[1] This phenomenon has been brought about largely due to the creation of social networking sites such as Digg and Newsvine.
The effect of democratic journalism is that it promotes news based on the popular opinion of the majority, or the "wisdom of the crowd".
This differs from more traditional approaches, such as the one commonly used in the newspaper industry, where an editor would decide whether to print a particular news story.
[2] A common problem faced by democratic journalism is the unreliability and bias of the voting system used, which may not reflect the actual opinions of the majority.
Many of the mediums which help enable democratic journalism suffer from problems such as gaming, bias, censorship, and lack of professional review.