Do you Twitter? It seems to me that Twitter has emerged from the shadow of Facebook to become the social media site of the moment. I hear friends raving about it; I see students procrastinating on it in the computer labs at uni; and I must admit that I enjoy reading the celebrity Twitter section in the mX newspaper. However, I am yet to participate in this activity myself, as I ponder – who would want to know what I am doing? Nevertheless, I find the concept of Twitter quite interesting. Of particular interest, is the way in which mobile devices are used to contribute to social media sites such as Twitter, which often serves as a platform for citizen journalism.
Bowman and Wills (2003, cited in Bruns 2008, 144) describe citizen journalism as “the act of a citizen, or a group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information”. Modern technology such as mobile phones and the Internet enable ordinary people to capture, report and share news with others.
The trusty mobile phone has come to be used for so much more than making a phone call; it serves as a valuable tool at the disposal of citizen journalists. Significant technological advances in mobile photo and video capabilities mean that mobile phones now boast high-resolution cameras and video recorders. In addition, users can access the Internet with the latest mobile devices. In this day and age, many people own a mobile phone and carry it with them. As a result, mobile phones are often used to capture, record and share newsworthy events as they happen; via text, photos and videos uploaded to the World Wide Web – often before professional news reporters and camera crews even make it to the scene.
Using their mobile phones, ordinary citizens have captured “some of the most powerful news images”, according to Wray (2006) from the UK’s The Guardian. Wray (2006) refers to footage captured during the Asian tsunami and the terror attacks on the London Underground. More recently, major events such as the Hudson River plane crash and the Mumbai terror attacks have been reported first on Twitter (Thornton, 2009). Twitter can serve as a tool to provide people with a platform to voice their news to the world, while newsworthy images can be uploaded to TwitPic for visual aid. Below is one of the first images of the Hudson River plane crash, that was caputured by an ordinary citizen and posted to his TwitPic page.
Increasingly, news companies are attempting to cash-in on citizen journalism. One of the most popular ways in which companies are doing so, is by creating online forums where users can contribute their news items. iReport is an online news site created by CNN. Developed around the concept of citizen journalism, the site is comprised of news gathered and submitted solely by its users. EyeMobile by CBS, is based on the same idea; mobile phone users can post videos relating to a particular news item and can send in content straight from their mobile phone via MMS or email. Mobile phone network 3 has considered the idea of creating a direct channel where users could send their newsworthy mobile media, which would be fed to television news bulletins (Wray 2006).
There are an increasing number of platforms in which ordinary people can engage in citizen journalism. Mobile devices and social media sharing sites are just a couple of tools at the disposal of citizen journalists. What’s in your citizen journalism tool belt?
Tags: citizen journalism, mobile media, twitter
