As the situation in Myanmar rapidly devolves into violence, I see just how much I rely on citizen journalism. At times, it is the immediacy of the situation that leads me to citizen journalism (canonical example: Tsunami), other times it is reporting angle. The case of Burma presents an interesting, compelling argument for citizen journalism – as an immediate phenomenon in a place with heavy media control, the citizen journalists are the information providers making it through the sieve of the state.
As I browse to Flickr, I find three individuals who are live-documenting the protests. It’s hard to be sure about the provenance of the photos, but I’m quite sure that at least two of the three are on the streets. In the comments you can find reporters asking for rights to use the pictures.
http://flickr.com/photos/naingankyatha/ – Ghemberee’s photos (best)
http://flickr.com/photos/8023565@N08/ – Soulspirit’s photos
http://flickr.com/photos/racoles/ – Racole’s photos (CC Licensed)
What’s most compelling is the role citizen journalists play in forcing the world to confront Burma. When King went down to Alabama, he had to rely on the mainstream media to get the enduring images into the world’s newspapers. Today, you need to be there with a cameraphone and data connection. This really isn’t a criticism of the news media, but rather a reflection of how the market is naturally segmenting. The protests in Burma are happening right now, as you read this, and people are uploading their records for the world. And it’s not just Flickr, it’s Wikipedia and YouTube and a whole host of other places. It’s incredible. And it’s not much of a stretch to imagine one of these citizen journalists winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Check out the pictures. Hope that there are more. This is citizen journalism’s moment to shine.
Update: Time article (on Yahoo) written based on eyewitness reports. Yahoo includes Flickr photos from photogs mentioned above.
“how the market is naturally segmenting”
Well: ‘naturally’ is a difficult thing to define, but I do hope a blood-thirsty, journalist-banning dictatorship will rapidly be thing of the past–and citizen journalists (however great) will not be the only source of information for a major event like a revolution, a coup or a civil war. They are welcome complements, sources, experts–but what is happening in Burma is more an example then the main question.