Availability
The JsonSerDe is available in Hive 0.12 and later.
Background
The JsonSerDe was moved to hive from hcatalog and before it was in hive-contrib project. It was added to the Hive distribution in HIVE-4895.
Usage
To use the SerDe, specify the fully qualified class name org.apache.hive.hcatalog.data.JsonSerDe
Create table, specify CSV properties
Depending on distribution you might need to add hive-hcatalog-core.jar
For general information about SerDes, see Hive SerDe in the Developer Guide. Also see SerDe for details about input and output processing.