Citizen Reporting and the Changing Face of War-time Journalism

In 2014, the coverage of war and conflicts by global news media and the art of war-time journalism
is in a state of flux. The fog of war which once shielded conflict zones from public view has now
been lifted by the tech revolution, with all the technology previously exclusive to journalists such
as video and camera capabilities and global platform on which to share and propagate information
now available to citizens. Consequently, news media has become increasingly dependent on citizen
journalism and social media when reporting on conflicts where they cannot rely on their personnel
on the ground. Journalists, unable to get into warzones, have used videos and accounts from
citizens to report on the conflict. Broadcasters use footage taken from social media that they were
unable to produce themselves. As a result, much of what the wider public knows about conflicts is
shaped by information collected and disseminated by citizen journalists.
For some, this new facet of war-time journalism has the potential to unravel the integrity of the
journalistic code. Critics of citizen journalism argue that professional journalists (defined here as an
individual who has a journalism degree or is employed by a recognised news network) are
exclusively equipped with the training necessary to navigate conflicting reports, adhere to ethics and
sift through information to paint the most comprehensive and correct picture of a conflict.
However, others believe that citizen journalism performs a vital democratic function and through
allowing everyone to publish without censor or regulation, the clearest picture of the conflict will
emerge.
The war in Syria has been the most socially mediated war in history. Almost all information about
the conflict- videos, photographs, analysis and commentary- has been compiled by the public and
disseminated through social media. Citizens picked up their mobiles with video recording and
camera capabilities, and took to the street in order to expose a didactic government and its human
rights abuses. Media performs the progression of social awareness, and therefore has the power to
dictate how much coverage is given to a crisis and inform global reaction to it. Citizens have now
bypassed conventional media channels used social media to raise and inform international
awareness about the abuses and atrocities they faced. The citizen journalist blog, the Shaam News
Network of Syria, was the first to convince Western news media that a chemical weapons attack
indeed occurred when they published gruesome pictures on their blog
1
. The resulting global outcry
precipitated the Obama administrations push for a militarised intervention against the Syrian
government. Dr. Rasha Abdulla, associate professor and chair of journalism and mass
communication at the University of Cairo said; Gone are the days when governments will be able to
hide their crimes by prohibiting news stations and journalists from being on the scene. Everyone on
the scene is a journalist, and everyone is documenting while protesting.
2
. Citizen journalists are
increasingly filling the dearth left by professionals who are unable to gain access to war zones. Blogs
of aggregated citizen journalism content have emerged, such as the Violations Documentation
Centre and Syria Tracker. Vicky Baker, the Index on Censorships deputy editor described Syria
Trackers method of correlating information; Syria Tracker monitors 2,000 different news sources,
including pro-regime outlets. Add to this 80 million social media updates and 4,000 eyewitness
reports these sort of projects are vital to worldwide news organisations and can help us gain a

1
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/chemical-weapons-attack-in-syria/ (Accessed 9/10/2014).

2
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/29/arab-spring-captured-on-cameraphones (Accessed
9/10/14

fuller picture of the devastation being wrought
3
. It is from such sources that professional journalists
use to inform their own stories on the conflict. Indeed Data compiled by the Index on Censorship
shows that the majority of news reports (June 2011 to Feb 2014) about Syria used information
sourced via crowd sourcing or social media rather than traditional journalistic means. Data compiled
by the Index on Censorship showed that the majority of news reports (June 2011 to Feb 2014) on
the Middle Eastern conflicts were sourced via crowd sourcing rather than traditional investigative
journalism. For instance, information mentioning the town of Aleppo where much of the fighting is
concentrated, 184 reports came from news articles, and 18,776 from crowd sourcing data. This
illustrates a potential future of journalism in wartime. Worldwide media outlets are unable to rely
on personnel on the ground for verified information, so the world increasingly looks to unregulated
and unverified citizen journalism and aggregated social media content.
However, journalists over reliance on social media or citizen compiled content has the potential to
create an incomplete or misleading picture of a conflict in mass media. Soazig Dollet a member of
the RSF Middle East committee explains the complications of the rise of citizen journalism in the
region; the conflict is evolving everyday in order to cover the conflict, there is no other choice
than to use citizen journalism to get the images out. But that does not mean that the conflict is
properly covered: both authorities and armed opposition groups are spreading disinformation
4
.
Reports have circulated of a Syrian government driven electronic army who seek to pollute and
use the citizen journalism network to their own ends. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports
that the Syrian government has also been known to specifically target professional and citizen
journalists to perpetuate a media blackout
5
. Activists, although more reliable than corrupted state
media, also have a clear agenda. With citizen captured content having previously been shown to
mobilize international intervention and aid, there is a clear incentive for activists to post strategic
content. Capturing the attention of worldwide media has the potential to motivate citizen
journalists to exaggerate or misrepresent events. Videos and content may be produced, edited and
manipulated to distort the mainstream medias view of a conflict. In one widely publicized case a
group of activists burned tires to create a backdrop of smoke in a video. Social media reporting
during war time can be dangerous as it creates a connotation of unmitigated information flows. The
average social media user, when following twitter accounts or youtube channels, does not consider
the political agendas and selectivity behind each post. A report by the United States Institute of
Peace found that social media flows are carefully curated by a network of activists and designed to
craft particular narratives. Indeed, key curation hubs within social media networks may now play a
gatekeeping role as powerful as that once played by television producers and op-ed page edition
6
.
News reports about the Arab region routinely come with the disclaimer; this cannot be
independently verified. A study by the Annenberg School of Communication of Syria coverage by
the BBC and Al Jezeera found vague citations such as from youtube or from the internet with no
specifics. It can be seen that much of what the wider public knows about conflicts is shaped by
information collected and disseminated by citizen journalists, and that this information may be
coloured by bias and propaganda.

3
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/sp-cjg061114.php (Accessed 10/10/14)

4
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/26/another-casualty-of-war-in-syria-citizen-journalists/
(Accessed 9/10/14)

5
http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2012/06/syria-a-war-reported-by-citizen-journalists-social-media-
41863/ (Accessed 9/10/2014)
6
file:///C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/PW91-Syrias%20Socially%20Mediated%20Civil%20War%20(1).pdf (Accessed
10/10/14)

The media environment that has characterised the Syrian war is likely to be a model for future
conflicts. It has shaped the way that the world has seen the conflict, and indeed, how the
conflict has been fought. With journalists unable to get to the ground, unrestricted user content
must inform the coverage, thereby changing and irreversibly altering the face of war-time
journalism. The rise of the tech-revolution and the proliferation of citizen journalism it enables
is by no means a bad thing. It demonstrates reconfigured power-relations between a
government and its people- no longer can human rights abuses and autodidactic regimes be
hidden from the world. However, verified information, despite that it may cover social medias
original information, is a vital to a democratic society. Journalists must still perform the function
of watch-dog in war time reporting, sifting through all of the conflicting information to find and
present the truth, devoid of personal bias, leaving it up to the public to form an opinion. In
conclusion, although the media coverage of war is changing to accommodate more citizen
captured and aggregated content, professional journalism is still vital to the credibility of the
overall picture of a conflict that is presented.
GRAPH SOURCES
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/
http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobile-worldwide-2014/
http://social4ce.com/blog/2014/07/01/15-stats-you-need-to-know-about-social-media-in-the-
middle-east/
Online crisis mapping system Syria Tracker has revealed that citizen
journalism is the most prominent source of news coming out of the
ongoing conflict.
The humanitarian tool, which has been crowdsourcing words, photos
and videos to deliver a real time map of the crisis since 2011, scoured
some 160,000 new reports and social media updates and used
complex data mining to come to this conclusion for Index on
Censorship, a global organisation that fights for freedom of
expressions. It found that ordinary people were providing more viable
information than traditional media across every region of Syria, bar
Homs (where much of the violence has centred).