According to Dictionary.com, Citizen Journalism is “the involvement of non-professionals in reporting news, especially in blogs and other websites.” As we discussed in class, a Journalist and a Citizen Journalists are not the same thing. If a journalist acts a citizen journalist in their practices of reporting, they are still considered a journalist because of their knowledge and skills. Whereas, a citizen journalist has no formal training in journalism but can post content of a current event with their own tools.
When thinking of a specific situation where citizen journalism was necessary for reporting a catastrophic event, I immediately thought of Hurricane Harvey.
Hurricane Harvey was a category 4 storm that hit Texas in 2017 leaving $125 billion in damages. The biggest problem with this storm was the flooding with 60.5 inches of rainfall throughout the course of the hurricane.
Citizen journalism was essential in this case because the rain could have damaged the reporting equipment, so the most effective way of recording was on mobile devices. There was deaths to report, billions of dollars in damages, people and animals rescued and obviously weather reports. A majority of the reports were by citizen journalists on mobile devices.
One particular instance of this that gained a lot of attention was dogs being rescued during the chaos. This hit home for many pet owners and gained close to 400,000 views on Youtube. All videos were filmed by citizen journalists on iPhone cameras and made a positive story out of a tragedy.
As the conditions improved, the quality and methods of reporting started to improved because the lessened chance of any water damage to the expensive equipment.
Twitter was among the most popular with delivering information about the storm and discussing their own experiences. Among them was many storm chasers, this one in particular giving his own experience being in Texas during the crisis.
Time magazine reported this hurricane as the first “Social Media Storm” we have had because the use of hashtags to flags down rescuers to rescue citizens in need on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
For instance, an elderly home was saved after a photo on twitter gained almost 5,000 retweets reaching the rescuers faster than normal.
During Hurricane Harvey, Timothy McIntosh’s mom texted him from the assisted living home she owns. The home was… https://t.co/jvoKCbqh3n— CatchCheatingBastard (@FedupLiesCheats) August 31, 2017
Isabel goes International 