Advertisement
Best Prices on Dell Notebooks
Best Prices on Dell Notebooks
Best Prices on Dell Notebooks
Best Prices on Dell Notebooks

Buying Guides
Shop Dell Notebooks
Best Prices on Dell Notebooks
Best Prices on Dell Notebooks

The Tools Of Citizen Journalism


December 31st, 2008 by K. T. Bradford  

demotixUK TechCrunch posted an interesting profile of Demotix, a London-based startup that allows users to upload pictures (and soon video) that are in turn sold to news outlets.  The recent events around the Israel/Palestinian conflict were a perfect showcase of this type of user-generated content site (though, obviously, a tragic one).

Citizen Journalism isn’t new, nor are sites that allow anyone to upload photos for licensing.  But TechCrunch points out that other ventures suffered from being a bit ahead of their time.  Now cell-phone cameras are much more ubiquitous, allowing people to take and upload a photo within minutes.  Phone cameras are improving and now users have the ability to add wide-angle and macro lenses to them.

Add to that ubiquitous Wi-Fi plus mobile broadband in ultraportables and netbooks and people all over the world have more ways than ever to document important events.

The site’s name, Demotix, is derived from demotic — “of the people”.  I find it amazing and wonderful that people can use  mobile technology to democratize media coverage.

 Comments  

Leave a Reply

Featured Sponsors