Citizen photojournalism: changing the visual order of the news

1
Citizen photojournalism changing the visual
order of the news
Mervi Pantti mervi.pantti_at_helsinki.fi
2
Ethics

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

How do professional news organizations in the
Netherlands react to amateur images?
3
Pro-am model

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

4
User-generated content

• UGC is mainly text
• Published mainly online
• Moderation
• Payment is an issue
• Three categories
• news images (accidents and crime)
• weather / nature picture
• human interest

5
Misfortunes
Before we had footage, we already had video from
people who filmed it themselves, 15 minutes after
it happened
6
Sunsets
7
Memories
8
Authenticity
It looks good, even if its badly filmed, with a
moving camera, shaking images. It offers a lot of
authenticity.
I used news photos from blogs in Burma. Its
definitely more authentic it brings the news
closer to you
9
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.
10
Authority
I believe in user-generated content but I dont
believe that users can decide what is
news. Checking facts, something citizen
journalists dont do, is a condition to call it
journalism.
11
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