ABSTRACT
Chapter Objectives ◾ To comprehend the impact of citizen journalism on emergency and disaster
response scenes, emergency public information, and comprehensive emergency management
◾ To identify and consider characteristics of both traditional and public participatory journalism
◾ To identify the level of acceptance of citizen journalism characteristics by the general public and the traditional media
◾ To consider new paradigms of time and pacing of news cycles ◾ To identify the tools and systems utilized by citizen journalism ◾ To consider all systematic and structural challenges to citizen journalism
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Journalism-Traditional and Participatory By any standard, journalism is the practice of reporting news. e challenge for both professional journalists and those individuals ašected by news (everyone else) is that the understanding of what is news and what is professional news coverage is challenging, particularly as social media has become more prevalent. e foundation of news reporting started with Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable type
DISASTER FOCUS-MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON
At 3:24 p.m. EST on January 15, 2009, U.S. Airways Flight 1549 was cleared for takeoš from Runway 4 at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for a routine §ight from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina. ere were 155 souls aboard the Airbus 320 plane, including „ve crew members, with Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger at the helm. Captain Sullenberger, 57, was a former „ghter pilot who had been a commercial pilot for nearly 30 years since leaving the U.S. Air Force. Within six minutes of takeoš, the plane was struck by a §ock of Canada geese (Figure 3.1). Subsequently, there was an immediate and complete loss of thrust from both engines. Captain Sullenberger and his §ight crew quickly determined that they would not be able to safely return to any local air„eld and instead decided to turn south to glide the plane into an emergency landing on the Hudson River near the USS Intrepid Museum. All occupants were safely evacuated by emergency services from the plane, which was amazingly still virtually intact although partially submerged and slowly sinking into the river. e entire crew of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 was later awarded the Master’s Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators and dubbed the “Miracle on the Hudson” by traditional media outlets.2 Although an amazing story of heroics and courage in the face of adversity, it also marks one of the most amazing examples of citizen journalism recorded. Speci„cally, while on a trip to New York City from his Florida home, Janis Krums (@jkrums on Twitter) was, according to his website, “in the right place at the right time” to capture a cell phone picture of the airplane §oating in the Hudson River.3 Mr. Krums immediately posted the picture to Twitter from his iPhone and within 34 minutes was being interviewed by MSNBC as an eyewitness to the crash.4 News coverage quickly followed on Google, FoxNews, and many other traditional news outlets throughout the world.4 Since that time, Mr. Krums’s picture has been downloaded over 635,000 times.5 Additionally, numerous Facebook pages and groups have been created since the event celebrating both the heroism of Captain Sullenberger and the Miracle on the Hudson event. Clearly traditional news outlets now seek out and need the input of citizen journalists for real-time event-related pieces of news information.
