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This article assesses the potential of online news reporting to create discursive spaces for emphatic engagement - of bearing witness - at a distance, especially where human rights violations are concerned. Taking as its focus the emergent forms and practices of citizen journalism, it examines the spontaneous actions of ordinary people compelled to adopt the role of news reporter in order to bear witness to human suffering. Specifically, findings derived from three case studies of citizen journalism are presented: 1) the 2004 South Asian Tsunami; 2) human rights abuses in India's north-east region; and 3) the Palestinian Crisis in the Occupied Territories. In each instance, it is argued, citizen journalism engendered new approaches to eyewitness reporting, a process shown to have important implications for challenging familiar 'us and them' dichotomies in news reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]