Participatory Journalism In Action
from the recording-the-news dept
There's been plenty of talk about "citizen journalism" and how things like cameraphones would help turn the average person on the street into a photojournalist. It appears that's happening extremely quickly (so much for those who said cameraphones would never be useful). After the London bombings this past summer, apparently the BBC received about 1,000 images from the public. After this weekend's oil depot explosion, they received well over 6,000. Obviously, there may be other factors involved -- but it is still interesting to note just how many people appear to be snapping photos and sending them in to news organizations. Of course, now the cameraphone curmudgeons will start complaining that people are standing around taking photos instead of helping when emergencies occur. In the meantime, for news organizations struggling to figure out how to embrace this internet thing (it's catching on, apparently), this is yet more evidence that people want to be a part of the story by helping to spread the news, not just consume it.
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No Subject Given
The first question that comes to mind is how many different people sent pictures and how many sent multiple (and what is the average number) pictures though. I have a hard time believing that 6000 people (or anything near that) had pictures of a single spontaneous event they thought were news worthy.
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Over 10 million people saw it
I think a major reason for the number of pictures is that so many people have seen this.
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Flickr photostream has over 700 images
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