Introduction
In this essay, firstly I will take the opportunity to expand on the topic of citizen journalists and the solutions they can offer to challenges in reporting on crises, which I have previously made a four-minute explainer video about for our blog, Creating a Solutions Culture. I’m glad of this opportunity for expansion, as I learned how difficult it is to include everything you want to say about a topic in a short video.
Secondly, this essay allows me the opportunity to critique my own video while putting forward the academic findings I have found in the course literature. I use the article Reflexive engagements: the international development blogging evolution and its challenges by Denskus and Papan (2013) for its insights into what my role in creating is video blog post could mean. I apply findings in this text to my critique of my own blog entry. A supporting text by Aysehan Jülide Etem, called Representations of Syrian Refugees in UNICEF’s Media Projects: New Vulnerabilities in Digital Humanitarian Communication (Global Perspectives 1 (1), 2020) is another valuable resource used in this essay for its specific theories on the process of representation.
What is a citizen journalist?
There is no single definition that covers the work of all citizen journalists in all contexts. As described by Wall (2019), the title has several disputed and wide-ranging parameters. Some say citizen journalists are just ordinary bystanders of an event who manage to record and share it. Others say they are those who lack the knowledge or skills to produce publication-ready content. There’s also the idea that they are simply unpaid journalists (Wall, 2019).
Citizen journalists tend to document things as they unfold. They use simple technology such as phone cameras and laptops to report on happenings in their communities. Since the dawn of live streaming across social media platforms, they have captured atrocities live in situations where professional journalists haven’t been able to access in time (Rains, 2017 in Wall, 2019). The raw nature and timeliness of these live streams in particular has the power to evoke stronger emotions in the viewer. The clips are more likely to evoke emotion and action than a well-edited professional news report of the same event.
Significant moments reported by citizen journalists
A key event in history, where a military regime cut a country off from the world but information still got out through citizen journalists was the Saffron Revolution that took place in Myanmar in 2007-2008. Events of the protests (led by typically non-political Buddhist monks) and violent crackdown by authorities were documented by video and photo and smuggled over land across the borders with neighbouring countries. These were then picked up by international news media and beamed across the world, “prompting international HR actors—ranging from NGOs such as Human Rights Watch to nation-state organizations such as the United Nations to informal social networks of online activists—to respond,” (Brough & Li, 2013).
A unique perspective
A citizen journalist is not removed from an event as a professional journalist from another place would be. They are personally affected by the events they document, and they have a very real understanding of the impact of what they record will have on them personally, on their family and friends and wider community. They deal with the aftermath of the natural disaster, violent conflict or act of aggressive repression. They are the ones who have to retrieve relatives’ bodies from the hospital, or rebuild their homes, for example.
A professional journalist is working on paid time and knows that when they clock out of their shift (albeit often arduous and risky work) they can remove themselves from the scene. Backed by a media organisation, there is funding and connections to support a journalist should they get into difficulty. Being a journalist in a crisis is not without its risks, but they do have the opportunity to leave a zone when it becomes too dangerous – often unlike those they are reporting on.
For my video post, I found some words from a clip by a citizen journalist from the Gaza Strip particularly poignant. The video, Inside the Gaza Seige: an eyewitness report, was captured by filmmaker Yousef Hammash and published by Channel 4 News on October 11, 2023. His words quoted below stand out to me more than any other new report covering the same event:
“We have been told to get out.
But where do we go?
And how do we get there?”
Pitfalls of citizen journalism
There is indeed good reason why journalists study for years to gain their qualifications. Skills around information verification, reporting ethics and technologies can be weak among citizen journalists who typically haven’t undergone the same rigorous training procedures. Citizen journalists are at the forefront of perilous circumstances and therefore often take extreme personal risk to report. They can be beaten or arrested for what they are doing. Without internet security training, they can be tracked down by the very oppressors whose malicious actions they are at pains to expose.
This type of reporting largely depends on having an unrestricted internet connection. Repressive regimes (like in Russia, Myanmar, and Iran) tend to restrict internet access, or block certain platforms at times of unrest. This can cause a major barrier to the immediacy of the reporting of citizen journalists. It highlights that this type of reporting is not immune to crackdowns.
A critique of my own video post on citizen journalists
For the purpose of this essay, I am going to critique my own video using representation theories as discussed by Aysehan Jülide Etem in Representations of Syrian Refugees in UNICEF’s Media Projects (Global Perspectives 1(1), 2020). As Etem writes, how a group or event is represented affects how we perceive that group or event (Said, 1978 in Etem, 2020). As proffered by Etem, my topic of citizen journalism, as with any topic, cannot be communicated absolutely completely – especially not in a short explainer video. Therefore it will always be divided into manageable aspects (Kidd 2015 in Etem, 2020). It is undoubtable that my choice of how to divide the topic into manageable, communicable parts is influenced by the fact that I am a white woman from the Global North. I didn’t realise this at the time. Additionally, my decision as to which divisions of this topic to include in my video is influenced by my whiteness. Perhaps if I was, for example, a citizen journalist in Myanmar, I would have focused on the many serious dangers of being a citizen journalist in the context of a repressive military regime. Thirdly, as Etem writes, there is power inequality in the method in which an item is communicated. I exercised this power inequality in my video. The language of the video is English and there are no subtitles. A video like this requires a good internet connection to be viewed. Etem’s points make me ask myself who did I really make this video for (apart from my classmates and teachers)?
What I learned from making a video as a blog post
Though I have made and edited videos before, I have never created the voiceover for a video or made explainer-style segments. I enjoyed the opportunity to hone my editing skills and learning that technologies make it quite easy to add your voice to a video. Though I am able to use Abode Premier Pro, I made this video using Canva which has a really handy feature for recording your own voice over a video segment. Canva does have its limitations and for any more flexibility on editing, I would have had to turn back to Premier Pro, but it’s good to know what simpler technologies can offer too. It was really challenging to decide how deep to dive into the topic and I found that the video could have been 10 minutes or longer and lost the interest of most viewers if I had covered all aspects I initially wanted to cover. A really valuable comment on my video post by user ‘Phil’ suggests looking into the negative sides of citizen journalism, especially by right-wing thinkers in the Global North.
“Yes, in authoritarian regimes and in highly restricted media access, like in Syria, Russia, Iran and Myanmar, citizen journalism is often the only way to get “the truth” out and inform citizens beyond state media. At great personal risk.
But in countries with free media landscapes, particularly in the GN, I’m sceptical of citizen journalism, as it’s often politically motivated. In Germany, for example, right-wing vloggers entered the parliament and intimidated politicians on camera. There’s also a very popular German vlogger “reporting” in line with Russian state propaganda from occupied territories of Ukraine.
I guess there’s both a constructive and destructive side to citizen journalism.”
This comment made me want to make another video about citizen journalism in the Global North and I think it would be very interesting to dive into that topic and compare the two contexts. The comment also made me think about the possibility of reframing the title and angle of the video to specifically focus on citizen journalism in countries under authoritarian or repressive rule.
What I learned about blogging
Before this exercise, I had honestly thought blogging had gone out of fashion – as so many things do in the fast-paced world of IT, information sharing and social media. I hadn’t thought so much about the advantages of a platform that allows readers to ‘deep dive’ into a topic or area of their interest. I had been only thinking of how we now seem to need to shape our information for dissemination in a way that catches people’s attention in a 30-second video while they scroll through hundreds of others on their phone screens (i.e. through TikTok).
Reading Denskus & Papun (2013) helped me recognise more of the positive values of blogging – and I’m particularly interested in the increased accessibility it offers. For example, it is more accessible than an academic book (which would have to be loaned or bought) and a conference (which would have to be travelled to, and a ticket bought for). Regardless of a person’s financial circumstances, location in the world, or academic qualifications, anyone can be a blogger or read a blog. You don’t necessarily need great IT skills, or any special equipment to write, read or engage with a blog. Indeed, blogging doesn’t have the restrictions of an editorial team that would process your content before publishing it.
I enjoy the format and style of blogging. It doesn’t have to be too serious or academic, and it offers great flexibility around how you push out the information, whether by text, video, music and sound, etc. For the topic of citizen journalism in crises, I found that short video clips emphasising the points I want to cover in the video were more impactful than paragraphs of text. The sound and visuals can more easily engage the attention of the viewer, and are usually more memorable than written text. Blogging offers a way for the audience to engage with the content, although social media has surely overtaken blogging for its ability to engage and interact with an audience.
However, as Denskus & Papun (2013) note, blogging is largely a phenomenon of the Global North. Research for their paper “found few contributions from local aid workers, researchers, and members of the public” who are not based in the Global North. In the sphere of development blogging, the authors found a tendency for blog voices to be coming from an already privileged vantage point such as from those already embedded in the development industry, and those in developed countries, or at least from the most developed urban centres of developing countries.
What I learned about group work
I enjoyed working as a group that had such a diverse background and range of skills. It was rewarding to be able to contribute my skills in web design and video editing while leaning on the journalistic and professional and personal experience of my group members to complete our overall task. Group work over different times zones is not without its challenges but ultimately, we as a group produced a more robust blog than if I was to create it on my own.
In summary
I have used this essay as an opportunity to dive further into the topic I covered in my previously published explainer-style video. I have gained useful insights into the value of blogging, and it’s pros and cons. From critiquing my own video, I know that I will produce something that is more aware of my position of privilege from which I create it.
References:
Brough, M., & Li, Z. (2013). Media systems dependency, symbolic power, and human rights online video: Learning from Burma’s “saffron revolution” and WITNESS’s hub. International Journal of Communication. 7. 281-304.
Channel 4 News. (2023, October 11). Inside the Gaza siege – an eyewitness report [Video]. Youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeuNRaNGQr8
Denskus, T., & Papan, A. S. (2013). Reflexive engagements: the international development blogging evolution and its challenges. Development in Practice, 23(4), 455–467. doi:10.1080/09614524.2013.790940
Etem, A. J. (2020). Representations of Syrian refugees in UNICEF’s media projects: New vulnerabilities in digital humanitarian communication. Global Perspectives, 1(1). doi:10.1525/gp.2020.12787
Kidd, J. (2015). Representation. doi:10.4324/9781315666785
Said, Edward. (1978). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin.
Wall, M. (2019). Citizen journalism: Practices, propaganda, pedagogy. Taylor & Francis Group.