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On 1 January 2009, Oscar Grant was shot and killed in a subway station by Bay Area Rail Transit officers. This event was recorded by several passengers on their cellphones and later uploaded to the video-sharing website YouTube. The videos generated significant protests among online and offline communities, and were eventually used as evidence in the ensuing trial. This study employed a critical thematic analysis to examine audience responses to this act of citizen journalism on YouTube. Results indicated that although some viewers critiqued the video quality and the cameraperson’s passivity, several supportive comments praised the cameraperson’s presence of mind and courage. Furthermore, some viewers called for resistance and retaliation, while others advocated a more prudent response. We argue that these findings necessitate a reconceptualization of traditional notions of the guard-dog media and the public sphere to accommodate new media technologies.

Given the preponderance of social media in our increasingly saturated media environments, there is a need for greater understanding of how personality traits and states can influence problematic social media use. This study examines whether contextual age indicators (life satisfaction, interpersonal interaction, social activity), the fear of missing out, and the Big Five personality traits are significant predictors of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat addictions. A survey of 337 college students reveals that greater social activity is a positive predictor of addiction to Snapchat. Another significant finding is a positive relationship between social media addiction and the fear of missing out, which explained the most variance in addiction scores for Snapchat (16%). An inductive analysis of open-ended responses indicated strong similarities between those who claimed that they were addicted to these social media apps and those said that they were not addicted. Both groups described largely similar usage patterns and media dependency, yet several users did not self-identify as addicted to social media. These patterns indicate that more research is needed to determine how social media users differentiate between normative, heavy, and addicted usage.

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