Crisis Reporting: Citizen Journalists
In the age where social media is intertwined with our every-day lives users are now more active than ever before; but is this always a good thing?
*This post does contain some distressing images*
No longer the passive consumers fed news through official platforms, users are now breaking critical events from an eyewitness point of view in real time, even before it reaches news channels. The internet has given users the ability to transmit their information instantly and globally, a power once reserved only for media and news corporations. This coins the term — citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is not the future it is our present.
The general public have an active role in distributing and collecting news and information.
A few core advantages of Citizen Journalism:
- Giving ‘the people’ an active voice
- Changing from passive audiences where the news being presented would just be accepted to active participants who can broadcast their own findings
- Allowing audiences to challenge the traditional news platforms
Rob O’Neill declared this is one of the most amazing developments in the history of media;
“Victims and witnesses are taking pictures, posting them, sending texts, emailing and phoning in eyewitness accounts to mainstream media”.
Being in the moment
A citizen journalist can capture a crisis or event as it unfolds in the moment — unlike official news platforms who are notified of the event and reporting on the evidence left behind after the event has occurred.
An example of an eyewitness by-stander breaking critical news before official platforms was during the Boston Bombings. In 2013 two bombs detonated during the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds.
This tragic event was first reported through Twitter one minute after the first bomb. This is the picture that was taken at the scene from an eye-witness account.
More and more tweets and images flooded news feeds until it was picked up by official news channels, six minutes after the initial online discussions had begun circulating.
In this case the news channels relied heavily upon updates from the people in the area to establish what was happening, using pictures and footage from bystanders who were the ones to capture the shocking event unfolding in front of them.
Today, the first person on the scene with a phone is usually the one going to break the story — and usually an ordinary citizen.
Being in the right place at the right time with your phone — sending out one sentence or a picture could change the world.
Multiple vantage points
With anyone having the ability to be a citizen journalist huge amount of content is produced from events being reported on, it can give true depictions as the story unfolds, and makes it easier for a true story to be pieced together. Therefore it cannot be slanted or framed in a certain way (which some professional citizen journalists argue is the case for large news corporations).
Citizen journalists are working to fact check news outlets version of events, to a degree they are working for the public to give them the real stories unbiased and unfiltered.
Tim Pool defines himself as a citizen journalist who is not beholding to corporations or advertisers, his information is straight from the source and on the ground — broadcasting live from all around the world.
Concerns over citizen journalism
Concerns have been raised about citizen journalism. From reporting incorrect facts to unfiltered content, it causes serious harm and distress to viewers, unlike legitimately licensed organisations who are trained and taught.
The Drum argues how journalists are trained to tell a story in a succinct, unbiased and objective manner.
“Yet, the public, when they share images from the scenes of breaking news online seem to have no such filter”.
They use the example of the Tunisia beach shootings in early 2017. Witnesses on the beach captured images of dead bodies and the gunman and took to share it on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter — distressing to the families who had not yet been informed by officials to identify the bodies and inform them that their loved ones had passed away.
The Drum argues these scenes of devastation can already be pictured in readers minds without such graphic and upsetting content — yet ‘ordinary people’ think it is right to post it as news.
They deduce that citizen journalism is used to satisfy the need for instant gratification, without thinking of the consequences or morals involved.
“Our desire to know something now, with little appreciation of really understanding the How, Why, Where, When. It is not journalism; it is just people passing on information to others without qualifying the facts”.
Fact or Fiction
Unlike traditional journalism where it is safe to assume the information being published is factual, it is difficult for people to believe citizen media as accurate.
Anyone has the ability to upload information online and present it as factual calling into question the validity and reliability.
Small Audiences
People still rely heavily upon official channels to get their information. Which unfortunately means citizen journalism does not have a large enough audience to make real changes within the journalism industry.
While social media and blogging can increase viewers and readership, it is hard to compete against the huge conglomerates that control the news platforms.
While citizen journalism can fill the gaps of mainstream media it still remains a field of uncertainty. It lies within the category of unreliability, inaccuracy of reports and unchecked facts. Readers remain hesitant of its validity and turn to conventional news channels for the information they deem correct.
