Abstract
This chapter examines the different channels operated by and for people with disabilities and how the participation of disabled citizen journalists contributes to the social construction of disability. Citizen journalists (e.g., Molly Burke, Erica Beth, Tanner Smith) create several disability news websites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and other media forms every year, reaching a large and expanding audience. Further, many of these outlets can and do have an impact beyond the disability community, influencing legacy media and non-disabled audiences. The chapter will discuss historical events (e.g., the independent living movement, the introduction of closed captioning), as well as trade organizations focused on disability rights (e.g., the National Center on Disability and Journalism). Biases of able-bodied people in journalism still exist, and the able-bodied perspective has remained societally dominant; however, there is growth taking place in the field to move beyond historical practices when reporting on disability, and there is the promising idea that people with disabilities no longer have to rely on mainstream media to define their issues.
