citizen journalism

Power to the people

Clark Kent, Citizen journalist was the first on the scene to post the story of the Hudson River plane crash using a Twitter account via his mobile phone and this was also the case for the attacks in Mumbai. The video shows the story how Janis Krums, the citizen journalist of the Hudson plane crash is an example of how people use new technology unforeseen by the original developers.

Twitter was developed for:

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" (Twitter, 2009)

It also appears now that journals from major news outlets are also tapping into the Twitter feed to get early warnings of significant events:

"On Wednesday evening, I was travelling home from a night out, glanced at my phone and saw one of the people I follow on Twitter talking about Apple's new statement on Steve Jobs' health. That meant I could get straight to work on filing a radio piece." (Cellan-Jones, 2009)

The ethical issues of the rights of the individual balanced with the need to file a story and the public's right to know has been made harder to control with the "mobility of data" (Concept 5, 2009). With all the user content uploading to sites like Flickr, Twitter and personal blogs it's become an even more important question of rights? After events like 9/11, who has the rights to publish images like "The Falling Man" (9/11 The Falling Man, 2009)?

Would you like to see images of people you know in this situation. I wouldn't.

Reference:
Twitter. (2009). Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://twitter.com/

Cellan-Jones, R. (2009). Twitter and a classic picture. Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/01/twitter_and_a_classic_picture.html

Concept 5. (2009). Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=%2Fbin%2Fcommon%2Fcourse.pl%3Fcourse_id%3D_14736_1%26sc%3D%252fwebapps%252fdiscussionboard%252fdo%252fmessage%253faction%253dlist_messages%2526conf_id%253d_23724_1%2526forum_id%253d_47938_1%2526message_id%253d_558527_1%2526thread_id%253d552622%2526nav%253ddiscussion_board%2526course_id%253d_14736_1

9/11 The Falling Man. (2009). Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXnA9FjvLSU