Social media as public journalism? Protest reporting in the digital era

Abstract

This article reviews recent research on social media platforms as outlets of street protest reporting by activists, posing the question of whether such outlets constitute a cultural source for protest movements. Given the "many-tomany" dynamic that alternative journalism via social media offers in contrast to the "one-to-many" approach of traditional media, there are implications for incursions into more democratic, participatory cultures and structures. Existing literature indicates that user-generated content via social media potentially is known to supplant traditional journalism in protest situations due to advantages such as firsthand access. Further, research demonstrates that activist reporting supplements and integrates with traditional journalism, and that interdependence develops. We also review the boundary conditions that constrain the use of socialmedia platforms for protest reporting. 1 | INTRODUCTION In January 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptian activists mesmerized the globe as they occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square, ultimately resulting in the resignation of Egypt's President Mubarak. This spectacle, and the accompanying domino pattern of "Arab Spring" (or "Arab Awakening") uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa exemplified the near ubiquity of global access to digital devices, the internet, and social media, allowing previously unparalleled speed and reach (Bossio, 2014, p. 22; Radi, 2017). In concert with other 21st-century movements such as #OccupyWallSt, #Blacklivesmatter, #MeToo, #hongkongprotests, #OccupyGezi, and #indignado, these activists purposed technology-assisted platforms to message organizing details, live-stream events, document police actions, disseminate protest music and art, host on-line debates, and more (Castells,

Journalistic knowledge production during a social crisis: How journalists claimed professional authority during the Chilean social uprising

“…However, during these protests, this asymmetry became unbalanced and somehow reversed, since most journalists accessed the sites of protests through media technologies, such as drones, security cameras or social media. This finding is consistent with previous research that discusses how demonstrators and citizen journalists directly engaged on the scene of street demonstrations are usually the main content generators about what is happening on-site during demonstrations and rallies (Pearce and Rodgers, 2020). This is significant because often journalists had to produce new knowledge about protests in contexts of remote news production.…”

“…This is a pertinent question, considering that such events often pose significant challenges for journalistic communities. During protests, journalists face difficulties in accessing news sites (Pearce and Rodgers, 2020), face politically tense environments and polarized audiences, occasionally becoming targets of demonstrators and/or police forces (Jiménez-Martínez, 2020; Mourão, 2019; Zhang and Jenkins, 2020).…”

“…Additionally, the ability of journalists to witness events, access the sites of protest and generate content about it becomes difficult. Whereas multimedia such as videos are increasingly essential evidence when reporting protests (Harlow et al, 2017), these are preponderantly user-generated content (UGC) because protesters have the advantage of access to the sites of protest and are usually interested in registering their actions and police reactions for the purpose of countering mainstream media narratives (Pearce and Rodgers, 2020). As a result, when covering protests, journalists are likely to be displaced as main witnesses and narrators of events, increasing tensions experienced by the journalistic field, such as the loss of exclusivity in gatekeeping functions (Singer, 2014), or what Usher (2019) calls their place-based authority.…”

Digital Advocacy for Punitive Justice and Vigilantism: Analyzing Citizen Dissatisfaction with the Klitih Prevention Policy

“…The term "digital advocacy" has been mentioned in many research and works of literature (Hall, 2019;Johansson & Scaramuzzino, 2019). Digital advocacy is also considered outstanding public journalism (Pearce & Rodgers, 2020) engaged in the public sphere. However, whether digital or non-digital, advocacy retains a specific meaning: to involve the general public in political movement, opening up spaces for the public to acquire information, raise issues, and direct them to the government.…”

Sino-Cal realism: TikTok as a medium between new market dynamics

“…The social network itself features short-form video content no longer than sixty seconds per clip, borrowing from the fast-paced ephemera which defines similarly growth-focussed social media start-ups such as Snapchat, Vine and Twitch. Pithy, user-generated video content for these platforms has been anointed a form of politics “rooted in everyday participatory practice” (Moreno-Almeida 2020 : 3) and afforded the label of protest reportage (Pearce and Rodgers 2020 ). The tendency to frame forms of digital protest based on precedents set in recent years has seen TikTok, despite its relative infancy, inheriting a set of expectations from other social media platforms which have likewise been bestowed with a legacy of digital participation (Miao et al 2021 ).…”