• Citizen Journalism in the Dublin Riots

    Todays riots in Dublin, as shameful as they were, have highlighted one of the strengths of Social Media and Citizen Journalism; while RTÉ coverage seemed thin on the ground (and with those of the media whom did attend facing senseless aggression) most of the reportage of events have come from blogs, amateur photography (featured on places like Flickr and Indymedia) and mobile phones.
    Here’s some superb footage of the rioters upturning a parked car and attacking another taken by a by-stander with a camera phone; apparently the images are due to be passed on to RTÉ.
    Dossing Times, as I mentioned earlier, was giving a live update on the events as they happened, and has since produced an opinion piece on the event.
    As cited on Dossing, places like Dilussioned Lefty gave an eye-witness account to the riot, and ElBlogador surveyed the damage from their perspective.
    From a media perspective, Newstalk seemed to be the only traditional medium covering the events; RTÉ Radio 1 didn’t break from planned programming until 18:30 while, to the best of my knowledge RTÉ TV didn’t alter programming at all, but just dedicated the 6:1 News to the Dublin events.
    It seems that people with camera phones and basic digital cameras were able to get amongst the idiots with more ease, while obvious Journalists (be they familiar faces or just people with huge cameras) were deliberately targetted in an effort by the rioters to avoid identification.
    An interesting day for social media, and as always, boards.ie has plenty of threads for people to discuss it in.