Citizen photojournalism: changing the visual order of the news Mervi Pantti [email protected].

Citizen photojournalism: changing the visual order of the news

Mervi [email protected]

Ethics

How do professional news organizations in the Netherlands react to amateur images?

• 2 National newscasts• 2 Local TV news • 3 National newspapers• 2 Free newspapers• 3 Local papers

Pro-am model

• Democratisation of professional news media• Enrichment and corrective for journalism• Means for cheap and compelling material• Thread for journalism’s authority

User-generated content

• UGC is mainly text• Published mainly online• Moderation• Payment is an issue

Three categories:

1. news images (accidents and crime)2. weather / nature picture3. human interest

Misfortunes

Before we had footage, we already had video from people who filmed it themselves, 15 minutes after it happened

Sunsets

Memories

Authenticity

I used news photos from blogs in Burma. It’s definitely more authentic; it brings the news closer to you

It looks good, even if it’s badly filmed, with a moving camera, shaking images. It offers a lot of authenticity.

Responsibility

On Internet we published the picture without any problems. But when we wanted to put it in the newspaper, there were a lot of discussions. (…) Internet is different.

What we do to our own TV material, we also do to this material.

I believe in user-generated content but I don’t believe that users can decide what is news.

Checking facts, something citizen journalists don’t do, is a condition to call it journalism.

Authority

Discussion

• No threat to authority

• No collaboration, just more sources

• ‘Hard news’ images are rare

• Images have other (unexpected) values

• Community building as main goal