Two citizen journalists – before social media they were called amateur photographers – stood a few feet apart and took essentially the same picture. One was disgraced. The other won a Pulitzer Prize. Such starts a cautionary tale on citizen journalism and credibility.

According to Jay Rosen, media critic, author, and educator, citizen journalists are “the people formerly known as the audience.” With hundreds of millions of easily pocketed and retrievable camera phones bought every year by consumers throughout the world that provide internet access to social media for quick and convenient uploads that bypass traditional print and broadcast outlets, creators and the audience are one. We are the media. Nevertheless, because an event is recorded does not necessarily make it journalism.

The citizen visual reporter and the visual account documented, user-generated content (UGC), must have credibility. A disciple of the Chinese philosopher Confucius asked the master, “I’ve heard that credibility is the cardinal principle of conducting oneself in society. Is that true?” Confucius answered, “How can one be acceptable without being trustworthy? It is like a carriage without a yoke. How can one move forward? Without credibility, one has no restraint.” Not surprisingly, Confucius was an early advocate of the golden rule philosophy. He was also apparently opposed to hitching a ride on a passing ox cart.

Howard Chapnick (1996), author of Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism and longtime head of the prestigious Black Star picture agency cautioned, “Credibility gives [visual reporters] the right to call photography a profession rather than a business. Not maintaining that credibility diminishes journalistic impact and self-respect, and the importance of photography as communication.”

In a story that reveals its tone with the headline, “Real TV news stars rush to prostitute themselves on ‘House of Cards,’” Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times condemns the practice of actual journalists appearing in the Washington-based political drama on Netflix (Hiltzik, 2014). Reporters from “60 Minutes,” ABC, Al Jazeera America, CNN, Fox, NBC, and The New York Times have portrayed themselves on the show. For Hiltzik the issue is about credibility. “Losing your credibility is a high price to pay just for the sake of swanking around as yourself for a Hollywood soap opera,” he writes. “The loss of credibility for the news shows that employ people willing to turn themselves into live-action cartoons is even worse.”

A lack of credibility is often associated with the hedonism philosophy. Hedonism is an often-derided philosophy for a person to possess, almost always deserving of consternation. Who wants to defend another whose behavior is based solely on an individual’s sense of entitlement? Any visual reporter who performs an action to increase personal wealth, status, or standing rather than for professional reasons reduces credibility and is considered an example of hedonism.

Awards Signify Credibility

A man who hoped his philanthropy would counteract criticisms of his hedonistically inspired publishing decisions and lack of credibility established the Pulitzer Prize, one of the most prestigious awards given each year since 1917 for literary and journalistic excellence. In his will, the Hungarian-born Joseph Pulitzer provided $250,000 (almost $5 million today) to Columbia University to inaugurate a journalism school and to fund the Prize (Topping, 2017). He had many professional sins he wanted to atone. One of the most egregious was his circulation war with another hedonistic newspaper publisher of his day, William Randolph Hearst (Wierichs, n.d.). In order to sell more papers, attract advertisers, and promote their political agendas, the two sensationalized stories with frighteningly, large headlines, gaudy illustrations, stereotypical cartoons, faked interviews, and fake news. Their exaggeration of a minor conflict in Cuba between Spain and the United States so inflamed the will of the American public that it was blamed for the Spanish-American War in 1898. In addition, their outrageous, ego-driven, back-and-forth bidding war for the cartoonist Richard Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid,” the most popular cartoon of the day, led to the derogatory term for unethical behavior, yellow journalism (“The Yellow Kid,” n.d.). At least for Pulitzer, his legacy is repaired through his eponymous Prize. For Hearst, his is forever tarnished by his unrepentant actions and opinions and Orson Welles’ motion picture, Citizen Kane, a harsh view of the life of Hearst, considered one of the best films ever produced (Dirks, 2017). The stories of Pulitzer and Hearst prove that bad business decisions can be ruinous to one’s reputation and counters the argument that bad publicity is a positive outcome from controversy.

On April 19, 1995 at 9:02 on a bright, blue, cloudless Wednesday morning, a truck bomb loaded with about two tons of explosives detonated next to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. This surprise attack remains the worst case of domestic terrorism in American history. The blast destroyed or damaged more than 300 buildings, crushed 80 automobiles, caused ruin in excess of $650 million (more than $1 billion today), injured more than 680 persons, and resulted in 168 deaths that included 19 children. One of the most memorable killed that day was one-year-old Baylee Almon, seen gently cradled by the bare hands of firefighter Chris Fields in photographs taken by Lester “Bob” LaRue and Charles H. Porter IV. The bloodstained child held calmly and caringly elicits sorrow, solemnity, and a visual comparison to the Pietà, the work by the fifteenth-century Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti. Wednesday’s child is full of woe (Eversley, 2015).

As reported on the website Famous Picture Collection, Bob LaRue, 57, was a safety coordinator for the Oklahoma Natural Gas Company when he heard the explosion (“Oklahoma City bombing,” 2013). He assumed it was a gas leak. He raced to his car to retrieve a company camera kept under a seat and made several frames of the scene. After his film was developed, he got a call from a photo clerk that an editor for Newsweek magazine wanted to see his negatives. He was paid $14,000 (about $21,000 today) from the magazine with more money sent to him by other media entities.

Charles Porter was a 26-year-old loan officer for Liberty Bancorp in a building nearby with dreams of being more than a credit analyzer. With a keen interest in photography, he earned a little extra money taking pictures at weddings, the Bullnanza Rodeo, and for the University of Oklahoma’s athletic department. While working at his desk he heard what he later called a sonic boom and immediately ran to his car to retrieve his camera. He took a few pictures of damaged buildings, debris, and rescue workers while not thinking too much about what he had recorded. As he usually did, he later took his film to be developed at his local Walmart. As reported by Ben Crandell (2016), Porter described the reaction of the women in the photo department to his prints. “They were looking over my shoulder, and they started crying. [One] said, ‘Oh, honey, what have you got? What did you take a picture of?’ And that’s when I kind of went, ‘Wait a minute. Hold on. I might have something here.’”

What Porter had was a photograph he sold to the Associated Press that ran in newspapers across the globe and filled the cover of Time magazine. The next year he won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography, a rare feat for anyone, but especially rare for an amateur photographer.

The first amateur photographer to win a Pulitzer Prize was Arnold Hardy, a 24-year-old graduate student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta (“Amateur who took Pulitzer,” 2007). Getting home after a late-night date on December 7, 1946, Hardy heard a fire engine’s siren. After a call to the station he learned the location of the fire, the Winecoff Hotel with 240 registered guests. When he arrived the hotel was engulfed in flames. His son, Glen, later told a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “He stood on the sidewalk and watched people plummet to their deaths.” In the darkness and confusion of the situation he took four pictures using the flashbulb technology of the day. His final image forever froze Daisy McCumber, a 41-year-old Atlanta secretary. Miraculously, she survived the 11-storey fall. One hundred and nineteen died in the catastrophe, at that time the deadliest hotel fire in US history. Hardy sold his photograph to the Associated Press for $300 (about $3,700 today) and was published in newspapers throughout the nation. The next year, he won the Pulitzer Prize. As a utilitarian plus, his photograph led to changes in building fire codes across the country. In true amateur photography tradition, Hardy turned down a job with the AP and started a company that produced X-ray equipment. “The only pictures I’ve taken since then,” he admitted, “have been of family and on vacations.”

In 1954 another amateur won the coveted prize. Virginia Schau was a housewife from North Sacramento on a holiday with her husband near Redding, California. She happened upon the rescue of two men stuck in the cab of a semitrailer that teetered over the edge of a bridge that spanned the Pit River, a tributary of the Sacramento (Dhaliwal, 2013). As reported by Frank Van Riper, Schau’s husband and a passerby lowered a rope to the men who screamed for help. During the successful rescue attempt, Schau’s father reminded her of the Sacramento Bee’s photography contest. She ran to her car and retrieved her simple Kodak Brownie camera to take the picture. She won the $10 first place award (about $100 today) from the Bee and the next year the Pulitzer.

The third amateur to win a Pulitzer sold furniture in St. Louis. In 1989 Ron Olshwanger enjoyed taking pictures of fires so much he installed a police scanner in his car to arrive at burning infernos (Holland, 2008). Moments after he arrived at a house fire, he photographed firefighter Adam Long giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to two-year-old Patricia Pettus outside a burning house. Unfortunately, the child died from her injuries. Editors at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch paid Olshwanger $200 (about $400 today) and ran the picture on the front page. After he won the Pulitzer, he gave his cash award to the Pettus family. As another utilitarian philosophy bonus, the tragedy publicized the need for smoke detectors in homes.

Hardy, Schau, and Olshwanger all had one trait in common with professional photojournalists. Except for the sale of the image to a news organization and the $10,000 cash award from the Pulitzer Prize Board (worth today about $100,000, $90,000, and $20,000 respectively), none of them actively attempted to cash in on the picture’s notoriety by endorsing cheesy product tie-ins.

LaRue’s photograph taken on that fateful day is seldom seen, won no prizes, and remains a source of frustration for the citizen journalist all because he approved the use of the image on T-shirts, posters, and other memorabilia. After Baylee’s mother, Aren publicly condemned the use of her daughter’s image for tacky self promotions, executives of LaRue’s gas company told him to stop selling the image because of the negative publicity and on the grounds that it wasn’t his to sell. He used the company’s camera and film. After LaRue refused to stop profiting from the picture, he was fired after 30 years on the job. He eventually lost a legal battle with the company over the copyright. It is estimated that he earned about $40,000 ($60,000 today). He gave some of the money to charities, but the majority of the earnings paid his legal fees. The controversy and questions about his credibility propelled Bob LaRue into the back pages of history and nullified a fine photographic effort.

Although Charles Porter also allowed his photograph to be used for memorabilia companies, particularly Precious Moments, known as a manufacturer of overly sentimental dolls, jewelry, and figurines, perhaps because of his more modest personality, his reputation remained intact. Writer Anthony Feinstein (2016) reports that today Porter is a physical therapist living in Texas. His Pulitzer trophy rests in a glass cabinet next to his family’s fine china. In an interview he admitted, “Don’t mistake for one second that I think that I am any kind of professional photographer. I was in the right place at the right time, and I was prepared and equipped to take advantage of that opportunity” (Crandell, 2016). A clearer definition of a bystander photographer could not be better stated.

Still photographers, then, have been recognized by major photographic award organizations with most rules for entries simply stating that the pictures be published. For those who use moving images as the medium of choice, honors are bestowed by the Heywood Broun Award, the Emmy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the National Press Photographers Association, the Peabody Awards, the George Polk Award, among others.

However, despite the fact that citizens with camera phones have provided valuable moving image accounts during such news events as Iran’s Green Movement, the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, highly controversial police shootings, and countless other stories, award competitions, for the most part, do not recognize their achievements. And yet, over the years there have been extraordinary recordings made by average citizens that have changed the course of history.

For moving images, one of the most famous citizen journalists is considered to be Abraham Zapruder, a dress manufacturer with an interest in filmmaking. He used a Bell & Howell film camera loaded with 8mm Kodachrome II film to record in silence the assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas. The footage has been called the most important 26 seconds in film history (“Zapruder film,” 2011). The morning following the tragedy, Zapruder agree to let Life magazine publish frames from his film for a fee of $150,000 (the equivalent of $1,185,000 today). Although Zapruder died in 1970, his family retained the copyright of the film until 1999 when it was donated to the Sixth Floor Museum housed within the Texas School Book Depository from where Lee Oswald shot President Kennedy. The short film is available for viewing on the museum’s website and elsewhere. An interesting contrast to the violent message of the Zapruder film is the remix by artist Josh Azzarella (Azzarella, 2005). After the presidential party passes by the street sign, a smiling Kennedy continues on his journey without incident.

In 1991 George Holliday, a 31-year-old plumber stepped out onto the second floor balcony of his apartment and used a newly purchased camcorder to videotape the beating of motorist Rodney King by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The tape has been called one of the most significant pieces of video ever recorded after it was shown throughout the world (Troy, 2016). When four police officers were acquitted in a criminal case against them the next year, the film was cited as one of the factors that caused the worst rioting in US history with 55 persons killed, more than 2,000 injured, and more than $1 billion ($1.7 billion today) in property damage. Nevertheless, the prestigious Peabody Award was given to KTLA-TV that first aired the footage and not to Holliday. Years later as reported by Erik Ortiz, Holliday urged citizen journalists “to stand up and record when they see something wrong – as long as they know that what they’re putting out there reflects the truth.”

Still images and video from bystanders were used by news agencies to help tell the complicated story of the destruction caused during 9/11 and the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001. Most of the amateur visual reporters were unrecognized and unknown to the general public. However, with the internet, and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram along with websites such as the CitizenTube channel on YouTube, CopBlock (2017), and Photography Is Not A Crime (2017), amateur videos are easily uploaded and viewed by millions with those who recorded news events made public.

Although The Washington Post reported that police are responsible for 995 shooting deaths of suspects in 2015, few are recorded on camera. The exceptions stand out. Ramsey Orta, 24, filmed police give an illegal chokehold to Eric Garner (2014) that caused his death in 2014. The next year Kevin Moore, 30, recorded the arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore who later died in police custody.

In 2015 Feidin Santana, 23, a barber from the Dominican Republic filmed the fatal shooting in the back of Walter Scott by Officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina (“Walter Scott shooting,” n.d.). After Santana visited the home of Scott family members, he gave a copy of the video to the family. Concerning the decision to hand over the video, an action that a professional journalist would almost never do, Santana noted that the family was highly emotional and he thought about his position and their situation. “If I had a family member that it happened to, I would want to know the truth.” His action was based on the veil of ignorance philosophy of feeling empathy for another. Slager was later indicted by state and federal authorities. The jury in the state trial was unable to reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared. A retrial of the charges is expected. Nevertheless, Slager pled guilty in the federal civil rights case.

In July 2016 two homemade videos of police shootings in as many days made the national news. In Baton Rouge, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot and killed after a struggle with police officers (“New video released,” 2016). A friend of Sterling’s and owner of a convenience store where the event took place, Abdullah Muflahi, filmed the incident. The entire footage was shown on the website The Daily Beast. Arthur Reed, a Black Lives Matters activist who heard about the arrest on a police radio scanner and arrived at the store also made a video of the shooting through a car’s window. The next day in a suburb outside St. Paul, Lavish “Diamond” Reynolds sat in the driver’s side of a car next to her fiancé, Philando Castile who was shot four times by a police officer. He later died from his wounds. Reynolds’ four-year old daughter sat in the back seat. Reynolds used Facebook Live, a video-streaming service for smartphones, to broadcast the ordeal (“Lavish Diamond Reynolds,” 2016). Her voice-over narration as she talked with the officer was extraordinary, as most bystander clips do not include detailed commentary. In 2017 a jury found the police officer Jeronimo Yanez who killed Castile not guilty on all counts.

The rash of publicized police shootings allegedly inspired a mentally ill Afghanistan War veteran a day later to ambush police officers after a peaceful protest march had ended in downtown Dallas, killing five and wounding seven. News coverage of that story combined footage taken by journalists with professional television equipment and citizens with camera phones. Video from Sidney Johnson, an intern with Central Track, a Dallas-based web publication showed police cars, downed officers, frightened passersby, the sound of gunshots, and someone yelling from inside a parking garage, “There are four cops down. There’s a sniper from up here somewhere” (“Exclusive video,” 2016). And then, “Holy shit.” Another eyewitness with a camera, Randy Biart made his video available to the Associated Press and other news sources. His video is much more graphic (“Eyewitness video,” 2016). From the roof of a building it shows a shootout with police officers with shots from the assailant hitting DART officer Brent Thompson multiple times from behind at point-blank range killing him. A voice is heard to say, “He’s down. Oh, [expletive deleted]. There’s more of them.” Both videos are compelling visual documents, but the uncut, raw, and emotional voice-overs are typically not part of an edited newscast. None of the citizen journalists was cited for recognition by any award-granting television organization.

The reason still images win prizes for journalism excellence and bystander videos do not is because the expectation for a single image is lower than for a video. All that is needed for a single photograph taken by an amateur to be considered for a journalism prize is for the photographer to be able to provide basic caption information – the who, what, when, and where questions answered – and for it to be published by a news entity. However, for a video to be considered by an award-granting institution, it must be edited and produced into a package – it cannot simply be raw footage. To win a television award it must have a story arc that moves from a beginning to an end with compelling pictures, insightful interviews, wild sound, informative voice-overs, and so on. That’s the difference between still and moving image citizen journalism – although a dramatic storyline is always a vital component, it is the telling that is praised in moving presentations.

Nevertheless, that categorical imperative might be softening. The one rare exception when unedited video won a major journalism award was in 2010 when a George Polk Award was given to an anonymous camera phone operator that showed the death of Neda Agha-Soltan (Daragahi, 2009), a young music student during an Iranian election protest. The curator of the Polk awards, John Darnton explained the organization’s controversial decision with, “This award celebrates the fact that, in today’s world, a brave bystander with a cell phone camera can use video sharing and social networking sites to deliver the news.” Benny Evangelista (2010) reported that a Polk Award given to an anonymous bystander with a camera phone bothered Bill Kovach, a long-time journalist and chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, an organization dedicated to the future of the profession based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Kovach thought that viewers might too easily accept such reports by amateurs “at face value” when they should be skeptical if a report does not come from a traditional news agency. “Professional journalists are trained to adhere to values that give their reports credibility,” Kovach said. “But citizen journalists, especially if they are unnamed, may not have the same drive to try to help you decide whether or not it’s worthy of belief and that’s what journalism is designed to do.” However, he did admit that “The new technology has created the opportunity for us to have a direct relationship with people in the community and begin to draw them into [the journalism] process, make them smarter consumers of it and also make them potential producers of it whenever they are where the action is.” NBC’s Tom Brokaw could not credit the citizen journalist during the ceremony because it was not known who took or uploaded the video.

Professionalism Typifies Credibility

Whether a seasoned professional visual reporter who works for a well-known media entity to a teenager with a camera phone who happens to be at the scene of a dramatic news event, the line between the two citizen journalists – for both groups can be classified as such – becomes more gray and fuzzy as handy technology, the employment of social media, and the public’s acceptance of unverified visual reports are more commonplace. Journalism calls itself a profession because most of its members graduated from academic institutions, belong to organizations that promote the latest practices along with ethical behavior, keep up with trade journals and other publications specific to the field, attend conferences that provide inspirational stories, images, and workshops, and engage in active self-criticism when controversial actions are analyzed.

Telling a story in one picture or through thousands in a video takes a professional attitude that comes from intuition, keen observation of previous examples, and practice with a variety of stories and experiences. Graduating from an accredited journalism school that teaches the fundamental skills, critiques the work you produce, and challenges your personal ethics is a plus. In other words, you should not be called a citizen journalist simply because you captured moving images – you should be called, however, a citizen – a thoughtful, caring, and committed citizen that should be commended for risking your career, reputation, freedom, and even your life to record the actions of others you think are improper or illegal. As instances of questionable, violent, and illegal behavior are reported, citizens should record and make public their smartphone video so that the civic spotlight illuminates the darkest corners of maliciousness. Without citizen recordings, it is unlikely we would have heard of Rodney King, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and many others. Nevertheless, a conclusion should not necessarily be made simply from a compelling and emotional video. Conclusions should be drawn after a gathering of all facts, explanations, the motives of those involved, and after a period of introspection. Journalism provides a procedure for that process and credibility is earned by thoughtful, thorough, and timely reporting.

Nevertheless, journalism and the world’s citizens need your homemade, eyewitness, and bystander videos. By all means, keep making recordings and keep making them available to journalism organizations and on social media. But please, please, do us all a favor and turn your smartphone sideways for a horizontal picture.

An editor or a news director has a difficult choice. Just because a bystander video on first viewing is presumably significant or contains uncommon subject matter doesn’t mean that it should immediately be available for downloads from a website or aired on television. However, the pressure to do so is compounded after the clip has been shown on several social media sites. If already widely distributed, the argument goes, why not show it? A mass audience media entity demands an editing process in which professional discretion evaluates the credibility of the source, the news value and facts of the content, and the potential for causing more harm to participants and viewers than illuminating the incident. If carefully vetted and if warnings about gruesome content are given as part of a journalism package, chances are the ethics mantra has been satisfied: Do your job and don’t cause unjustified harm. Your actions can be considered ethical if your role-related responsibilities are met and any harm the presentation may cause can be clearly and understandably defended. In that way, professionalism and more importantly, credibility, is maintained.

See Appendix A for a professional’s approach to citizen journalism.

Case Studies

Case Study One

One of the most war-torn regions in the world is Syria. The conflict, which began in 2010, forced tens of millions of people from their homes, creating a humanitarian and refugee crisis. Many of those affected were children. Much of the reporting of the story focused on the refugee crisis – the difficult journey displaced Syrian citizens faced; and the sometimes less than welcoming greeting these individuals received upon arrival in Europe or the United States. And, no doubt, these are important stories.

However, also important are the stories of the people who have not left Syria but, instead, have stayed. However, few who live there have the training to do this. To try to fill this void, Syrian native Zaina Erhaim returned home in 2013 to train fellow citizens in the craft. She was sponsored by the Institute of War and Peace reporting. Erhaim trained more than 100 citizen journalists, one-third of whom were women who had never done anything like reporting before. Not only does this bring a unique perspective, but gives these women a chance to use their voice in a way that had never been possible before.

Ciobanu, M. (October 15, 2015). “Citizen journalists in Syria ‘start writing history.’” Journalism. Accessed June 29, 2017 from https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/writing-history-training-citizen-journalists-in-syria-/s2/a574666/.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Case Study Two

Almost everyone is familiar with Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that lets users write and edit content in a collaborative fashion. Not as many people, however, are as familiar with Wikinews. Wikinews is a sister site to Wikipedia, but rather than creating content about historical events or scientific terms, for example, the idea is to create news stories. However, like Wikipedia, Wikinews operates under the value that stories should be written from a “neutral” viewpoint, and not from one which means to advocate particular perspectives or agitate for change.

One of the first major events that writers used Wikinews to cover was Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, by in large, the site had a relatively low number of stories appear (during the first 20 days after the storm there were only 6, written collectively by 51 different people), and many were edited a significant number of times. This made reporting slow. As a result, even where Wikinews writers were trying to do good – say, by coming to agreement about how to best use language that would counter racial bias in reporting – the slow process meant that by the time stories were posted they did little good because they no longer had much news value.

“Category: New Orleans disaster.” (2017). Accessed June 29, 2017 from https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Category:New_Orleans_Disaster.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Case Study Three

Cell phone cameras have become one of the most important tools for raising awareness of police tactics, aggression and over-aggression and, even, police abuse against African American citizens. Recordings of police encounters with black citizens become proof when wrongdoing occurs, and they also act as catalysts for spurring protests and demanding that action be taken against offending officers, or to ensure better treatment against citizens of color in the future. In a way, the recordings show that anyone with a camera can be a journalist.

However, even as more activists and minority citizens take on this role, some in the police feel threatened by the ubiquitous presence of cameras. This creates even more tension between these citizens and law enforcement, and deepens the sense of distrust. Some police officers even suggest such photography and recording should be illegal. But this violates the First Amendment.

Gillmor, D. (August 16, 2014). “Ferguson’s citizen journalists revealed the value of an undeniable video.” The Guardian. Accessed June 29, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/16/fergusons-citizen-journalists-video.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Annotated Sources

Ahva, L. and Hellman, M. (2015). “Citizen eyewitness images and audience engagement in crisis coverage”. International Communication Gazette, 77(7), 668–681.

Amateur (nonprofessional) photographs have proliferated with the advance of digital technology, and are now widely available for use in news coverage of events and crises happening far away.

Bock, M.A. “Little brother is watching: Citizen video journalists and witness narratives”, in Citizen Journalism Global Perspectives, Vol. 2, Elinar Thorsen and Stuart Allan (Eds.). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

With the relatively recent explosion of cameras hiding in most everyone’s pockets, there has been a compounded increase in the amount of citizen videography used in breaking news. The cell phone camera and the occurrence of the everyday journalist has led to a new way of capturing minute-by-minute accounts of breaking news as it unfolds.

Cummins, R.G. and Chamber, T. (2011). “How production value impacts perceived technical quality, credibility, and economic value of video news”. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, pp. 737–752.

Consumers are apt at recognizing differences in production quality, but do not attribute production quality to a comparable increase in economic value. In other words, viewers are unwilling to pay for the higher quality content that they prefer. Several factors including video resolution, aspect ratio, audio quality, and shot stability play into determining production value, but the relative importance of each of these factors requires more study.

Firmstone, J. and Coleman, S. (2014). “The changing role of the local news media in enabling citizens to engage in local democracies”. Journalism Practice, 8(5), 596–606.

The role of communication between local government and local citizens is in a transitional period. Traditional media members tend to view their relationship with local government as a co-dependent one, and the traditional media views the move toward citizen media as a trend, not something more serious.

Mythen, G. (2008). “Citizen journalism and the transformation of news”. Journal of Risk Research, 13(1), 45–58.

Understanding there are inherent caveats associated with the quality of citizen journalism, Mythen finds that it is fair to conclude that citizen journalism can increase the amount of news for the public, and that the increase could raise the quality of the news when it improves upon already gathered news. He finds the greatest question to be the balance of speed of reporting in citizen journalism and the quality of the journalism which is being practiced.

References

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Azzarella, J. (2005). “Untitled #7 (16mm).” Vimeo. Accessed June 28, 2017 from https://vimeo.com/21680441.

Chapnick, H. (1996). Truth needs no ally. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

“CopBlock.” (2017). CopBlock. Accessed June 28, 2017 from https://www.copblock.org/.

Crandell, B. (May 13, 2016). “Unlikely Pulitzer winner Charles Porter IV to speak in West Palm Beach.” SouthFlorida.com. Accessed September 13, 2017 from http://www.southflorida.com/theater-and-arts/sf-charles-porter-iv-pulitzer-palm-beach-photographic-centre-20160513-story.html.

Daragahi, B. (June 23, 2009). “Neda an international martyr.” SFGate. Accessed June 28, 2017 from http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Neda-an-international-martyr-3294784.php.

Dhaliwal, R. (June 12, 2013). “Rescue on Pit River bridge.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/picture/2013/jun/12/rescue-on-pit-river-bridge-photography.

Dirks, T. (2017). “Citizen Kane (1941).” AMC Filmsite. Accessed June 28, 2017 by http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html.

Evangelista, B. (February 20, 2010). “Amateur video wins prestigious journalism award.” SFGate. Accessed June 28, 2017 from http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Amateur-video-wins-prestigious-journalism-award-3198685.php.

Eversley, M. (April 19, 2015). “Iconic Oklahoma City photo caused twists and turns.” USA Today. Accessed June 28, 2017 from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/18/oklahoma-city-photo/25957831/.

“Exclusive video from the downtown Dallas shooting on 7/7/16.” (July 7, 2016). Central Track. Accessed June 28, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAzy37yzodk.

“Eyewitness video: Dallas gunman shoots police office.” (July 8, 2016). The Washington Post. Accessed June 28, 2017 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/eyewitness-video-dallas-gunman-shoots-police-officer/2016/07/08/78648854-452d-11e6-a76d-3550dba926ac_video.html.

Feinstein, A. (February 3, 2016). “The accidental photographer.” The Globe and Mail (Canada), p. A6.

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