Posts tagged citizen journalism
In comparison with other areas on the globe, the West Bank and Gaza might seem to many to be “flooded” with media. This is true in a sense, but it also misses a point. Traditional media, including local outlets, tend to go to the most expected places, and film the familiar shots over and over again. Both Israelis and Palestinians are tired of hearing the same news, and media outlets are less inclined to send crews to film an “occupation.” This leaves a great deal of space for citizen journalists, and the West Bank contains many of them.
Our model of citizen journalism is based on working with the “regular” local population, rather than with activists, and many of the videos we publish are filmed from windows, balconies and roofs rather than by someone involved in the incidents. This, I think, gives the videos a special quality, and helps the Israeli audience see the reality from the eyes, or camera lenses, of ordinary Palestinians. It is also important in terms of access, and allows us to monitor and document incidents that occur daily in Palestinian streets and fields.
Aleppo
Via the Times of Israel: This citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows people searching through the debris of destroyed buildings in the aftermath of a strike by Syrian government forces, in the neighborhood of Jabal Bedro, Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday Feb. 19, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Aleppo Media Center)
The Aleppo Media Center (English) is on Facebook.
Who reads music writing? There’s obviously a core of readers invested in what reviews and think pieces have to say — they debate on Twitter and in specialist havens like I Love Music, on their Facebook feeds and even sometimes in the comment sections. The economics of the web, which are both more directly tied to traffic numbers and lower-margin than those of print, make that audience too small to make any economic sense as a core demographic; readers outside the Best Music Writing-obsessed have to be reached as well.
Maura Johnson, NPR Music. What Happened To Music Writing This Year?
Johnson is on to something, and it’s not just about music writing — it’s about journalism as an increasingly porous activity. Lists and lightweight news bites regularly become the day’s most shared content. And many people who would be receptive to more in-depth, thoughtful content are likely banging out article-worthy ideas in online conversations.
She continues, asking a question all up-and-comers should ask themselves:
And this is where the larger quandary comes in. If the idea is to “serve the reader,” does that mean exposing them to new things they haven’t heard and ideas that might not have been aired yet, or does it mean pivoting off the conventional wisdom in some way?
H/T: Jay Rosen.
Global Voices and the Power of We
See Global Voices, a citizen journalism site that does an incredible job of providing passionate people with a place to coordinate and research, write, translate and distribute online news. Above is a case study of a land grab in Brazil, and follows the story from idea to Italian, among other languages.
Citizen Journalism Outfitters in Cairo Succeed in Crowdfunding Campaign
An Egyptian “media collective” called Mosireen, which trains journalists and activists in the Cairo area, successfully finished its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
From an interview with the collective’s leader, Salma Said, posted at The Lede:
The activists initially came together to build an archive of clips documenting the street protests of early 2011, Ms. Said said, but then, struck by the lack of independent reporting on the post-Mubarak government, they began to make their own reports, often incorporating video recorded on phones. Given that the airwaves were still dominated by state channels that were loath to broadcast any critical reports on the country’s new rulers, the Mosireen activists staged a series of public screenings of video that challenged official accounts of clashes, like the claim that the security forces only used force against “thugs,” not peaceful protesters.
With it, they’ll continue to screen films, train journalists, and do archival work. See their videos, taken by those they’ve trained in workshops, on YoutTube or in Cairo.
Calling all Citizens: You Have a Right to Record
Today is a day we can (and should) all be journalists, especially if we witness voter suppression. Here’s how to do it safely.
Video the Vote is a nonpartisan effort to train thousands of people to document any instances of voter suppression and disenfranchisement at polling places across the U.S. The group is particularly interested in finding people who can livestream from swing states where there is a heightened concern about ongoing voter-suppression efforts (see a full list of target counties here). Video the Vote is even offering a $100 stipend to volunteers.
If you’re planning to record from a polling place or interview voters, it’s important you know your rights and understand local laws. Video the Vote has put together a great set of resources to help citizen journalists. A few key points from the group’s Election Day Code of Conduct include:
- Observe and document; don’t influence.
- Remain a legal distance from the polling place.
- Get permission from voters before you film them.
- Never argue with a poll worker.
Before you head out, contact Barni Qaasim at Video the Vote at barni@videothevote.org for more information and to connect with other citizen journalists in your area.
Harvard’s Digital Media Law Project has an excellent and detailed legal guide to documenting the vote.
FJP: Go vote! Be smart. And be fearless.
Five Ways to Get a Grant to Finance Your Journalism Career
1. Be Specific in Your Application
Think of a topic, project or proposal that you are excited about. Then make it more specific. Then make it even more specific.
2. Like a Good Reporter, Do Your Research
Once you’ve chosen a proposal, seriously investigate the organizations that are most likely to care about your work.
3. If a Grant is Only Available to Organizations, Don’t Get Discouraged
A huge chunk of grants are designed to support nonprofit organizations but, as it turns out, there is a way for strong individual applicants to take advantage of them anyway.
“If a foundation is interested in giving you a grant, but they only fund organizations, you can go through a fiscal sponsor,” Kira Kay, executive director of the Bureau for International Reporting, said by phone. “They provide you with the administration and legal legitimacy of a nonprofit, so you can harvest foundation grants that aren’t normally available to individuals.”
Here’s how it works: Fiscal sponsors are official 501(c)(3) public charities that are eligible to receive nonprofit grants, but can pass their sponsorship onto individual grant applicants. By going through a fiscal sponsor, individuals can seek grants and solicit tax-deductible donations in the same way that nonprofit organizations can.
4. Consider Grants that Aren’t Specifically for Reporters
If you’d like to do an international project, look for grant funding from NGOs, aid organizations, or research foundations that focus on your country, region or topic of interest. For example, the Luce Scholars Program offers grants for projects in Asia, while Inter American Press Association Fellowships fund projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
If you work in multimedia formats, consider grants for photographers, radio producers and filmmakers, such as the Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant orNational Press Photographers Association Grants. Even broad grants that fund general research projects, like the Fulbright, can be great ways to subsidize long-term freelance reporting work.
5. Demonstrate Potential for Success
So for journalists who don’t have a well-established portfolio of clips (or don’t have clips that are relevant to their grant project), examples of self-published work can be just as useful.
“I’m a big believer in producing a project that you believe in that showcases your skills and putting it on your own website,” Moore said by phone. “People who are interested in funding don’t care whether your project has appeared on NPR — they just want to know that you can get a project done.”
Whether we are dealing with a historian or an economist, a surgeon or a reporter, we need to understand how these professionals go about their work so that they can with some confidence, put forth a proposition that they believe to be true. If we do not trouble to understand the method–say, that of a blogger versus a trained reporter, or a barber versus a board-certified surgeon–then our chances of ascertaining truth are sharply reduced.
Howard Gardner, as quoted in my reflections on last week’s Poynter Ethics Journalism Symposium.
We’ve published the reflection over at our brand-new theFJP.org, which we also launched last week.
So head on over to read: “Reflections on the #PoynterEthics Journalism Symposium from a Starry-Eyed Attendee“ -Jihii
(Starry-eyes refers to this embarrassing post.)
The VO1CE Project: citizen journalism and development
Think citizen journalism, think crowdsourcing, think video-documentaries, think advocacy, think mapping, think civic media. This is what the Vo1ce Project is about. An idea developed by Angelo Greco and Marija Govedarica focused on training citizens in underserved communities to report on sensitive issues and then publishing their findings on a web-based platform. Vo1ce’s goal is to foster community development by engaging marginalized localities in documenting and sharing information.
“We decided to focus, at least on this early stage of the project, on covering censorship because the problem is everywhere, and we think it affects every single layer of the communities in the Americas”, said Greco, a graduate from The American University, during an interview in a cafe in Mexico City.
Currently, Vo1ce has ongoing projects in Serbia, the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. Angelo was visiting Mexico City looking for citizen journalists, journalists, activists, and human rights advocates willing to join the censorship project that is about to take off in the Latin American countries. After his stop in Mexico, he traveled to Medellin, Colombia, also looking for supporters. (Interested in joining the cause? send an email to info@vo1ceproject.org)
Why are they focusing in Latin America?
The complexities of the region in terms of the challenges faced by underserved communities and the interest of professional journalists to mentor citizen journalists are a great mix they’ve found in the region, said Greco.
According to Greco, the main challenges ahead for Vo1ce will be to find journalists and activists willing to join the cause, developing a friendly-yet-professional mobile app to help capture and transfer footage and then find the best way to publish the findings of their different projects in a visually compelling platform.
The Vo1ce Project is an NGO currently going through a fundraising campaign.
Image: Angelo and Marija founders of the Vo1ce Project.
Today, I also read the diary written for the BBC (in Urdu) and published in the newspaper. My mother liked my pen name ‘Gul Makai’ and said to my father ‘why not change her name to Gul Makai?’ I also like the name because my real name means ‘grief stricken’.
My father said that some days ago someone brought the printout of this diary saying how wonderful it was. My father said that he smiled but could not even say that it was written by his daughter.
14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, in her 2009 diary for BBC Urdu, about life under Taliban rule.
She wrote the series under a pen name until the Taliban were driven out of Swat, after which her identity was known and she won a national award for bravery, as well as a nomination for an international children’s peace award.
On Tuesday, she was shot.
BBC reports:
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman told the BBC they carried out the attack.
Ehsanullah Ehsan told BBC Urdu that they attacked her because she was anti-Taliban and secular, adding that she would not be spared.
Malala Yousafzai was travelling with at least one other girl when she was shot, but there are differing accounts of how events unfolded.
One report, citing local sources, says a bearded gunman stopped a car full of schoolgirls, and asked for Malala Yousafzai by name, before opening fire.
But a police official also told BBC Urdu that unidentified gunmen opened fire on the schoolgirls as they were about to board a van or bus.
She was hit in the head and, some reports say, in the neck area by a second bullet, but is now in hospital and is reportedly out of danger. Another girl who was with her at the time was also injured.
FJP: Horrifying.
Mitchell Stephens on Living in an Amateur Society
NYU Professor Mitchell Stephens is convinced that the steady rise of non-professionals creating journalism content is a very good thing for news. We asked him to explain.
His reasons are several: to begin with, our general public is better educated today than ever before, the cost and expertise required to edit video and publish writing have dropped. And, he says, we online users, being such a large and diverse group, have a good handle on what makes good content and what doesn’t. We don’t need to teach media literacy, Stephens believes, because the competition among those making journalism sorts the good from the bad, and people know good content when they see it.
For more information, see his books A History of News and The Rise of the Image the Fall of the Word. We’ll upload more of what he had to say over the next few weeks.
FJP: See here for more of our interview with Mitchell Stephens.
The Center for International Media Assistance has just released its latest report, by journalist and editorial consultant, Jane Sasseen. The report traces the rise of crowd-sourced video and its impact on the international news landscape.
No longer do professional journalists have a monopoly on the footage that is shot and broadcast. Perhaps most importantly, in repressive countries where media is heavily controlled by the state or other powerful interests, the video revolution has destroyed their monopoly on what will be covered or deemed newsworthy.
Instead, the man or woman on the street has a powerful new ability to record what is happening around him or her. Citizens shooting video and spreading it through social media have become critical eyewitnesses in exposing government repression and abuse.
The report also examines challenges:
If the rise of video has created new opportunities and increased accountability, however, it has also created increased challenges for journalism. Much of the footage shot by citizens around the globe and loaded onto YouTube or elsewhere is of poor quality, with little context or clear narrative.
“We’re getting into totally uncharted territory when it comes to using these technologies,” said Eric Chinje, the former head of the Global Media Program at the World Bank Institute who now oversees communications for the London-based Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which supports improved governance and leadership in Africa. “We’ve got to weigh the greater good that comes from them, but we also have to be conscious of what the potential dangers are.”
FJP: In light of the recent video that’s sparked outrage throughout the Middle East, let’s look at this from another perspective. The report is an in-depth look at how new citizen video production is, particularly in the Middle East. Granted, the discussion is largely about video-as-news. But Chinje’s worries can point—by extension—to the fact that the culture around independent video production is very new as well.
In the United States, the culture around video production is born from a long precedent of free speech. That said, our filters for video quality, credibility, humor, sarcasm, opinion, and fact are well-developed. YouTube and the like have very much helped to speed up our process of developing such filters.
In the Middle East, the way media is received and has historically been governed is very unlike in the United States. In Michael’s words:
Little has been said that in the countries where protests are taking place the media is government controlled. Whether this is hands-on control or self-censorship, people consider created media such as The Innocence of Muslims as something that has some sort of “official” approval. There isn’t necessarily a First Amendment concept where anyone, anywhere can go out and create a trashy hit piece, preview it in a movie theater and then throw it on a YouTube.
And just as the region is acclimatizing to its newfound democracies, it’s also acclimatizing to, and creating its own unique culture around media in the era of internet.
That, perhaps, can shed some light on why some in the western world have trouble understanding Muslim reaction to the film, and lack of Muslim gratitude to the US.—Jihii
The Hope of Participatory Journalism
Some time ago, we interviewed Farai Chideya, multimedia journalist, entrepreneur, and a lady full of heart, art, and passion. In this video, she discusses participatory journalism and the evolving world in which journalists, news organizations, and audiences can collaborate to create meaningful stories.
For more thoughts about citizen journalism, check out the FJP archives.
For more interviews with smart journalism thinkers, see here.
Guide to Reporting at the 2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions
The Citizen Media Law Project has released guides for covering the upcoming conventions.
Via Berkman Center:
As we mentioned already, the conventions are creatures of chaos. Thousands of journalists and even more demonstrators will descend upon these cities. These crowds are typically met with an overwhelming police presence, and the clashes between protesters and the police typically result in numerous arrests. Avoiding police detention as a journalist is often a challenge, as a large tangle of laws regulates crowd behavior, and police often enforce these complex laws with sweep arrests of whole crowds.
Many experienced journalists are not strangers to such tough situations, but the nature of the conventions as “national special security events” presents special concerns, especially around the norms journalists establish with local law enforcement. The Secret Service takes the lead during these national security events, and the normal journalist–police relationships that allow journalists to report from over police lines are likely to be jettisoned in favor of a strict enforcement of the law.
The guides cover issues such as:
- Freedom of the Press in the Context of Convention Reporting
- Covering Activity Around the Conventions including “Free Speech Zones” and the issues surrounding them
- Laws Governing Public Assembly
- Public Recording, Wiretapping, Privacy and the “Right to Record”
- And, of course, a variety of issues surrounding Interactions with the Police.
PDFs are available here and come in a longform 60 page version, and a handy one sheet pocket guide.
- Page 1 of 3
- Next »
