The “Public Eye” Or “Disaster Tourists”

Abstract

This article contributes to debates regarding professional–amateur interfaces in photojournalism by reporting on findings from a qualitative study with members of a demographic cohort often described as “millennial” users (that is, people born between 1980 and 1999). A textual analysis of their responses identified five thematics for analysis: (1) respondents’ views regarding the prospective role of bearing witness and what it may entail; (2) the motivations of those engaged in this type of activity; (3) the uses of citizen smartphone imagery by news organisations; (4) presumed distinctions between professional and amateur or citizen photojournalism; and (5) ethical questions of trust where the ensuing imagery was concerned. On this evidential basis, professional photojournalism’s discursive authority is shown to be open to challenge by the alternative ethos of citizen imagery, with respondents’ perceptions raising questions over realness, authenticity and truth-value complicating, and at times destabilising, familiar professional–amateur normative binarisms.

KEYWORDS:

• audiences
• citizen journalism: civic engagement
• ethics
• photojournalism
• smartphones
• witnessing
• young adults

Acknowledgements

For their assistance in recruiting respondents for our study’s questionnaire, we are most grateful to Emma Kirk in Canada, Kirsten Kolstrup in the Netherlands, and Cynthia Carter in the United Kingdom.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Ms. England granted permission to use the three photographs in Figure 1 on 20 July 2013, later favouriting the tweet thanking her.

2. Quotations are noted in the format of [country, gender, age]. The following abbreviations are used: Canada, CAN; Netherlands, NL; United Kingdom, UK; female, F; male, M. Where demographic details overlap, respondents are distinguished from each other using a, b, c, etc., based upon where they first appear in text.

3. Our use of the word “document” in this question was intended to purposely avoid explicitly encouraging our respondents to self-identify in journalistic terms, although those who read through all of the questions before answering would anticipate this direction of travel. At the same time, the use of “witness” arguably invited a more active conception of the implied stance than, say, “observe”, but here we wanted to ascertain whether—and, if so, to what extent—this term resonated for them. In the absence of neutral terminology, no question will be innocent of social contingency, of course.