The Problem: These days, every mobile phone can shoot video. As journalists, it offers an opportunity to collect images from cameras belonging to an army of citizen shooters. The difficulty, however, is collecting and arranging this video, and more importantly, offering context and information about the video. More often than not, cellphone videos are left on the phone or laptop, or occasionally uploaded to YouTube. Only in the most outstanding cases does mobile video find its way into mainstream news.
The Opportunity: As mobile devices evolve, so does their camera technology. The iPhone4, for example, now shoots full HD video. Considering they sold 3 million of them in the first three weeks of availability, there are now millions of opportunities to collect footage of newsworthy events as they unfold. Considering the fact that even major news organizations can't be everywhere at once, taking advantage of these cameras and the "crowd" allows them to expand their coverage and show perspectives they otherwise wouldn't collect.
The Project: For major news events, we'll create an interface that invites users to upload their video, label it with appropriate tags, map the exact location where it was collected (many phones will geo-tag the video anyway), and place it on a map/timeline to display the sequence and location of each citizen video. For an event like the Olympics, your timeline may cover weeks. For a crisis unfolding unexpectedly, your timeline may only be a few minutes long. The location feature would also cover a broad range of focus. For some stories, your map may show a city block. For others it could display images from around the world, perhaps to show international responses to a particular incident.
Just as Wikipedia pages grow over the course of a few hours as new information becomes available, this interface would show the evolution of a news story as it unfolds using information collected from citizen cameras. Not only would the video be collected and categorized, it would also be mapped to give the viewers perspective. This functionality exists already in products like Panoramio but that is intended for geo-tagged photosharing. Taking the same idea and applying it to news would open the doors for citizen reporters to share their experiences, and introducing a timeline would allow the viewer to experience the stories in sequence.
As the timeline evolves, points could be marked to indicate happenings within the event. In the case of the G20 Protests in Toronto, you could have a city wide map with "Protesters gather - 9:15 am" and "Police car set on fire - 1:23 pm" marked as notable points. Video of the protests, the police presence, the car of fire, would all be plotted accordingly on the timeline, between those key points.
Why?: We already rely on crowdsourcing video (YouTube), news and opinions (Twitter/Blogs), and mapping (OpenStreetMap/Ushahidi). This project would combine those three things to offer a complete perspective of newsworthy events. It would engage citizen journalists AND provide a more comprehensive story when all is said and done.
Brian Chick
Toronto, Canada
brian.chick -at- left-button.com
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