Citizen journalism floods in
Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Nic on 24-07-2007
Tagged Under : citizen journalism, flooding
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The recent spate of flooding in the UK has proven to be a wonderful platform for citizens to feature on major news networks.
Watching Sky News this morning (yes, I watched Sky News this morning) I was astounded by the reports coming in on the channel. It seemed as though there were no employed “proffesional” journalists in the field. I’d say most, if not all of the footage from one report came solely from citizens suffering from the floods.
This makes sense since much of the country is underwater, which makes it tough for journalists, trucks, camera crews etc etc, to get to the places.
Mr Maher might find some point against this, but I feel that this is where CitJ is very relevant and useful. It might even be the logical way to cover this sort of event (can one call floods an “event”). Instead of asking one journalist to try and cover and entire span of tragedy, ask the people living it to send in their footage. It’s easy in todays day and age.
This streamlines the process, allows citizens to feel important and special because they had their footage played on TV and allows for the news station to appear to be caring about what is happening from the view of the citizens.
Yes Nic, you’re right - eye-witness accounts were invented in 2004.
hahahahaha, That’s true, eye-witness accounts weren’t invented in 2004… But the ability to not require a journalist to interview an eye-witness for their information, photographs, videos or data is a recent development that makes their input relevant and important in situations like these!!
What is your point? Surely those people would be launching their new FloodNEWS online TV news channels rather than emailing video clips to Sky if you were right?
uhu… They would definitely be doing that if electricity and water weren’t such good mates. I wonder if any of them have access to internet when THEIR WHOLE TOWN IS FLOODED…
And let’s be honest, the average citizen does not believe that recognition online is necessarily as interesting for them as recognition on a major news network like, say, Al Jazeera, Sky, CNN, Fox, BBC or any of the others.
Most people also do not have the means, know-how or interest to blog, start a network about their information or upload photos and videos.
Come on, you are assuming that everyone is an online fundy and can make their own media work for them. Many people simply have a digital camera that takes photos and videos. Not everyone knows how to upload that stuff on to online services to let the world know. There is surely more exposure to get your one video on TV than upload it on to YouTube?
I agree completely and the same applies to their journalistic skills, so basically the “citizen journalism” is really just User Generated Content in the mainstream media. Thanks for making my argument for me.
[...] Nic and I are about to start an argument that will last for weeks if not months or years. Here is Nic’s argument in his post Citizen Journalism floods in: [...]