Mainstream media such as television, radio and newspapers were the primary source of reliable information before the Internet age. However, the situation has changed. The evolution of modern technology in today's world has led to the continuous increase in methods of practicing journalism. Social and technological advances have not only improved the pace and content of the practice of this field, but have extended its genre to online or cyber journalism. (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2007). News websites, most of which are owned by major media companies, and alternative websites with user-generated content such as social networking sites and blogs are gaining ground in the field of journalistic practice. (Nel, n.d.). One of the major forces influencing the practice of journalism today is online citizen journalists. Nel (n.d.) defines citizen journalism as “individuals who play an active role in the process of gathering, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information”. He further adds that “citizen journalism is slowly being seen as a form of legitimate democratic way of providing news, articles, etc., directly to the citizens of the world from anywhere.” One of the main research conducted in the field of citizen journalism describes the phenomenon as “individuals who intend to publish information online, intended to benefit a community”, and it is expected that this information will benefit the public or the wider population in making decisions for the betterment of their community. (Carpenter, 2010.) Content diversity is probably the most important factor when it comes to online journalism. At a recent ECREA journalism conference held at the University of Navarra, one of the burning topics was... middle of paper... citizen journalism publications were found to contain or publish similar topics to those of smaller newspapers . online newspaper publications, covering issues related to athletics, human interests, and social events. (Tichenor et al, 1980). Meanwhile, according to Shim (2006), larger online newspaper publications focus more on topics such as crime, government, and politics. This statement is supported by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (2006), whose research indicates that topics such as government, politics, foreign relations, elections are reported in a higher proportion than entertainment and human interest stories in online newspapers.HYPERLINKSResearch that were conducted on the use of hyperlinks or hypertexts in online journalism were based on the quantitative content analysis methodology to count the number of links present in online news sites.