1. Alternative/ Citizen Journalism
Holly Jones & Sophie Bennett

2. What is it?
Alternative or ‘citizen’ journalism in its
simplest form is…
• Not produced by professionals
• Created by People from outside
mainstream media organisations
• These people write and report from their
position as citizens

3. Media Platforms
Which sites can be used as platforms for
citizen journalism?
To name a few…
• Facebook – photo, location, events and
video share
• YouTube – video share
• Flickr – photo share
• Twitter – location, events and photo share

4. Hudson River 2009

5. YouTube
Prime example of citizen journalism
• Captured by people outside the mass
media
• Signified by the name “YOU” tube

6. Oscar Grant 2009
Oscar Grant shooting incident – killed in a
subway station, recorded by passengers on
mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube
causing protests among online and offline
communities.
Video coverage from YouTube was used as
official evidence in the following court case.
Covered in the essential reading ‘'This is citizen journalism at its finest':
YouTube and the public sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident’ - Mary
Grace Antony and Ryan J. Thomas

8. Guard-Dog Theory
States the Journalists and mass media
support…
• Dominant political institutions
• Major economic groups & their values
The guard-dog media can sometimes attack
an individual in power as opposed to the
passive “lapdog” theory

9. Toronto G20 Protests
- Protesters were
encouraged to
document events using
social media, resulting in
11,556 tweets, 222
videos and 3,338 photos.
- Categorised by
#g20report
Covered in the second essential reading ‘Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr as platforms of
alternative journalism: The social media account of the 2010 Toronto G20 protests’ Thomas Poell and Erik Borra

10. A Critical Look
Focus on issues, especially those not in
mainstream consciousness.
Vs.
Huge moral bias- mainly focused on actions of
the police.

11. “Like mainstream reporting, these accounts were
dominated by the violence that accompanied the
protests….accounts that were squarely focused on the
violence and spectacle that accompanied and
eventually overtook the protests. Of course, a major
difference from traditional mainstream protest
reporting is not that the protesters in the social media
account are depicted as deviants, or outlaws, but that
attention is paid to excessive police violence.
Nevertheless, the result of activist social media
reporting is just as tragic: the attention is drawn away
from the original issues at stake in the protests.”

12. http://blog.witness.org/tag/citizen-video-blog-series/