Media essays

Caught in the act

New technology is allowing the audience to become the news-makers and news-shakers

by Simon Gibson

(Author's note: The aim of this feature is to discuss the rise of the audience as a reporter and the technologies at their disposal. In recent times, much interest has been generated in this area within journalism circles. However, the "audience as reporter" concept is not entirely new. This current study shows similarities between the Mass Observation movement, early radio and today’s Internet. Finally, ethical considerations are briefly discussed.)

On the crystal clear morning of 1 February, 2003, a space enthusiast known only as "leadpenny" was in the process of writing an online diary. This individual probably never considered himself or herself a reporter. However, within 24 hours, the observations of this author would have even the Wall Street Journal sit up and take notice. The safe return of the space shuttle Columbia had become so routine, that no live televised coverage was planned that Saturday morning by any of the major American TV networks or leading cable news organizations. It was this amateur "web logger" on Freerepublic.com, who is credited with breaking the unfolding tragedy to a wide audience at least 11 minutes before any major media organization. Welcome to a new era in communication.
In this article, we will look at the effect of new consumer technologies on the existing Media, the subsequent rise of the audience as reporter and the historical context of these changes.
The audience in the hot seat
Less than one week after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, Leander Kahney of Wired magazine remarked, "One of the most striking things about the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York was the outpouring of outstanding Internet coverage from ordinary citizens." Kahney is referring to a phenomenon that has the Media in a tailspin: the rise of the audience as the reporter. With today’s technology, they number in the "potential" millions. She believes that not only was the citizen-produced coverage during that event sometimes more accessible than professional news organizations, it was often more compelling. "Amateur videos of the events posted on the Net are full of heart-wrenching expressions of shock, fear and disbelief. Even if the soundtrack is just a string of expletives, it's an emotional response that carries the story home," says Kahney. "And while there were many powerful photographs of the tragedy taken by both professional and amateur photographers, some of the most intimate and unexpected shots came from outside the community of professionals."
The same could be said of the iconic shuttle Columbia photograph taken by cardiologist, Dr. Scott Lieberman. Many photos were taken that day, but Liebermann is credited with the shot seen around the world: about half a dozen brightly glowing orbs plummeting to Earth with long trails of vapour streaming behind. What began as an attempt to record a rare event from his backyard, capturing the passing overhead of the spacecraft, became one of the most widely published photos of the disaster. With the assistance of a Texan newspaper, the photos were distributed worldwide through the Associated Press. In future, it is possible that dramatic footage such as this will be distributed without the help of an external news agency. The user will be able to post these images on the Internet themselves, especially since the tools of the trade have also become more affordable. For instance, there has been a significant decrease in price of high-quality digital SLR cameras over the last 10 years. Camera technology that was once $40,000 only five years ago is now around $5000. Low-end consumer cameras cost under $1000.
According to Vin Alabiso, vice president/executive photo editor for Associated Press, "given the technology of the day and our instant delivery abilities, pictures can now move further, faster than ever before."
Indeed, current technology allows people to be ready to take a photograph and send it, wherever they are. This blurring of the lines, especially in live reporting by the general public when it uses new technology, is something that excites Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News. He sees potential in the massive popularity of 3G mobile phones in Japan, "Some day soon, there will be a major, newsworthy event in Japan and there will be 400 photos taken of it in the first minute by cam-equipped cell phones." In this way, Gillmor says that the ‘former audience’ would provide the source material for the news organizations.
Updating online journals with photos taken by mobile phones is also becoming common. A recently created European venture, 20six.co.uk, allows mobile phone users to post pictures and text to personal journals. The company hopes to provide for two needs: the ability for non-technical people to start writing online easily; and to create the "key application" for mobile picture messaging that mobile phone operators have been searching for. The process has been dubbed "moblogging" or "photologging." With the emergence of mobile video, it is now even possible to "video-blog" or "vlog".
The effect of this relatively cheap portable technology has begun to filter into mainstream media. It is now common to see footage taken by bystanders using home video equipment on television news.
The Internet grows up
The Internet is only beginning to be recognised for its value in breaking news events. Steve Outing of Editor and Publisher believes that this shift has occurred recently – with the distribution of news during the United States and Iraq conflict of early 2003. Outing believes an advantage of this medium lies in the content. During the conflict, he found himself sitting in front of his television along with a lap top computer. He simultaneously watched television and clicked around the world’s top news sites. Outing notes that often he found the web-component of the war-news to be more satisfying, with alternative perspectives that television could not match. "While TV anchors started repeating themselves and filling air time with their own theories when there was a temporarily lull of new information, the Web with its hundreds of available news channels offered a respite when TV news started to flounder", he says.
"There's no question that online news is fully a part of the mainstream media and that millions of people turn to Internet news sites during breaking news events," says Dean Wright, the recently appointed editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com. Wright prefers to not look at the Internet as "new media" anymore, but a serious contender to Television and Radio. "I think we're already there," he says. "We're delivering reputable information and breaking news to millions of online users."
Not everyone shares this enthusiasm. David Carlson, media futurist and journalism professor at the University of Florida believes that we are still going to see the importance of Television for a while yet. "As long as Internet journalists have to write or otherwise generate content beyond moving pictures with sound, we can't compete in those early minutes," Carlson says. "The TV guys just have to show up, turn on a camera and hoist a satellite dish. I'm not saying that's easy, but I am saying that it's faster than the technology Internet journalists have available to them now. When we have bandwidth and technology to create a 'wearable reporting suit' or something of its ilk, that may change."
Clearly, there are still some major technical issues that the Internet faces if it is to be a mass media source during a crisis. Outing notes that September 11, 2001, increased the profile of online news, but the industry wasn't quite ready then for the level of interest. He says, "Millions of information-hungry online users flooded news Web sites – so many that the most popular sites' servers choked on demand. A year and a half ago, Web news wasn't quite ready for prime time."
Cost also remains an important factor for the public. Contrary to many popular myths, not everyone owns a computer with an Internet connection – not to mention broadband access. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates, over half of all Australian households had a home computer and one third had Internet access by May 2000. The online audience decreases further because the Internet appears to be an option only for the well-heeled and youthful: households with incomes of $50,000 or more were twice as likely to have access to a home computer and three times as likely to have Internet access at home, compared to households with incomes less than $50,000. The likelihood that an adult is an Internet user also decreases dramatically with age. In the 12 months to February 2000, 77 per cent of 18-24 year olds accessed the Internet compared to 13 per cent of adults aged 55 years or over.
So, your young (at heart), have a healthy bank balance and a broadband connection: is this enough incentive to banish your television to the garbage tip? Gordon Borrell, president of media research firm Borrell & Associates, would have you think otherwise. He argues, "If something is so urgent that consumers must see what's happening immediately, they're not going to be patient enough to watch a poor-quality video that doesn't match up with the sound – or click 'refresh' 10 times waiting to get that video stream from CNN.com." However, Borrell may need to reconsider after witnessing the extent that iridium satellite phones featured in the war-news coverage on television early 2003. The picture quality was comparable to broadband Internet and demonstrates that the newsroom editors felt it was this ‘immediacy’ that really mattered. John Benson of La Trobe University points out that it is the convenience of this new technology and the ability for the reporter to be "imbedded" inside the event that really counts.
We came, we saw, we blogged
Not only does Dan Gillmor believe in 3G mobile phones; he believes in "the blog" – the medium that some say will revolutionise journalism. He says, "This is my guiding principle in journalism. My readers know more than I do, and that's great!" Although difficult to define, weblogs are easy to recognise. A form of online diary, a weblog (or blog), is usually set out in reverse chronological order with the newest items at the top of the web page. The key feature of web logs is that they point you to other things on the Net.
Gillmor claims that Journalism has been transformed from Old Media, through New Media to We Media. It is now possible to use "the power and knowledge of people at the edges."
The power of the new medium is evident when looking at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference, held in Silicon Valley, May, 2002. Throughout the four days, approximately 50 of the attendees "blogged" the proceedings. On occasion, this became live: blog entries were being added in the middle of lectures, using laptops and the hotel's wireless network. Digital cameras also allowed pictures to be seen within seconds and chat rooms provided a worldwide forum. It set a pace that some traditional reporters found to difficult to handle. With a knowledgeable audience keen to disseminate the information, Ben Hammersley of The Guardian notes, "old school newspaper reporters were scooped so hard that most gave up and retired to the bar." He adds, "The loop was so quick, that by the end of many lectures, questions from around the world were being emailed to the bloggers, who relayed them to the stage, and in turn blogged the answers." Interestingly, the readership were not just passively listening to a correspondent describe the situation, they were reaching into the event itself through their "representative."
Perhaps the traditional journalist has good reason to be concerned: some webloggers have an axe to grind. Byron Fast, a Canadian weblogger and programmer, claims journalists are not going to change how they report news. He says, "This doesn't mean they are irrelevant or dangerous, it just means you have to listen to four blind men describe an elephant and create the correct mental picture yourself." He adds, " The wonderful thing about today is that you can read the opinion of dozens of blind men and women in weblogs, and although the spelling may suck, you can make a clearer picture of that elephant than people have ever had opportunity to do."
As Instapundit.com’s Glenn Reynolds puts it, we can now, "fact-check your ass." If the audience doesn’t accept the thoroughness of the reporter, they can now proclaim loudly just how fact-checked you are through message boards and blogs. Gillmor sees this unleashing of the reader as "both scary and liberating" for the professional journalist. "I think we've moved profoundly from the older period in which news was a lecture," he says. "Now the job is that we tell you what we have learned, you tell us if you think we are correct, then we all discuss it."
The direction that all this is heading is anyone’s guess. Hammersley concludes, "Whether the thousands of people blogging their own personal subjects can be called journalists, or whether they can make a living at it, or whether the wide availability of the free blogging tools makes for a hard time filtering the signal from the noise, are all debates starting now; but for the people consuming blogs as their premier news service, the arguments are somewhat irrelevant."
Blogging differs to Journalism because it does not have the same restrictions- if any. John Hiler of Microcontent News notes Journalism requires objectivity and an editor. He says, "If all bloggers followed the Journalism Code of Ethics, their blogs would be objective and edited. But would they still be blogs?"
The strength of weblogging is the ability for practitioners on similar subjects to link to each other. As a result, the reader benefits from having access to many different points-of-view.
With this in mind, are journalists going to make it on to the next endangered species listing? Not quite yet, according to Hammersley. "Blogs are not," he predicts, "going to take over the world. Rather they add something to the journalistic mix that was sorely missing." He notes, "On the Internet, everyone is the same size – and by allowing experts in their field to correct others, and be corrected themselves, almost in real time, blogs release the voice of the readership. They give an alternative – which for many here is all they ask."
He sees this alternative as a powerful tool for the journalist, not something to be feared, "What once was used for teenage journals has now, however, been co-opted by specialist reporters who can reach massive audiences almost for free."
Dé jà new
The audience as reporter is nothing new or revolutionary. Its pedigree can be traced back to 1937. In that year, Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings created the social research organization Mass Observation. They aimed to create an "anthropology of ourselves" by documenting the lives of ordinary people in Britain. The many volunteer writers and photographers documented different public situations including meetings, religious groups, sporting and leisure activities both in the street and at work. The goal was to record everyday events and peoples behaviour in as much detail as possible. After Jennings and Madge moved on, Mass Observation continued throughout the Second World War. With time, there was a gradual shift in emphasis away from social issues towards consumer behaviour.
If you believe the rhetoric from the IT gurus about the Internet giving the audience a voice for the first time, think again. Todd Lappin of Wired sees striking similarities between early radio and the Internet. He says radio pioneers of early last century were also bickering back then about the political, educational, artistic and even spiritual fulfilment that radio promised to the audience. Lappin notes all this changed after radio became commercial and the amateurs who helped pave the way were cast aside. Those who couldn’t pay for advertising lost their voice. "Maybe things will be different this time. Online media enables us to be both consumers and suppliers of electronic content," Lappin muses. "Perhaps radio wasn’t the right technology. But the Web and the Net may well be. Our job is to make sure that glorious potential doesn’t get stuffed into yet another tired, old media box."
One of the most influential media philosophers of the 20th century, Marshall McLuhan, spoke of meshing media, culture and technology long before Bill Gates was a household name. His work, Understanding Media, sparked controversy and debate which continues til this day. Formulated in the 1960s, his theory of an electronic global village offered an optimistic view of how electronic media could bring people back together. He is often quoted, "The medium is the message", a thought that describes how the tools shape ourselves. Put another way, the technology that carries the message, also shapes the nature of the message. Therefore, text presented in a linear, fragmented and static form, led to an overemphasis on reductionist thinking: a worldview dominated by logic and facts. On the other hand, McLuhan believed that the global village concept would encourage a more non-linear, preliterate and mythic form of thinking and behaving. Perhaps this is exactly what we are experiencing as we enter a new century?
New rules, new game?
Important ethical questions arise from the audience becoming involved in the news. For Bloggers, the rules of the game are currently being drafted. When a recent Wall Street Journal technology conference set guidelines that reporters were not to publish any comments by panellists without getting their permission, a number of bloggers at the conference did not adhere to such boundaries. Dan Gillmor notes the organisers, "made reporters promise that all sessions were off the record unless the speakers specifically agreed to put the comments on the record. Regular conference attendees were under no such restraint, and as a result we have coverage from the audience, not the journalists." Conference organisers can no longer make an event "off-the-record" for official journalists. Gillmor warns, "in the world of blogs and other self-publishing, these kinds of arrangements are unenforceable in any event."
The rules are changing and the audience is helping with the proof-reading.
In his book, Jamming the Media, Gareth Branwyn speaks of the way in which the public has an opportunity to make an impact through existing technology. However, it is not always clear what directions this technology can be pushed into. "The early developers of desktop publishing and the original architects of the Internet would undoubtedly be shocked by today’s personal media technologies and the wild diversity of their uses", he says. In the same way, how the public will use existing technology and what the effect will be on the Media is open for debate at this stage. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the flow of information exchanged between the audience and the Media. These first steps may mark the beginning of a new era for the role that the Media will act out in all of our lives.

Tragic teachers
Steve Outing of Editor and Publisher believes that there were important lessons from covering mass audience events, such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. An issue facing all journalists during a major disaster event such as this one is how to make their story distinctive. Outing has a solution. The Internet in the hours after this tragedy was already rife with theories, background data and first-person accounts. In particular, Outing cites Web Logging as being important for coverage and unique viewpoints, "We learned this lesson on Sept, 11, 2001, when weblogs produced by New Yorkers close to the scene of the World Trade Centre published their first-person accounts, photos, and thoughts in the hours and days after the terrorist attacks." He says that these authors were often everyday people, including many professional writers, willing to share their experiences with the world. "They provided colour and story tidbits that professional journalists missed, " he says.
Such resources were drawn upon again, during the unfolding tragedy of the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Mike Braun, Design Desk chief at The Vindicator says, "The Internet was indispensable in helping us find the graphic materials we needed to adequately represent the shuttle and its crew. The events of 9/11 and our response to them then helped to guide us this time as well. Our reactions to that day's events were a blueprint of how we handled the Columbia disaster."

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Author contact: sbgibson@bigpond.net.au