Taking Tsunami Coverage into Their Own Hands

Steve Outing for E-Media Tidbits describes how the world turned to citizen journalists for eyewitness accounts and more as the crisis continues to unfold in South East Asia.

"The earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia and their aftermath represent a tipping point in so-called "citizen journalism." What September 11, 2001, was to setting off the growth and enhanced reputation of blogs, the December 2004 tsunamis are to the larger notion of citizen journalism (of which blogs are a part).

[...] Digital technologies -- the Web, e-mail, blogs, digital cameras, camera phones -- have evolved to the point where people on the scene share with professional journalists the ability to reach a wide audience, to tell and show the world what they saw and experienced. Where once disaster eyewitness photographs and videos turned up for widespread viewing only on news programs and in newspapers, today through e-mail, blogs, and a blogging infrastructure that spreads amateur news quickly and efficiently, they often find large audiences without the help or need of mainstream news outlets. [...]

Links to all Tsunami/cell phone stories posted in Textually.org.

emily | 2:33 PM | Citizens as Camera Phone Reporters |
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