With the UK gripped by arctic conditions last week there was an almost blanket appeal by almost media outlets for photos and videos.
Yet a visit to Flickr or YouTube would provide any researcher or journalist with a stream of Creative Commons output tagged by location that could be incorporated within their news reporting.
But to date mainstream media has made limited use of social network as a newsgathering source.
One exception is Trinity Mirror owned ncjMedia which has created a Flickr group that it uses as a source of reader images for The Journal’s Your Place Northumberland project.
So why doesn’t mainstream media make greater use of Flickr and YouTube for newsgathering?
Ged Carroll suggested to me over the weekend that mainstream media sourced user generated content (UGC) direct as it was a means of engaging directly with its audience.
Craig McGill said that he thought that mainstream media didn’t make greater use of UGC social networks as it is reluctant to credit third part sources – and that understanding of Creating Commons was limited.
Several news sources that have created apps for the iPhone, including Sky News and The Telegraph have actually added features where you are able to report news yourself, uploading pictures etc.. I’m not sure how well they are using the stuff they recieve, but user generated content via mbile phones is definately the perfect source for near instant journalism, and I think we’ll start seeing a lot more of this in the future.
I’d agree with both Ged and Craig – publishers want users engaging with their site and see Flickr as a threat to that, and Creative Commons literacy is woefully lacking.
In addition I think there’s an organisational culture element here too – editors are more likely to see UGC element as a tech function rather than an editorial one. It costs them less mental energy to ask someone to create a function than to ask a reporter to scour Flickr.