Mobile Journalism keeps being a game changer — Black journalism educators and Black journalists are driving the change.
Mobile Journalism keeps being a game changer in journalism, going forward in many unprecedented directions. For many newsrooms it’s at first a welcome cost-cutting method until reporters recognise the significant methodological gains. Newsrooms who are serious about human-centred product development — what I’d call Social Journalism — will have to look into two things:
1. How to integrate smartphones and wearables into their workflows, changing radically the visual grammar and journalistic methods.
2. The learnings from more than two decades of journalistic storytelling with mobile devices, starting with simple feature phones up to high-tech devices as today’s iPhone12, offering a fully equipped digital broadcast studio at your finger tap and on the go.
For me it was an eye-opener to see the impact of mobile devices in Non-European regions while working based out of Nairobi in Kenya in the early 2000s. I observed how mobile devices drove innovative business models and communication on the go. The potential for democratised media and citizens controlling the narratives caught my professional interest, and I started to explore the visual grammar of mobile communication and social storytelling ever since, then also to teach hands-on mobile journalism.
I was lucky to be able to learn from my Danish colleague Kristian Strøbech, who pioneered Mobile Journalism education in Denmark and often joins me and my students. Interestingly Kristian has ties to South-Africa, where he worked as a correspondent for some years.
I’m also glad of being part of the Global Pop-Up Newsroom circle. Where we, a diverse group of international educators from four continents with young students and independent journalists, apply innovative human-centred journalistic methods, using live and immersive multimedia methods, often with mobile devices only.
After reading Allissa V. Richardson’s new book “Bearing Witness While Black”, I want you to not miss the impactful contributions by Black journalists and Black journalism educators in the field of mobile journalism. Alongside the two most powerful social justice movements worldwide: #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, both started by Black women in the US, using smartphones and mobile journalism methods.
In India I first met Devadas Rajaram who started in 1998 to experiment with mobile news stories using messenger news, when many in Europe didn’t even have a mobile phone. Rajaram, back then already a renowned editor, had the professional foresight to switch then from print to online and mobile. In 2012 he became an educator in higher education and was recognised in 2018 by MediaShift as one of the most innovative journalism educators worldwide.
Then I met Shubranshu Choudary who started 2010 CGnet Swara, a mobile newsroom for rural communities in central India, working with Bluetooth audio. His approach proved being extraordinary successful in reporting stories of local interest and making news where people are, in order to foster peace and resilience in the region.
In South-Africa Yusuf Omar started to explore “Selfie Journalism” with his smartphone in 2010, when he hitchhiked from South Africa to Syria — a journey which led him to becoming one of the most influential global voices in mobile journalism and co-founding “Hashtag Our Stories”.
In my book “Innovationtelling”, published by Nomos, Yusuf Omar explains how he built the largest mobile newsroom at Hindustan Times in Delhi.
In the US journalist turned influential educator Allissa V. Richardson pioneered mobile journalism education. After years of reporting with mobile phones and the first phone cameras, she started in 2010 the Morgan Mojo Lab at the State University in Baltimore. With the focus of hacking new technology for telling more relevant, diverse and human-centred stories.
In her research work Allissa highlights the turn from the traditional misconception of “objectivity” in journalism to the fact-based “transparency” approach reflected in mobile journalism. For the near future and in the light of increased surveillance and the IoT it seems very important, too, to think about Richardson’s concept of “sousveillance” countering surveillance.
If insights like these are interesting for you, stay tuned for our new podcasts in cooperation with “Future Framed TV” on YouTube. Scientific knowledge turned into practice. Our podcasts on EdTech, New Skills and the Global Pop-up Newsroom in conversations are coming soon.
