Year: 2005

Citizen reporters helped traditional media in reporting from the London bombings. Camera phones, photo sharing sites and blogs enable people on the scene to share their experiences immedeately to media consumers thirsting for information, especially valuable on an event like this where traditional media had restricted access to the locations and could take very few pictures of their own.

Another way of describing the event is the “7 July 2005 London bombings” page at Wikipedia, already a massive resource for information about what happened and how things progress. It is further evidence to the growth of open source, collaborative ways of collecting and distributing information, as an addition to traditional sources of information, such as media and governmental/official sources. Flickr, Wikipedia and Technorati are already up there with BBC and for example the offical London site as places we turn to to become informed.

Technorati Tags: London 7/7, London Bombing

The role of citizen journalism has been clear in the horrific London bombings. Media ask citizens to send in photos and videos from recent events, the latest example from CNN, asking for footage of hurricane Dennis (via Tim Porter). Here are some articles about the role of citizen journalism in the London incidents.

– Editor & Publisher: Newspapers Aided By Phone Cameras in London Coverage

“Within minutes of the first blast we had received images from the public and we had 50 images within an hour. Now there are thousands. We had a gallery of still photographs from the public online, and they were incredibly powerful.”

– The Guardian: Public provides new dimension to media coverage

“Several U.S. television executives said that as far as they knew, it was the first time video taken from a cellular phone was used during coverage of a major story.”

– SR P1 Kulturnytt: Bloggar och privata mobiltelefonfilmer kompletterar nyhetsrapporteringen

“Journalistik och ögonvittnesskildringar smälter samman när bloggar och privatpersoners mobilfotografier blir en del av nyhetsmediernas rapportering om Londonattentaten.”

– The Christian Science Monitor: Citizen journalists pass the test in London

“The BBC later reported that its website had received almost 1000 photos taken by cellphone and 20 pieces of amateur video.”

– The Boston Globe: Camera phones play major role in coverage

“The London news service ITV News began to periodically display phone numbers to which viewers were invited to send text messages or video phone pictures. It and other networks have since broadcast many viewer-created pictures and video clips.”

– The Washington Post: Witnesses to History

“Rather than relying on unfocused, rambling blog entries, the London papers and the Beeb ran pithy postings from the people who were there. They ran alongside the staff reporters’ accounts and presumably with the same amount of editing.”

– The Washington Post: Eyewitness Journalism: Camera Phones Lend Immediacy to Images of Disaster

“Some of the most intimate images of yesterday’s bomb blasts in London came from cell phones equipped with cameras and video recorders, demonstrating how a technology originally marketed as entertainment has come to play a significant role in up-to-the-minute news.”

– Tim Porter: London Bombings: The Unread Newspaper

“The first-day story no longer belongs to newspapers – and hasn’t for a long time. It isn’t even the property of professional journalists any longer.”

– The Wall Street Journal: Bloggers and Photographers Chronicle Chaos in London

“As journalists scrambled to cover the London bomb blasts, ordinary citizens went online to share pictures snapped by cameraphones and reports of what they saw. At Technorati.com, a search engine for blogs, eight of the top 10 searches Thursday were related to the blasts.”

– The Salt Lake Tribune: Technology is changing how big media cover stories

“Welcome to the world of citizen newsgathering, where technology and the age-old desire to communicate hot information, be it hard news or soft gossip, are converging and forcing traditional news outlets to dramatically change the way they cover big news events.”

More: some 10,000+ posts about the London bombings via Technorati.

Some links via Hypergene’s linkblog.

Technorati Tags: London 7/7, London Bombing

Internet is growing in importance as advertising medium, according to a survey from the Association of Swedish Advertisers. 89 of its members answered a survey about online advertising and:

– 72% advertise online today. Banners and co-operation are the most common ways, but more than half use search engine advertising.
– Nine out of ten see online advertising as a complement, most often to direct mail.
– Half will increase their online media budget this year, 45% spend as much as lasy tear.
– 80% spend 10% or less of their advertising budget online.

These numbers are surprisingly high, considering media consumers’ negative attitudes towards online ads. In a recent survey (pdf), also from the Association of Swedish Advertisers, Swedes say that online advertising is the second most impopular form of advertising, second only to email spam. 52% of the respondents say they dislike online advertising. Similarily, only 8% say they like online ads. Only radio commercials (6%) and spam (1%) get lower figures.

Movie commercials (43%) and sponsoring (39%) are the most popular forms of advertising.

Bloggers are sharing photos today from the horrible events in London. Several photo pools have been set up at Flickr where many photos already have had several thousands of hits: London Bomb Blasts and London Explosions.

This story is actually the first major news story that I found out about on a blog. I read about it first by reading the RSS feed of Davil Hall’s Månhus beta.