Everywhere I look it seems that folks are talking about the new role of citizen media in defining breaking news after last week's London blasts. I've been thinking a lot about what makes citizen journalism/citizen news so fascinating, and here's the start of my list:
-
immediacy — Information from direct participants can get out and spread much quicker than the information from a news crew who arrives on the scene even portions of an hour later.
-
directness — We don't care nearly as much what Joe Schmoe professional journalist called in to the scene has to say about his feelings an hour after the event has passed. His wasn't a direct experience of the event. We're compelled by the folks who were actually there, telling their stories. We're also, as it turns out, very concerned with the emotional content of the message, beyond the mere factual, "objective" stream as provided by a conventional news source.
-
amateurism/colloquialism — There is a compulsion to, and familiarity with, well-produced broadcast media. However, folks are also starting to realize the value of the "news" as delivered by someone who seems more like them, delivered in an informal way that can be likened more to passing information from friend to friend than from news source to consumer. It is already a natural process to receive news from our friends, but it seems that the connected web allows us to be open to new connections via news from "friends" we have not yet met, who become friends by virtue of their willingness to share with us. Though the relationship isn't always reciprocal, the existence of the connected web makes it more likely that it could become so. Perhaps our pool of "potential friends" grows significantly as a result which, if we remain open to it, could lead to an overall increase in feelings of connectedness.
Also interesting, and I'm not quite sure where it fits in, is the curious realization that, even in the face of mortal danger, we're somehow still compelled to document our experience. Clearly this represents some sort of social instinct, as a cameraphone shot of a bomb blast wouldn't do our individual selves any good should we perish in the process of obtaining it.
Please contribute your thoughts if you have other ideas on this…
1. I wasn't in London on the day, but I certainly felt compelled to produce a podcast on the streets of London on the Friday morning - more of a reflection on what had happened than a news story, but citizen media nonetheless.
I wrote a post the other week called "The civic duty to blog" http://www.perfectpath.co.uk/archives/000232.html in which I argued that in societies such as ours where a growing proportion of people have a university education it feels more and more absurd that we should only ever be consumers or recipients of news and not reporters, critics or analysts in our own right.
What I think is a bit sad is that while people seem to have accepted themselves as competent photographers, their confidence as creators in other media is still lacking - still lots of lights being hidden under bushels.
Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Lloyd Davis