MobileActive.org

Activist Media from the Frontlines: Mobile, Strategic, and Much More Than Just at "The Right Place at the Right Time"

In Syria, activists and citizen journalists fill a media void and strategically inform the global conversation on the uprising by capturing and sharing their own footage. They are organized, trained, smart, strategic, and promote media - much of it mobile - with a purpose.

Mass demonstrations and continued state violence continue in Syria. Authorities are largely banning foreign reporters and have arrested Syrian journalists and bloggers. Outside of the country, news outlets report on the major events there citing “Syrian activists” as the source of information.  Day-to-day events in cities around the country come to our attention largely because of the activists and citizen journalists who are systematically providing information to news outlets worldwide.

Perhaps the way the term citizen journalism has been used to date is a misnomer in the context of recent events in Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain. Activists on the ground and online do not ‘just happen’ to capture and record media because they are in the "right place at the right time" but instead systematically gather, and strategically disseminate media. It may be time for a new term - ‘activist media' who are reporting from the frontlines - that describes the organized media campaigns waged by these activists in a place where traditional media is largely absent.