現有關於公民新聞的研究沒有綜合考察公民媒體、公民記者及其互動產物――公民新聞，並且把公民新聞現象侷限於網路空間中，缺乏對線下具體過程與事件的關注。 在文獻探討的基礎上，本文以「傳播賦權」為框架，從個體、社區和社會三個層次探討公民新聞賦權的過程與效果。本研究以臺灣 PeoPo公民新聞平臺及其公民記者為例，通過深度訪談、參與式觀察、線上閱讀等途徑蒐集資料。總體上發現，公民媒體雖仍未從根本上改變一個社會的傳播生態，但公民媒體倡導的參與式傳播使公民的社會行動力得到了培育、集中和增強。在此過程中，公民媒體所扮演的角色不僅僅是提供一個開放的公共平臺，更體現為基於現實推廣公民新聞活動的「變革的能動者」。在個體層面，傳播賦權需經過媒介接近權的意識覺醒過程，使公民體認到個人亦能參與媒體生產並參與和影響公共生活。在社區層次，公民記者通過各種微觀參與，顯示出其作為文化生產者和政治主體來證實個人和集體的能動性。而社會運動與公民新聞的結合則使那些被大眾媒體所忽視、邊緣化的議題在「另類公共領域」獲得能見度並得以持續，甚至改變政治經濟系統的決策。此三者相互影響、動態關聯，雖過程與效果各有差異，但貫穿其中的是一種守望相助、休戚與共的社群情感。

Previous studies on citizen journalism rarely investigated the associations among citizen media, citizen reporters, and citizen journalism practices, as well as their online-offline interactions. This paper develops a three-level analytic framework of communication empowerment to examine local practices of citizen journalism in Taiwan, as represented by the PeoPo citizen journalism platform. Qualitative data collection and analysis reveal that citizen media has not reconfigured the media ecology. Yet, as change agent, citizen media has contributed to emancipating, cultivating, and aggregating individual citizen reporters’ democratic communication through mediating their cognition of media access and participatory media production. At the community level, citizen reporters are able to manifest their agency as cultural producers and political subjects both in normal and crisis situations. At the societal level, the online and offline collaborations between citizen media and social movement organizations give rise to more visibility and continuity of social movement issues in an alternative public sphere. The influences of emotional resonance among citizen journalism practitioners at different levels are also discussed.