shoot and send

It's amazing how this shooting and sending/uploading has spread like wildfire. Fuelled no doubt by the speedy introduction of cameraphones, all more advanced and with more features than their predecessors. How it has shifted the paradigm.

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Straits Times, Sat, April 28, 2007
Don't just stand and stare, shoot it, too
Mobile phones have changed the way people see the world. Jennifer Lewis looks at the growth of citizen journalism

WHAT started as a lover's tiff ended with a young man being arrested for attempted murder. He allegedly pushed his girlfriend off a Clementi MRT station platform - right into the path of an approaching train.
Commuters watched in horror, but the woman got to safety just as the train whizzed past her.
That evening of Sept 14, last year, several pictures poured into STOMP's 75557 gateway.
The one that stood out was taken by a commuter in the approaching train. Hearing a loud commotion ahead, he whipped out his cameraphone - not knowing what to expect, but ready to snap any picture he could.
He got the only photograph of the woman's face, snapped as the train passed within centimetres of her.
Going by the nickname Darksoth, he posted the picture on STOMP and gave an account of what had happened. The image was grainy and its resolution low, but it was powerful.

Another picture grabbed my attention, too.
This time, the cameraphone of another STOMPer was trained on the crowd which had gathered to watch the real-life drama.
One could see many in the crowd craning their necks to get the best view. More significant to me was the number of arms raised high, cameraphones at the ready.

So this was the pose of the latest evolution of humans - from Neanderthal to the N95 man!
Indeed, we don't just stand and stare like we used to anymore. A new instinct has kicked in. Now we must also 'shoot and share'.

There is no doubt the camera-phone is the reason for this growing phenomenon. It has made it so easy to snap pictures, take videos and forward the images that we feel we simply must do so.
Something irks you? Snap it with your camera-phone.
Thrilled with how lovely your meal looks? Whip out the cameraphone and take a picture.
Witnessed a road accident? Get it on record with the trusty camera-phone.

The 'share' instinct is fast catching up with the 'shoot' reflex - and STOMP is right in the middle of the surging trend. Its 75557 'magic number' has made sharing a painless process.
Every day, the interactive portal set up by The Straits Times in June last year receives about 100 MMSes and e-mails with accompanying pictures and video clips. About 8,000 images have been posted since it started.

All this has added to the excitement in the newsroom.
The Straits Times Newsdesk monitors the flow of pictures and reporters appreciate the early heads-up they provide.

For instance, when tremors hit Singapore on March 6, photographs of workers being evacuated from offices and factories poured in - helping reporters quickly realise that these tremors were very different from the others.
Previous tremors had tended to be limited to just a few parts of the island. But this time round, the pictures were coming in from a variety of locations, making it clear that the entire country had felt the earthquake.
The Straits Times' editors sent the journalists out and, alongside reports of the earthquake in Sumatra, an entire page was devoted to the tremors felt right here.

This newspaper is rare in that it is one of the few established media groups in the world which have embraced user-generated material.
Some of the 'citizen journalism' reports found in 'Singapore Seen' - STOMP's most active section - make it into the newspaper, adding an interesting dimension.
Most of these reports are hyper-local and would not be covered by mainstream media. But with the camera-phone clicking away, it's hard for even a hard-nosed journalist to ignore pictures of, say, a rare white peacock sighted at St John's Island.
The report and photograph made it onto the pages of The Straits Times in December last year.

The citizen journalism practised here, however, is different from that in the United States and South Korea where the man in the street takes the picture and writes the accompanying report on his own.
We have found that those who send pictures to STOMP would still rather talk to a reporter and tell them their story.
Some academics I spoke to put it down to cultural preferences, saying that Singaporeans prefer to relate a story rather than write it themselves. So we do the writing and get the citizen journalists to check the post once it is up.

Citizen journalism in the form we see now should flourish here because we have taken away the 'pain' of writing, and ever-improving mobile phone technology has made it extremely easy to snap a picture and send it to STOMP in a flash.

When Mr Roger Sim, a 60-year-old cleaner, used his camera-phone to take a grainy, low resolution picture of a long queue at the Geylang Polyclinic which began as early as 5am, it must have been in the hope of making some official sit up.
When he spoke to STOMP content producer Serene Siew about the early morning queues made up mostly of the elderly, it must have been in the hope of catching the eye of the authorities.
It worked.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan soon instructed SingHealth chief executive Tan Ser Kiat to set things right.
It was a story the mainstream media needed brought to its attention, and Mr Sim and his mighty camera-phone did the trick.

It helped, of course, that The Straits Times has a policy of carrying citizen reports regularly.
It is this virtuous circle of user-generated material and the willingness of a paper like The Straits Times to publish this material that is contributing to the growth of citizen journalism.
The 162-year-old paper acknowledges the power of citizen reports and gets it that they make for exciting reads alongside those of established journalists, leading more everyday folk to brandish their camera-phones.
It's a no-brainer when you know you're going to be heard.

jlewis@sph.com.sg
The writer is Editor of STOMP