say that civic journalism aims at building a partnership between journalists and the public. Through this partnership, the media industry serves as a platform for dialogue and problem-solving.

Civic journalism is also called public journalism.

Now, what is the difference between civic journalism and citizen journalism?

Civic journalism is practiced by professional journalists while citizen journalism is done by non-professionals i.e. ordinary people e.g. community members.