Seven Things the Iranian Uprising Showed Us About Citizen Journalism

The Iranian uprising of the past few weeks was a watershed moment for citizen journalism. As the regime clamped down on foreign journalists, average Iranians using Twitter, websites, blogs and YouTube spread the word about what was happening in a way that mainstream news organizations could not.

So what has this experience demonstrated?

1. Citizen journalism is here to stay. Any doubt about that was erased in the last few weeks. The legitimization of citizen journalism that began with coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last year was solidified, once and for all, with the Iranian uprising.

2. Citizen journalism is fast. Bloggers and twitterers were the first to report much of what was happening in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere.

3. Citizen journalism is, more often than not, pretty reliable. So far, mainstream news outlets have reported few problems with the accuracy of the information they received from Iran.

4. Citizen journalism isn’t perfect and, like all journalism, must be checked and edited. For example, some of the videos from Iran that purported to be new turned out to be several days old. CNN, for example, vetted the videos it received on its iReport site and showed more than 100 of them on television.

5. Mainstream news organizations will use citizen journalism – especially when nothing else is available. From CNN to The New York Times, mainstream news outlets used pictures and videos from citizen journalists on an unprecedented scale during the Iranian uprising.

6. Citizen journalism and mainstream journalism can be used collaboratively. As reported by Brian Stelter in the Times, Nico Pitney, the senior news editor at The Huffington Post, aggregated Iran news on a blog that combined professional reporting and reliable reports from citizen journalists.

7. Citizen journalism can be powerful. When people holding camera phones filmed the death of a young woman named Neda who had been shot at a demonstration, those horrifying images became a powerful symbol and rallying cry for the protesters.

Photo courtesy Tehran 24

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