New Social Media Tools Empower Citizen Journalism

Washington (AFP) – It may be inside a protest rally, or in front of a deadly shooting. Smartphones, video and social media are empowering citizens to tell their stories like never before.

This became clear with the live video earlier this month from Diamond Reynolds when she captured the aftermath of the shooting by a police officer of her boyfriend Philando Castile in Minnesota and streamed it live on Facebook.

The unprecedented live feed was just the latest in a series of events highlighting the power of citizen journalists to bring to light events and viewpoints that would otherwise not be part of mainstream media.

Citizen journalism has been around for centuries, but each technological advance has made it easier to reach more people, said Valerie Belair-Gagnon, who heads the Yale University Information Society Project and is an incoming professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota.

Prominent examples from the past include the 1963 Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and the 1991 beating by Los Angeles police of Rodney King and the events of the Arab Spring.

More recently, citizen videos offered immediate and intimate perspectives from Thursday’s truck attack in the southern French city of Nice and the 2015 rampage in Paris, as well as dozens of citizen confrontations with police in the United States.

“In each case, a new technology prompted us to be aware that citizens can contribute journalism in certain ways,” Belair-Gagnon said.

“In the shift we are seeing since 2004, citizen media is becoming fully integrated to journalism.”

Belair-Gagnon said the rise of citizen journalism is not necessarily negative for the mainstream media.

“For me, it’s a positive story because journalists are not the only gatekeepers,” she told AFP.

“The fact that the public or citizens are able to gather information and distribute it to the public provides an opportunity for richer storytelling.”

– Democratizing media –

Jeff Achen, executive editor of the Minnesota nonprofit group The UpTake, which trains citizen journalists, said the latest incidents show a “democratization” of the news media.

“Media can’t be everywhere, but there is something with a citizen telling their own story from their own perspective which can be very valuable.”

Achen, a former television and print report, said citizen journalism won’t necessarily replace traditional media but may augment it.

“With the legacy media, some of the news can feel manufactured and manipulated. It can feel corporate sponsored,” he said…(read more)

Source: AFP/Yahoo