Embedding content from Syrian citizen journalists: The rise of the collaborative news clip

Citizen journalism

From the rise of blogging in the wake of the Iraq War to YouTube citizen videos of the impact of the Japanese tsunami to the Tweeting of the Arab Spring, citizen content has become part of the mainstream news media’s coverage of key global events. It has become commonly accepted that citizens may break stories and bring new perspectives to mainstream news (Allan and Thorsen, 2009). Both lauded and condemned, citizen or participatory journalism heralds potentially significant changes in journalism itself and has been described as embodying new relationships between one-time news audience members and mainstream news gatekeepers (Berger, 2011; Hermida and Thurman, 2008; Matheson and Allan, 2009; Nip, 2006; Robinson, 2009). Much of this content is happenstance, created by citizen witnesses who happen upon major news events. However, some amateur media content has been intentionally produced, crafted with lo-fi tools such as cellphones and handheld video cams in a version of what might be said to be ‘maker’ culture (Leadbeater, 2013).

Scholars suggest that where citizen content may have made its largest impact is in its incorporation into mainstream news media culture (Andén-Papadopoulos and Pantti, 2011). Citizens have become increasingly valued as news contributors because they have been able to provide content that professional journalists were unable to access or unavailable to collect (Mortensen, 2011). These citizen accounts provide a sense of authenticity and personal intimacy with events often in an unpolished form that supporters and some audiences appreciate (Bock, 2012; Holton et al., 2013; Pantti and Andén-Papadopoulos, 2011; Williams et al., 2011a). Nevertheless, early investigations into this new journalism form found news outlets ambivalent about citizen journalism, often seeing little to gain from collaborating in any meaningful way with citizens producing content (Paulussen et al., 2007; Thurman, 2008). Initial research on citizen journalism being incorporated into mainstream news sites found a perceived need to monitor and moderate what was posted (Hermida and Thurman, 2008). Much of that early content was in text form, either blog posts or comments on news stories and mostly opinions or reposts of other’s content that were not seen as particularly relevant to producing original news. As citizens increasingly included video and photos, their content was more often perceived by professional journalists as potentially valuable and even possessing a ‘discursive authority’ (Pantti and Andén-Papadopoulos, 2011: 100). Still, journalists and journalism researchers continue to raise concerns about citizen or user-generated content’s credibility, trustworthiness, and, in some cases, its production values (Mortensen, 2011; Niekamp, 2011; Robinson, 2009). In addition, citizen content has consistently been criticized for potentially contributing to ethical lapses and increased use of graphic content, and found to be more subjective, thus violating the objectivity norm of mainstream news media (Bock, 2012; Mortensen, 2011). Unsurprisingly, then, research suggests citizen journalism’s place within mainstream news remains uneasy and contested (Hermida and Thurman, 2008; Robinson, 2009).

Fundamentally at issue is whether mainstream news usage of amateur content actually signifies any truly new changes to journalism. For example, Williams et al. (2011b) argue that citizen content itself is not all that new with eyewitness media having long existed in previous eras. However, the response by traditional news media that seek to tame or normalize citizen journalism suggests in fact professionals see citizen contributions as disruptive enough as to threaten their own authority (Matheson, 2004; Singer, 2007; Usher, 2011). For that reason, ‘traditional editorial logic’ is often applied to citizen content, making it appear as a not-too-different extension of existing content and practices (Jönsson and Örnebring, 2011: 128; Matheson, 2004). In this way, the potential of citizen journalism may never be realized (Usher, 2011). Thus, some news outlets have sought to contain citizen journalism by both encouraging it and at the same time segregating it into its own, lesser section of online websites. For example, while CNN’s iReport promotes itself in part as potentially supplying news to the mainstream section of the global news outlet, the amount is said to be quite small, around 7 percent of the monthly 15,000 contributions (Tenore, 2011). Studies of BBC suggest it also seeks to curtail citizen content, mainly harvesting it for sources, and writing most of it off as of little value (Williams et al., 2010). If mainstream news media seek to maintain their dominant positions as the creators and distributors of news, then such efforts may be necessary forms of boundary maintenance (Berkowitz, 2009). In order to maintain control over the overall narrative and more broadly journalistic authority, these new forms are adopted and used in ways similar to existing elements even if their fit with such roles is imprecise.

Sources

Journalism research has long established that the journalist–source relationship is a key part of news routines (Berkowitz, 2009; Tuchman, 1972). Maintaining a predictable set of sources (i.e. a beat) can facilitate reporting of stories, helping reporters more efficiently do their jobs. Sources can also provide journalists with credibility, particularly when sources are seen as experts or what have been called ‘Knowns’, generally elites within governmental or business fields (Gans, 1979/2004). Elite sources are seen as trustworthy and authoritative; ordinary people are generally seen as less credible and are thus less likely to be prioritized as sources (Cook, 1998; Gans, 1979/2004). Scholars argue that the interaction between elite sources and journalists represents a competition for cultural power as sources ‘speak from ideological positions in their cultural worlds’ (Berkowitz, 2009: 112).

As for the mechanics of the source–reporter relationship, the traditionally key interaction – the interview – may be seen as a competition. The reporter seeks certain answers that their sources may attempt to steer in a different direction. In fact, the interview has been described as a method of meaning-making, created by journalists to mark their legitimacy and establish boundaries for the profession (Ekström, 2001; Zelizer, 1990b). Some scholars argue that reporters exercise substantial power over sources during interviews. Ekström (2001) has suggested that the television news interview in particular is an act of dominance, as journalists determine which question to ask, suppress some answers, and highlight others through the editing of the story. Contrary to that point of view, Berkowitz (2009) suggests that elite sources are not at the mercy of the reporter but exercise considerable power in the interview process. For example, what are perceived as ‘credible’ sources may not even be fact checked. What they say is simply accepted and reported. Through their own mastery of journalistic routes, savvy sources can employ considerable influence – for example, setting up a press conference or other such manufactured event.

Nevertheless, the longstanding practice of interviewing sources and the resultant quoting of sources is in a period of transition. Berkowitz (2009) suggests that these processes are changing with the introduction of new technologies making the role of sources today ‘ambiguous’ (p. 112). This is seen most clearly with the rise of social media as journalistic tools which bring professional reporters into closer interaction with citizens who may serve as both sources and as content producers themselves (Hermida, 2012). Hermida (2012) argues these new interactions and formulations are resulting in ‘new storytelling approaches’ that ‘may diverge from established norms’ (pp. 315, 321).

Of particular consideration in this analysis is the impact of these changes on the interview and resultant quotes typical of traditional journalism. The quote and its broadcast equivalent, the sound bite, have been central building blocks of the basic news story and, at a more ideological level, a ‘place for leakage of meaning’ (Zelizer, 1995: 35). Any introductory journalism textbook describes in detail how to select, attribute, and present a quote. Researchers note that the creation of quotes within news stories results from specific discursive practices that help determine the meaning of news reports (Ekström, 2001). The selection of a source’s words within broadcast news has been the focus of Ekström’s (2001) study of the strategies for editing – removing some parts and combining the remaining material with other information or quotes with which it was not originally collected. He describes ‘decontextualization’ occurring when the content of an interview is edited and inserted into a news story; the process of transfer or ‘recontextualization’ is the providing of a new interpretative framework for the material, placing it within a new structure such as the television report (p. 567). Thus, he argues that the meaning of the quoted material depends upon the context within which it is placed.

Some studies of broadcast television news have provided more detailed examinations of the ways citizen video are incorporated into news reports, outlining the varying strategies used to maintain professional control (Pantti and Andén-Papadopoulos, 2011; Sjøvaag, 2011). Mainstream news organizations such as CNN have been found to sometimes highlight the amateur origins of citizen video content and create a ‘transparency ritual’ by emphasizing its non-professional origins. In this way, audiences are made more aware of the differences between professional and amateur video (Pantti and Andén-Papadopoulos, 2011). Sjøvaag (2011) calls such usage ‘embellishing’, showing the image over and over again, making clear its unknown origins and closely analyzing it via the news report (p. 85). The ultimate aim is to draw attention to the fact that professional journalists might air the video but did not produce it. In other cases, Sjøvaag (2011) argues that content is woven into the story without comment, in a process of ‘embedding’ which does not dwell on the video’s origins, but merely incorporates it into the news.

In a similar study of mainstream television use of citizen journalism from the London subway bombings, Lorenzo-Dus and Bryan (2011) found the same citizen videos were used repeatedly, yet professional journalists de-emphasized the citizens’ roles in the videos by muting their sound, and thus lessening their impact. They argued that the citizen creators were made less important through the lack of identification and became a part of the news item’s background rather the foreground. Because so much citizen content consists of images, it is important to note that even professional photographers and their role in capturing images are also often hidden through the processes of absorbing the work into the news public product (Bock, 2012).

In a study that specifically examined Syrian citizen content and its reception and use by professional news outlets, Harkin et al. (2012) analyzed the BBC Arabic’s and Al Jazeera’s (Arabic) use of Syrian citizen videos. They found that the news outlets were less rigorous than usual in identifying or confirming the sources of the videos. They argue this happened for logistical reasons, in part because of professional news agencies’ unique reliance on citizen or activist content coming from Syria.

Analytical procedures

This article aimed to uncover the discursive practices used by the NYT’s live blog, The Lede, when using video from the Syria conflict. The Lede was chosen in part because, as Thurman and Walters (2013) note, live blogs react swiftly to breaking news, and so may employ non-traditional news practices. In addition, The Lede is viewed as an exemplary use of the live blog form that is ‘highly regarded’ by other journalists (Carvin, 2012). It illustrates one of the ways a premiere professional news outlet has adapted to digital news forms, a process that has been seen as evidence of The Time’s willingness to rethink and ‘reinvent’ some news practices (Folkenflik, 2011: 53). The Lede is further significant because it differs from other live blogs that cover the Middle East in that it covers all sorts of breaking news, which includes domestic and international stories. Here, Syria is merely one story among many. The Lede also differs from other citizen journalism specific sites such as the CNN’s iReport which specifically segregates citizen content into separate areas from the professional content of CNN, creating what Domingo (2011) has called a ‘playground’ model. In contrast, The Lede is a place for citizen material to be collected, evaluated, and supplemented by professionals.

For this analysis, all posts in The Lede for 2012 were assessed that focused specifically on Syria and included embedded video (videos that were linked to were not included). This time period covers an important intensification of the conflict, and a period during which foreign journalists could at certain points only travel to Syria illegally and at great risk. The Syria case is an opportunity to observe professional news media’s use of sustained citizen content from one ongoing story: Syria’s protest turned civil war. Most research on citizen content reflects a brief period – such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the London subway bombings, etc. Those citizens rarely continued to produce content as the dramatic events they experienced ended in a short period of time. The Syrian conflict has of this writing gone on since 2011. Thus, a larger, more continuous amount of citizen content has been produced. While The Lede includes multiple forms of citizen content – videos, embedded Tweets, and audio – the focus here is on video, which includes images and natural sound in a live-to-tape format; these may be narrated scenes in which the creator or someone working with that person speaks while filming. Video was chosen as the focus for several reasons: the great majority of content being produced by Syrian citizens is in the form of video; video has become increasingly important as a news form for formerly print-only publications; despite their constructed nature, images have historically been associated with ‘truth’ and are thus treated differently from text within journalistic arenas; and finally, despite general claims that we are living in an increasingly visual age, journalism research on news still tends to disproportionately focus on news texts rather than images (Bock, 2012; Harkin et al., 2012; Sasseen, 2012; Zelizer, 2010).

The research questions asked were as follows: How were Syrian citizen videos incorporated into The Lede? What is the media grammar or logic of the citizen-activist videos? We are interested in discovering what do these practices suggest about changes to sourcing and quoting routines as carried out by a digitally native media news form, The Lede.

All posts from 2012 about Syria on The Lede that contained embedded video viewable within the blog were included in this analysis for a total of 82 blog posts (links to off-site videos were not included). These posts contained a total of 162 citizen videos, 52 professional news videos (produced by mainstream outlets such as the UK’s ‘Daily Telegraph’ and state-run news operations such as Iran’s Press TV), and 14 others (e.g. witness statements from Non-Governmental Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, United Nations (UN) video including their press conferences, etc.); 42 videos were not viewable as of this analysis (e.g. their accounts had been closed since appearing in The Lede; they were censored by YouTube for offensive content, they were violating copyright or no longer available, etc.).

Discourse analysis focused on the language used to introduce the videos and comment upon them, the ways in which they were displayed within The Lede along with the content of the videos themselves. The following questions were asked of each blog post that contained videos: What words did The Lede employ to describe the embedded videos (of these, which labels were most frequently used)? How did The Lede identify the creator of the video, if at all? While videos by Syrian amateurs were the focus of the study, those produced by professional news outlets appearing in the posts were also assessed in order to help contrast the differences if any. Thus, a further question asked was as follows: How did the characterizations for citizen-created content and content creators compare with those for professionally created content and their creators?

The actual content of the videos also was examined in order to more completely understand the meaning of their incorporation into The Lede. Questions asked of each video’s content included the following: What was the length? What language is primarily spoken in the video? (One of the paper’s authors is a native Arabic speaker.) Of the amateur videos, how many had subtitles or were in English? In addition, amateur videos were further examined to answer the question: What was the video’s internal storytelling logic (as defined by Altheide and Snow [1979]: story structure, style, and emphasis).

Findings

Reported below are the answers to the questions concerning the ways the videos were incorporated into the blog posts and the logic of the videos themselves.

Incorporation into The Lede

Labels

While not every video was labeled, of those that were, citizen videos were most often described as a ‘clip’. That is, almost one-third (49 of 162) of all citizen videos were labeled as a ‘clip’. Whereas, slightly more than half (28 of 52) of the professional videos were labeled a ‘report’. For example, when citizen-activists uploaded videos to YouTube of a protest that was met with violence by the government, The Lede introduced it this way (emphasis added): ‘A brief clip, apparently recorded from inside one of the U.N. vehicles as the monitors evacuated a wounded student’ (Mackey, 2012g, para. 8). In another story about protesters and the UN observers, The Lede embedded the video with this introduction (emphasis added): ‘Video clips posted online by activists showed protesters first swarming around Ahmed Himmiche’ (Mackey, 2012f, para. 3). Other words used to label citizen videos included ‘stream’ (for live streamed content) used four times; ‘footage’, used three times; ‘message’, used three times; ‘report’ and ‘piece’, were both used once.

The videos posted by professional organizations were labeled differently, most often identified as a report. Other words used to categorize them included ‘interview’ (8 times); ‘footage’ (3 times); ‘clip’ 2 times; and ‘tribute’, ‘dispatch’, ‘bulletin’, and ‘update’ were each used once. For example, The Lede reported that

Alex Thomson of Britain’s Channel 4 News managed to travel to the outskirts of Aqrab … Mr. Thomson’s (emphasis added) report, which was produced without the presence of any government minders, suggests that there might have been no massacre at all (Mackey, 2012a, para. 5, 6).

The label is not limited to Western professional operations; videos from outfits such as Russia Today and Press TV, the 24-hour Iranian English language satellite channel, were similarly designated such as when Press TV reported on their Syria correspondent who was shot to death in Damascus (Figure 1): ‘A later report posted on the station’s YouTube channel included footage of the correspondent just before the shooting’ (Mackey, 2012d, para. 3, authors’ emphasis).

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Figure 1.

Screenshot of video from Iranian state-run international satellite television channel, Press TV, that appeared within The Lede (Mackey, 2012d).

Even content coming from Syria’s state-run television, which is considered to be highly propagandistic (Harkin et al., 2012; Starr, 2012), was described in a cutline the same way (emphasis added): ‘A video report from a Syrian state television crew showed the ruined neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs’ (Mackey, 2012i).

Video logic

Structure

The Syrian citizen videos tended to lack a beginning, middle and end structure typical of the professional news videos. Instead, they tended to be characterized by an in-the-middle-of story structure, lacking an introduction or obvious ending, as if the camera was turned on when something the videographer thought was noteworthy was happening. For example, in a video about a university protest in Aleppo, students, whose faces have been blurred, interact with UN personnel (Mackey, 2012g). The video (author’s translation) begins inside a vehicle with pixelated images of students moving around in a backseat pleading with someone in the front seat. There, a UN observer, not pixelated, sits at the wheel of the car. A male voice and a female voice are heard speaking, urging the UN observer to drive them away. The male student says, ‘Oh look, look, look at what they do’ as sounds of violence take place outside the vehicle (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Screenshot from a citizen video of students with UN driver that appeared within The Lede (Mackey, 2012g).

At one point the car’s driver says, ‘I will not start the car, they will hit me’, while the students urge him to leave, only to be told ‘No, they will shoot me’. In a traditional story, there would be some explanation of what was happening outside the car; indeed, the opening shot was likely to be a broader view of the protest taking place, followed by a close-up in the car and ending with a resolution of some sort that provides closure to the piece.

Emphasis

Some videos included not just a witnessing of an event but an emotional response heard in the voice of the narrator such as in videos documenting a live bombardment or showing the body of civilians killed in the conflict. For example, a video titled (author’s translation) ‘Violently Bombing Baba Amr Mosque’ shows the destruction of a mosque by the Syrian military (Mackey, 2012j). The videographer (author’s translation) screams ‘Allah Akbar’ (God is Great) throughout the 26-second clip as buildings just across the street come under bombardment from the Syrian military. His voice is pitched with fear and disbelief at what the camera shows the viewer: ‘Even mosques are getting shot in Bab Amr! God is Great, Muslims! God is Great, Muslims! God is Great! Even mosques!’ In another video, an activist stands next to the corpse of a small child who he explains was killed when his home was shelled by government forces. ‘What is the UN waiting for?’ he asks. In a second video in the same post of The Lede, the same activist, a Syrian with British nationality who unusually is named here, notes the bombing has been going on all day and asks about the lack of outside intervention by the UN or the United States, ‘Are we animals dying here?’ (Mackey, 2012b) (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Screenshot of a citizen video used by The Lede that shows live bombardments (Mackey, 2012j).

Style

Many of the videos are of poor technical quality. This has been identified as a quality frequently found in citizen-produced content, so its appearance here is not a surprise (Niekamp, 2011). What is important is that The Lede chooses to include videos of notably poor technical quality, which may be a blurry or dark visual image or one with poor sound quality. In one of the more extreme examples of technical problems, in a video that The Lede notes was uploaded to the Hama2Free YouTube channel, the screen is almost all black with only the sounds of fighting as its information (Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Screenshot of Syrian activist’s video used by The Lede despite a nearly blank screen (Mackey, 2012h).

Discussion

This analysis of The Lede suggests two key patterns: The videos’ own internal media logic confirms the emergence of the fragment or clip, an incomplete, non-traditional piece of reporting often offering an emotional immersion within the news event, and, second, collaborative news production through shared gatekeeping in which a tier of activists/non-professional journalists identify and verify breaking news for professional organizations, and joint framing by these partners. These patterns are laid out in more detail below.

Conclusion

The rise of the citizen videographer, particularly in the case of Syria, offers an opportunity for news organizations to use this content to provide witness’ immediate observations of, reactions to, and involvement in dramatic – indeed, life and death – events. Yet, productive usage of the Syrian citizen videos requires context and place specific knowledge, a level of understanding that The Lede achieves in part by turning to insiders, activists within the conflict, to help with their selection and explanations. In this way, The Lede provides a means for Syria’s citizen journalists and their supporters to have a louder voice on the webpages of a major world news outlet. In the process, some narrative power may be shifting to a tier of citizen-activists who create and/or identify local content. This is important because, as Zelizer (1995) has argued, reporters derive their power and authority from their ability to retell a source’s telling of his or her story. The assessment here shows that practice is evolving.

These changes in news practices are not limited to The Lede, and can be seen in a myriad of other users of Syrian citizen content including other news outlets along with organizations such as Human Rights Watch, which has for the first time incorporated citizen journalism into its assessments. While it might be said at least some of these uses follow familiar practices of journalists who select quotes in ways that seek to prove predetermined frames, this may be too simplified an explanation.

The use of these videos goes beyond merely selecting some of a source’s words. Now included are words, visuals, and audio from the source’s perspective. While some of the video’s content is summarized by The Lede, the videos themselves offer viewers an experience of what the citizen is recording. This is not the well-constructed factual documentation typical of professional news reporting (e.g. a numerical list of lives lost, buildings destroyed, armaments dropped, etc.). Instead, they frequently show a disjointed scene imbued with emotion. In part, this appears to be the case because the citizen videos’ words (almost always in Arabic) would not be understandable to most of the NYT’s English-speaking audience, thus bringing more focus to the feelings they convey.

Therefore, the audience viewing the Syrian videos may play a greater role in their interpretation of and interaction with what they are seeing. As Zelizer (2010) argues, more than information is conveyed through compelling images. The emotionality of the videos in this study may well cause more intense audience involvement with and connection to what is being viewed. Such images may even lead to what Azoulay (2008) argues goes beyond mere active audience interpretation but an act of collaboration achieved between the subject of the image and the audience viewing it. It should be noted that a contrary reaction may also take place: the intensity and immediacy may lead viewers to think of the videos as more like a reality show, an entertainment genre with its own set of tropes – witness the controversial parody of a Syrian citizen video created by the artist Banksy.

Whether these patterns are specific only to resistance movements within authoritarian societies as interpreted by Western news media will need additional research. Videos of dramatic, violent events closer to home in a familiar cultural context may be treated differently and perhaps more skeptically or at least with less involvement by activists or agents familiar with the issue or events. For now, Collaborative News Clips appear to open a space for non-professionals to create their own drafts of news that may be amplified by professionals and, in turn, possibly more intensely experienced by audiences. Whether the Collaborative News Clip becomes a new standard for shared news making or just another clever means of co-opting citizen content in order to maintain professional authority remains to be seen.