Evolving media redefines legitimate news on Gaza

Micael Bogar

The recent violence in Gaza has spurred yet another evolutionary surge of public media 2.0 responses. While mainstream media interpretations of the current crisis seem so one-sided, online independent and citizen news sources continue to grow in popularity and offer a myriad of fresh perspectives, many of which are emerging through social media. In Jay Rosen's article Audience Atomization Overcome, he does a great job of explaining the shift in media legitimacy where he explains that "the authority of the press to assume consensus, define deviance and set the terms for legitimate debate is weaker when people can connect horizontally around and about the news."

Some of this social media covers a wide range of topics and has spurred not only information sharing but also dialogue, action, and the production of alternative narratives. This is where social media takes the leap into what we call public media 2.0, –in which publics become not only the media subjects or audiences, but the media makers and disseminators.

Here we offer five notable media responses to the Gaza crisis that show the robust and inclusive role that the evolving media play in getting out the whole story.

1. War on Gaza

This project is hosted by powerhouse Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera, but is based on tools developed by a grassroots initiative, Ushahidi, that was created in 2007 in response to the violence in Kenya surrounding elections. Ushahidi means "testimony" in Swahili, and the site is designed to gather and map citizen reports of violence via mobile phones, emails, and the Web. With Ushahidi’s success in Kenya came further funding allowing them to create a platform that can be applied to any global crisis. Their software has been applied now, with the help of Al Jazeera, to record the violence taking place in and around Gaza. It allows the public to become the media, reporting on the incidents from their own homes and charting the news as they take place and in relation to the others. Some key categories of reports include: deaths, air strikes, protests and announcements. Impact measurements are not apparent so it is difficult to say how useful this tool has been in serving as a hub for witnesses to communicate and share information, but so far it is a pioneer in its field.

2. Gaza/Sderot

This website hosts a beautiful interactive video gallery with footage on the lives of fourteen residents living in Gaza and Sderot. The footage was taken from October 26th to December 23rd 2008 and chronicles the stories of these people. The magic of this interactive media project comes in the ebb and flow of stories, browsable by faces, maps and topics. One cannot help but feel compassion and sympathy for all of the documentary subjects, both Palestinian and Israeli, as you track their lives simultaneously. Just as one short clip of a day in the life of a Gaza resident ends, the website offers a chance to watch the happenings of the residents from the "other side of the tracks" Sderot on the very same day. This sort of alternative media, where the important facts and figures are deliberately left out creates an entirely different understanding of the situation --one where there is depth, humanity and a sense of complexity, a feeling that this is where the real truth is hidden.

3. Gaza on YouTube

YouTube has been faced with a number of ethical and legal issues surrounding the Gaza air strikes, in which videos have been posted from different view points that are disturbing and offensive to many other viewers. In particular, the Israeli Defense Forces created a page on YouTube that features some videos of the assault on Gaza. Currently, the videos are being shown but for a brief period they were taken down. Haaretz.com wrote an interesting article explaining the situation, You Tube pulls some IDF videos showing Gaza assault

In addition, the Palestinian Mickey Mouse character on a kid's show has made big waves on YouTube with over 400,000 views with the title: Hamas Mickey Mouse Teaches Terror to Kids.

4. Bill Moyers Journal

Bill Moyers’ coverage often directly contradicts or expands upon the limited positions taken in mainstream U.S. media and he has earned his name for saying what many journalists are afraid to say. For many, this makes Bill Moyers the face of public media. In his most recent vlog, Bill reflects on the recent violence in the Middle East and offers a perspective that is shared by many. His piece juxtaposes two events that took place in DC recently: The March of the Dead, a protest recognizing the victims of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza, and the seating of the Illinois Senator Roland Burris. Moyers recalls how on this day, most mainstream media chose to cover the seating of Senator Roland Burris, while little to none covered the March of the Dead. He closes his commentary with, "And pay no attention to those Washington pundits cheering the fighting in Gaza as they did the bloodletting in Iraq. Killing is cheap and war is a sport in a city where life and death become abstractions of policy."

5. Twitter Search: Gaza

In the two hours of research time spent putting this blog together on the morning of January 12, 2009, there were over 1,000 new tweets with the word "Gaza." This sort of fast aggregation is what allows social media to flourish. For all the criticism that Twitter’s popularity has received recently, it is important to note that the growth of Twitter has allowed users to rapidly share a vast array of information from all sides on one given subject. The multitude of viewpoints involved is stunning. We see YouTube more and more taking down certain videos, but Twitter lets it all in. Mainstream news, junk, public media 2.0 and silly social media have their place in the Twitter search feed. In Ian Lamont's article, Twitter Sees a Furious Debate Over Gaza he notes, "Some people appeared to be using Twitter as a PR platform, highlighting "facts" or "news" to lend support to one side, or highlight the failings of the other." This free flow of information in short bite sized pieces really does constitute a new phase in the Internet and social media. After all, I found three of the five projects above by searching through Twitter.