This is interesting, but I'm not sure I'd call it citizen journalism. Citizen 'reporting' more like. I think of journalism as a profession that requires research and analysis, not just being there with a camera.
What will your first thought be? This guy was a passenger on the ferry that was heading towards the plane to help, so what was he supposed to do, jump into the river and try to get there faster? Fashion a makeshift paddle and help propel the ferry? Seems like posting a picture of the plane to twitter is a reasonable response when you're standing around watching rescue crews do their job.
I don't know if there is anything wrong with merely taking a picture, but posting it online right away when you aren't exactly sure what happened yet isn't sensitive to the families of the potential victims involved.
When I turned on the news earlier, a cameraman was chasing a lady on a stretcher even though she was covering her face, obviously to avoid being shown... During 9/11, the news showed people jumping out of the towers...
Just because we have the technology and response time to bring these moments to our living rooms in real-time doesn't mean it's appropriate... you know?
EDIT: How many tragedies does the tech industry need to get over the fact that we have cell phone cameras with web applications that let us converse about them in real-time? Do you really think these tech journalists care about the victims involved?
I'm not going to mention names, but when I see some of these tech journalists get all riled up about the real-time web every time a tragedy occurs it makes me sick.
Disagree. Are there instances in which journalists and tech are too intrusive into private matters? Absolutely. Is one of them taking a cell phone picture from the deck of a ferry while media helicopters swarm around the scene? No way. Please explain how this picture is insensitive to the family members.
Are you seriously arguing that in the face of a tragedy, no information is preferable to those worried about their family members? The Mumbai attacks are an even better example: if I had a family member in Mumbai during the attacks, I'd want every single piece of info and data I could get my hands on, rather than having to wait forever for the "official" reports.
You're right. I just get a bad feeling when the random Twitter user starts giving interviews and becomes the hero, and when every tragedy inevitably turns into a discussion about Twitter and the real-time web.
This is why I think censorship is impossible in today's society. The instant an event happens news of it will spread virally over the Internet faster than any agency can block it.
Twitter is by definition viral. It passes from person to person and expands outwards as networks intersect and overlap.
I always applaud Twitter getting more mainstream press but the fact is that Twitter expands in a very different way than most other service sites, it's of no use to people who don't know anyone else on it. My brother and sister both got on it but I was the only person they knew on it and so they faded back off of it.
So coverage only helps name recognition and I suspect has very little in terms of direct conversion from this sort of thing.
Because on others there is more to do than simply communicate. On Facebook you can find events, locations, fans, and such. On Myspace you can listen to bands and music. So there is stuff to do before you've built up a network, on Twitter it's vacuous when you don't have that many friends or people you're following.
