Alternative/ Citizen Journalism

Holly Jones & Sophie Bennett

What is it?

Alternative or ‘citizen’ journalism in its simplest form is…• Not produced by professionals • Created by People from outside

mainstream media organisations • These people write and report from

their position as citizens

Media Platforms

Which sites can be used as platforms for citizen journalism?To name a few…• Facebook – photo, location, events and

video share• YouTube – video share • Flickr – photo share• Twitter – location, events and photo

share

Hudson River 2009

YouTube

Prime example of citizen journalism• Captured by people outside the mass

media • Signified by the name “YOU” tube

Oscar Grant 2009

Oscar Grant shooting incident – killed in a subway station, recorded by passengers on mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube causing protests among online and offline communities.Video coverage from YouTube was used as official evidence in the following court case.

Covered in the essential reading ‘'This is citizen journalism at its finest': YouTube and the public sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident’ - Mary Grace Antony and Ryan J. Thomas

Guard-Dog Theory

States the Journalists and mass media support…• Dominant political institutions • Major economic groups & their

values

The guard-dog media can sometimes attack an individual in power as opposed to the passive “lapdog” theory

Toronto G20 Protests- Protesters were encouraged to document events using social media, resulting in 11,556 tweets, 222 videos and 3,338 photos. - Categorised by #g20report

Covered in the second essential reading ‘Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr as platforms of alternative journalism: The social media account of the 2010

Toronto G20 protests’ -Thomas Poell and Erik Borra

A Critical Look

Focus on issues, especially those not in mainstream consciousness.

Vs.Huge moral bias- mainly focused on actions of the police.

“Like mainstream reporting, these accounts were dominated by the violence that accompanied the protests….accounts that were squarely focused on the violence and spectacle that accompanied and eventually overtook the protests. Of course, a major difference from traditional mainstream protest reporting is not that the protesters in the social media account are depicted as deviants, or outlaws, but that attention is paid to excessive police violence. Nevertheless, the result of activist social media reporting is just as tragic: the attention is drawn away from the original issues at stake in the protests.”

http://blog.witness.org/tag/citizen-video-blog-series/