Amateur Footage: A Global Study of User

Transcription

Tow Center for Digital Journalism
A Tow/Knight Report
AMATEUR FOOTAGE:
A GLOBAL STUDY OF
USER-GENERATED
CONTENT IN TV
AND ONLINE-NEWS
OUTPUT
CLAIRE
WARDLE, PH.D.
SAM
DUBBERLEY, M.A.
PETE
BROWN, PH.D.
PHASE 1 REPORT
APRIL 2014
Funded by The Tow Foundation
and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Tow Center for Digital Journalism
A Tow/Knight Report
AMATEUR FOOTAGE:
A GLOBAL STUDY OF
USER-GENERATED
CONTENT IN TV
AND ONLINE-NEWS
OUTPUT
CLAIRE
WARDLE, PH.D.
SAM
DUBBERLEY, M.A.
PETE
BROWN, PH.D.
PHASE 1 REPORT
APRIL 2014
Funded by The Tow Foundation
and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
About the Authors
Claire Wardle has a Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School
for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She started her career
at Cardiff University, where she undertook a year-long research project on
UGC at the BBC. In 2009, she took what she thought would be a short break
to design the social media training programme for BBC News in 2009. Since
then she has been training journalists around the world on social newsgathering and verification, including a year working with the social media news
agency Storyful.
www.clairewardle.com | @cwardle
Sam Dubberley has over ten years experience in broadcast news. He is an
independent media researcher and adviser—working on a variety of media
projects. He was head of the Eurovision News Exchange from 2010 to 2013,
managing the world’s largest exchange of television news content. He was a
bulletin editor for Bloomberg Television.
www.samdubberley.net | @samdubberley
Pete Brown completed his Ph.D. at Cardiff University, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies in 2013. Since then he has worked independently on a number of different research projects, including a recent
examination of gender and representation on BBC Local radio.
@beteprown
Acknowledgements
First off, we would like to thank the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia
Journalism School for supporting this project—Emily, Taylor and Lauren in particular. With their help, a crazy idea on a Skype call has become something that will
actually provide the news industry with concrete numbers about their use of UGC.
We hope the research will act as a foundation for conversations and will provide
support and suggestions for best practice. We would also like to thank the international cooperation team at NHK in Tokyo for recording three weeks of their broadcasts for us. John, Sam’s step-dad, was another who helped us by recording CNN
for us when we had lost all hope that we could find a way to capture it from our
respective locations of Istanbul and Malaga, Spain. And, finally, thanks to all those
who took time out of their schedules to talk to us about UGC and how they use it
in their news bulletins. The conversation was interesting and thoughtful every time.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Introduction
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Methodology
Sample
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Research Questions
Principle Findings
Results
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How much UGC does the 24-hour news industry
use online and on-air?
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In which types of stories is the 24-hour news industry
most likely to use UGC?
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How does the 24-hour news industry use UGC?
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Why this Matters
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Conclusions
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Endnotes
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References
Columbia Journalism School | TOW CENTER FOR DIGITAL JOURNALISM
Executive Summary
Aim of the Research
The aim of this research is to understand how much User-Generated Content (UGC) is used on air and online by 24-hour news channels, why editors and journalists of these news outlets choose to use it, and under what
conditions it is employed. The study intends to provide a holistic understanding of the use of UGC by international broadcast news channels.
Methodology
The research has been split into quantitative and qualitative phases. This
report focuses solely on the quantitative phase, and provides an in-depth
examination of how much UGC was used by eight international news
broadcasters on air and online across a three-week period. To collect this
data, the eight selected channels were recorded for eight hours per day
for 21 days. This, accounting for technical drop-outs, offered 1,164 hours
of news output, which were coded according to parameters intended to
answer the research questions. The second, qualitative part of the research
involves interviews with at least 60 news managers, editors, and journalists—including, but not limited to, the broadcasters coded. The product of
both sections will become a comprehensive report about the use of UGC
among international news channels.
1
Amateur Footage: A Global Study of User-Generated Content in TV and Online-News Output
Research Questions
As well as counting the exact quantity of UGC that was used on air, each
individual piece of UGC was coded according to the following criteria:
whether stories integrated at least one form of UGC, whether the news
organizations used video or photographs, whether the channels recognized content as UGC, and whether they credited the source or uploader
when using UGC.
Conclusions
There are two main conclusions from this initial phase of research.
1.UGC is used by news organizations daily, but only when other content
is not available to tell the story.
2.News organizations are poor and inconsistent in labeling content as
UGC and crediting the individual who captured the content.
Our data showed more similarities than differences across television and
Web output, with troubling practices across both platforms. The best use
of UGC was online, mostly because the Web provides opportunities for
integrating UGC into news output like live blogs and topic pages.
2
Introduction
This research is a global study exploring the integration of user-generated
content (UGC) into the output of some of the most watched cross-border
24-hour news channels, both on television and online. Television news
organizations’ reliance on UGC is unquestionable, and while there have
been a number of studies about UGC and news,1 there is no systematic,
quantitative analysis of how UGC is being used by broadcasters at scale.
Anecdotal evidence from newsrooms suggests that although very dramatic
UGC has always been sought and used, the past three years have seen a
marked rise in this type of content appearing on our screens. Over the past
decade some of the world’s most important news stories have been covered using photographs or video shot by eyewitnesses. From photos taken
on camera phones by passengers being led to safety through the underground tunnels in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings on
July 7, 2005, to the videos of police shooting protestors in Kiev’s Maidan
Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in early 2014, UGC has become an
increasingly regular feature of news output both on television and the Web.
Citizen journalists, non-professionals with an interest in documenting
news events, have taken some of these pictures and videos, but indeed many
have simply been shot by “accidental journalists”—people with a camera or
smartphone on hand, who happened to be in the right (or wrong) place at
the right (or wrong) time.
Rarely do these people recognize the value of their footage. Instead of contacting news oranizations directly, they want to share what they have seen
with friends and family via the social Web. As Anthony De Rosa (ex-social
media editor for Reuters and now managing editor for Circa) writes, “The
3
first thought of the [uploader] is usually not: ‘I need to share this with a
major TV news network,’ because they don’t care about traditional television news networks or more likely they’ve never heard of them. They have,
however, heard of the Internet and that’s where they decide to share it with
the world.”2 Amateur content-capturers have their own audiences to think
about now.
The causality behind this phenomenon of mainstream news integrating
UGC into its output is multi-factored. First, there’s global, mobile phone
penetration. Phones now have sophisticated cameras, meaning very simply
that more people have the ability to document news events well. Secondly,
the universal popularity of the Web and increasingly cheaper access to it
means content can be shared immediately. This provides savvy journalists
with opportunities to discover breaking-news content and communicate
in real time with the people who have witnessed the event firsthand. Third,
the Syrian conflict has normalized, so to speak, the use of content filmed
by people unaffiliated with a news organization.3 While the innate power
of some of the UGC from Syria might have pervaded the news no matter
what, the limitations placed on journalists to enter the country or move
around freely in this case forced even the most reluctant of journalists and
editors to use UGC—because it was impossible to tell the story otherwise.
This research has two phases. First, it captures a quantitative analysis of
news output on eight television news channels and their respective Web
sites, designed to provide a benchmark for the amount of UGC currently
being used in news output worldwide. The second involves qualitative
interviews with journalists, editors, and news managers to discuss the
issues raised by the use of UGC around workflow, verification, rights, payment, and ethics. This report focuses solely on the first, quantitative phase
of the research.
4
Definition
The phrase user-generated content has always been an unpopular one.4
Unfortunately no one has managed to create an alternative that adequately
describes the phenomenon. For the purposes of this study, we define UGC
as photographs and videos captured by people who are not professional
journalists and are unrelated to news organizations. It does not include
comments (either posted underneath a news article or those posted to
social networks) integrated into coverage.
In addition, statements posted on social networks by newsmakers (e.g.,
celebrities, politicians, sports people, or institutions like the United
Nations) that are using social networks to bypass traditional public relations channels are also not classified as UGC. So, for example, a golfer
posting a picture of a new set of clubs he’s received from his sponsor does
not qualify. On the other hand, a picture tweeted by a soccer player of himself watching the 2014 World Cup draw with his teammates is included, as
it is not classified as P.R. (See Figure 1).
Figure 1: Picture tweeted by professional soccer player Edin Dzeko during the FIFA World Cup 2014 draw
5
Methodology
Content analysis was the methodology used to analyze the output online
and on-air. The two lead researchers, Claire Wardle and Sam Dubberley, coded the television output. Research assistant Pete Brown analyzed
the Web sites. The content analysis only began when Claire and Sam had
reached a 95 percent agreement during pilot coding sessions. There was
continuous dialogue between all three researchers about examples that
raised questions or issues.
The majority of content was not explicitly labeled as UGC, so the researchers had to investigate many individual cases to verify UGC. This was
achieved by cross-referencing content with items available on YouTube,
Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, as well as cross-referencing with those on
the Reuters, AP, or Storyful portals.
When the content’s origin was still unclear, there was a group discussion
about the photo or video. Some of the content from more remote locations
often looked at first glance like UGC, but under closer inspection was often
shown to be footage captured by a local news channel with less sophisticated
video equipment and then distributed by one of the main two television
news agencies to their clients. One of the best clues that a piece of content
was filmed by a professional was the raw skill of the camera operator. Often,
professional chops could be identified—such as the way the camera panned
slowly across the action rather than the quick, jerky or uneven movements
associated with camera-phone video taken by amateurs.
Ultimately, the researchers worked as hard as possible to ensure consistent
and accurate coding, but acknowledge there is undoubtedly a small margin
of error caused by the difficulty of coding UGC that wasn’t labeled.
6
Sample
For the research, we chose the eight 24-hour news channels listed in Table
1. The sample was designed to include channels from around the world
with an international audience (i.e., the target audience of the channel
was cross-border, excluding major 24-hour channels like Sky News in the
United Kingdom, for instance). Our intention was to analyze seven full
days of output—168 hours from each of the eight channels, equaling 1,344
hours.
The inbuilt repetition of rolling television news meant we didn’t want to
analzse 24 hours of output from the same day, so we sampled eight hours
from each day for 21 days. We also rotated the start time, so on the first day
we recorded from 8 a.m.–4 p.m., on the second day from 4 p.m.–midnight,
and on the third from midnight–8 a.m. This pattern was repeated for the
21 days. Recording began on Monday, November 25, 2013 and ended on
Sunday, December 15, 2013.
Table 1: News organizations included in the sample
Channel
Location of Headquarters
Language
Al Jazeera Arabic
Doha, Qatar
Arabic
Al Jazeera English
Doha, Qatar
English
BBC World
London, United Kingdom
English
CNN International
Atlanta, United States
English
Euronews
Lyon, France
English
France 24
Paris, France
French
NHK World
Tokyo, Japan
English
Telesur
Caracas, Venezuela
English
7
Of the eight news organizations, only the BBC archives its own broadcasts
(for internal purposes) enabling us to gain direct access. We therefore had
to record the other seven channels as they were broadcast. We achieved
this through a variety of methods, but it did result in some outages caused
by power cuts or live streams dropping out in the middle of the night. As a
result, our final sample was 1,164 hours and 10 minutes (87 percent of our
original target).
We analyzed all 21 days of the recordings for all channels apart from Al
Jazeera Arabic. For Al Jazeera Arabic we coded five days, chosen at random, from the 21-day sample. The reason for this was the difficulty of coding Arabic output without knowledge of the language. It was impossible to
check whether the presenters or reporters were describing the UGC in a
particular way, or whether the captions on screen were relevant. The use of
UGC was also significantly greater than any other channel we coded, and,
in fact, even during five days of output from Al Jazeera Arabic there were
more instances of UGC than from any other channel except Al Jazeera
English over the 21 days.
All eight Web sites were captured at 6 p.m. (local time for the location
of their headquarters), for all 21 days. In total, the content on 2,254 Web
pages was analyzed. Only five days were analyzed,5 the same five random
days chosen for the Al Jazeera Arabic analysis. This was due to the sheer
amount of content on each of the sites. The average number of links on
each homepage every day was 56. Some were less populated. NHK World,
for example, only had, on average, 13 links out to news stories. CNN International, on the other hand, had an average of 119 links out to different
stories on its homepage. On some of these story pages, there were up to 11
three- to five-minute videos included on just that single page. All of these
had to be combed for UGC.
8
Unit of Analysis
For the television output, every individual piece of UGC was counted. If
a three-minute television package on Syria included a compilation of 10
separate pieces of UGC edited together, these were considered to be 10 different examples of UGC, and each was examined separately. Each piece of
UGC was coded for different characteristics. The main ones were: duration,
format (video or photograph), story, if the content was described as UGC
either on-screen or through a voiceover (with descriptions such as “source:
youtube.com,” “unverified pictures,” or “amateur vidéo”), and if the content
was credited (either on-screen, in captions, or descriptions online). For the
online analysis, again every piece of UGC was coded for whether it was an
embedded Vine video, or a piece of activist video included in a television
package uploaded to the news Web site.
9
Research Questions
There were three key questions that framed this phase of the research.
1.How much UGC does the 24-hour news industry use online and
on-air?
2.In which types of stories is the 24-hour news industry most likely
to use UGC?
3.How does the 24-hour news industry use UGC?
a. Are photographs or videos more likely to be used?
b. Is the content described as UGC?
c. Is the uploader of the content credited?
10
Principle Findings
The research found that UGC is used across the 24-hour news industry
on a daily basis. The tendency is to use it only when there are no other
pictures available. Throughout our sampling period, all channels included
UGC to report the Syrian conflict. Indeed, for some news organizations
Syria was the only story for which they included UGC. However, the manner in which UGC fills a gap was also evident in the way it was used in the
very early stages of breaking-news stories. For example, a helicopter crash
in Glasgow happened very late at night (GMT) on November 29, 2013 and
UGC was featured heavily as the story broke. As professional pictures from
their own camera crews or news agencies appeared on Saturday morning,
broadcasters chose to update their packages and reports with these, substituting out the UGC.
However, there were instances when stories were run only because there
was UGC to provide imagery. During our sampled time frame, secretly
filmed UGC exposed serious police brutality in Egypt and the Ukraine, a
dive rescue team unexpectedly found a man alive in a sunken ship and their
underwater cameras told the story of the rescue, and a group of children
in Damascus were shown talking to a camera in the street before narrowly
escaping being hit by a mortar shell that landed nearby.
Overall, all news organizations regularly failed to label or describe content
as UGC and crediting was rare. The majority of news organizations, both
online and on television, rarely described where the pictures had come
from, acknowledged that people unconnected to the organization had
filmed them, or gave credit to the uploader. Verification processes were
almost never discussed, apart from a couple of times when the viewer or
reader was told that the pictures were unverified.
11
There are more similarities across TV and Web output than differences,
highlighting troubling practices across both platforms. However, there
were some shining examples online, particularly in live blogs. The web also
provided more opportunities for more innovative integrations of UGC into
news output, and these will be explored in more detail in the final report.
12
Results
RQ1: H
ow much does the television news industry use
UGC online and on air?
While 21 days of television content were analyzed from seven channels,
only five days of output were evaluated from Al Jazeera Arabic, so the data
has to be compared separately. In addition, only five days of Web content
were analyzed, so again this must be considered separately.
As Table 2 on the next page demonstrates, an average6 of 11 pieces of UGC
were used every day on television by news organizations. The average
length of a piece of UGC on screen was 11 seconds.
It is very evident from this table how much Al Jazeera Arabic employs UGC,
compared to the other channels. Its daily average number of pieces of UGC
was 51 (compared to 11 for the other seven channels), and the average
length of a piece of UGC was 16 seconds (compared to 11 seconds for the
other seven channels).
13
Table 2: Amount of UGC included in coverage
TV
7 Channels
(excluding
Al Jazeera Arabic)
Al Jazeera Arabic
only
Web
21 days sampled
5 days sampled
5 days sampled
Overall number of
UGC pieces used
1,858
257
758
Average number of
UGC pieces used per
channel per day
11.06
51.04
18.95
5 hours, 45 minutes
1 hour, 9 minutes
N/A
11 seconds
16 seconds
N/A
2 minutes, 5 seconds
13 minutes, 36
seconds
N/A
Total number of
minutes
Average length of
each piece of UGC
used
Average length of
UGC used per channel per day
Table 3 demonstrates a significant range, in terms of how different channels used UGC. Focusing on the television output, Al Jazeera Arabic used
the most UGC in the period sampled with a daily average of 51.4 pieces. (If
the daily average was multiplied over 21 days, there would have been 1,079
pieces of UGC aired over the 21-day period on Al Jazeera Arabic alone).
14
Table 3: Comparison of the amount of UGC used by news organization
TV
High Use
Channels
Low Use
Channels
Totals
Web
Overall
number of
items
Daily average
Overall
number of
items
Daily average
Al Jazeera
Arabic
257
51.4
55
11.0
Al Jazeera
English
386
18.4
5*
1.0
BBC World
254
12.1
78
15.6
CNN
International
356
17.0
450
90.0
Euronews
415
19.8
53
10.6
France 24
270
12.9
114
22.8
NHK
144
6.9
0
0
34
1.6
3
0.6
Telesur
2,115
758
In terms of Web output, CNN International included the most UGC
online. It is important to stress, however, that this is partly because different Web sites had different numbers of links on each homepage. CNN
International had the most links out to stories from its homepage, with
a daily average of 119 links, compared with 65 links to stories on BBC
World and 13 links to stories on the NHK homepage.
RQ2: In which types of stories is the 24-hour news industry
most likely to use UGC?
During the first phase of analysis, the story related to each piece of UGC
was noted. For some stories, such as the riots in Singapore, it was a oneoff event. For ongoing stories, such as Syria, the story descriptor involved
something like, “Syria—chemical weapons inspection,” “Syria—Geneva II
15
talks announced,” or “Syria—bombing in Aleppo.” During the second phase
of analysis, these descriptions were post-coded, so that one all-encompassing description could be given to similar stories. Anything related to Syria
was labeled, “Syria conflict.”
On television, over the 21 days, 75 different stories were told using some
element of UGC. On the Web, over just five days, 115 individual subjects included at least one piece of UGC. Intuitively, this variance can be
explained by the structural differences between television and the Web.
Online news needs to be refreshed and updated constantly and has near
unlimited space in terms of its different Web pages, whereas television fills
a limited, and immovable amount of time.
The news Web sites had specific design features that encouraged depth and
breadth in reporting. One was live blogs and the other was topic pages.
Live blogs are featured on Al Jazeera English, BBC World, CNN International, euronews (which used an embedded Storify as a form of live blogging), and France 24. Figure 2 presents an example from BBC World from
December 6, 2013, called “UK tidal surge: As it happened.” It shows the
Figure 2: “UK tidal surge: As it happened,” BBC World, December 6, 2013
16
impact of a serious storm on the United Kingdom. Within this one story
there are 22 separate pieces of UGC (one television package that includes a
UGC video,7 six photos from Twitter, and 15 photos emailed directly to the
BBC). Television could not have included this level of depth in its coverage
of the storm.
The other format we investigated was topic pages. These pages had curated
content around a similar topic displayed in one place. On topics like Syria,
formats like this on the Web provide far more flexibility in terms of storytelling, and allow more context and explanation. BBC World and CNN
International had topic pages for Syria. Figure 3 shows an example of one
built by CNN, specifically exploring the refugee experience of Syrians.
Over the 21 days reviewed on television, 73 different stories used at least
one piece of UGC to illustrate events. In comparison, over only five days
on the Web, 115 different stories included at least one piece of UGC. Table
3, however, shows that the main story types were similar.
Figure 3: topic page, “Crisis in Syria: The Refugees,” CNN
17
Table 4: The main types of stories covered using some form of UGC
Story Type
TV
Web
Number of
UGC items
% of total
Number of
UGC items
% of total
Conflict/
War/Military
925
44%
161
21%
Explosion
(terrorism or
other causes)
50
2%
9
1%
Other
281
13%
285
38%
Protest
364
17%
152
20%
Vehicular
crashes
449
21%
80
11%
Weather
46
2%
71
9%
2,115
100%
758
100%
Total
On the Web, the most common category of news employing UGC was
“other.” During our analysis, the Web ran a number of feature stories, like
“Pictures of the audience dressed as Doctor Who characters” or “Pictures
people had taken during vacations to North Korea,”8 that were inundated
with UGC.
Perhaps one of the most surprising statistics was the relative absence of
content around weather. People are often quick to dismiss UGC as simply something used to illustrate serious weather conditions. Apart from
severe storms in the United Kingdom and the United States during the
coding period, which prompted some usage of UGC, especially online,
weather-related UGC did not feature heavily. It should also be noted that
the weather-related disaster of Typhoon Hainan in the Philippines was
classified as individual stories.
18
While the Web can’t be directly compared, because only five days of content were analyzed, when you drill down to the specific stories covered
using UGC on television during the sampling frame, similar patterns are
visible.
Table 5: The specific stories covered using some form of UGC
TV
Web
Overall story
Number of items
Overall story
Number of items
1
Syria
842
Syria
155
2
Glasgow helicopter
crash
349
Egypt protests
52
3
Ukraine protests
119
Ukraine protests
52
4
Egypt protests
99
Glasgow helicopter
crash
49
5
Black Friday
85
Bangkok protests
25
Of the five stories with the most UGC on television (Syria, the Glasgow
helicopter crash, Ukraine protests, Egypt protests, and Black Friday), four
of the top five stories on the Web were the same, apart from Black Friday coverage, which did not appear with the same volume online. This
is because Black Friday fell on November 29, which was not one of the
five randomly sampled dates. Instead, the protests in Bangkok, Thailand,
received coverage on four out of the five sampled days.
But these pure numbers alone do not accurately reflect what was happening over the three-week period. When stories are mapped against date, the
resulting graph (Figure 4) shows the three clearest patterns from the research.
19
500
450
SYRIA
GLASGOW
UKRAINE PROTESTS
EGYPT
BLACK FRIDAY
TOTAL
400
Items Used
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
15-DEC
14-DEC
13-DEC
12-DEC
11-DEC
10-DEC
09-DEC
08-DEC
07-DEC
06-DEC
05-DEC
04-DEC
03-DEC
02-DEC
01-DEC
30-NOV
29-NOV
28-NOV
27-NOV
26-NOV
25-NOV
0
Figure 4: Comparison of the amount of UGC used over the 21-day period
100
90
THAILAND PROTESTS
GLASGOW
UKRAINE PROTESTS
EGYPT
SYRIA
80
Items Used
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
27-NOV
30-NOV
02-DEC
05-DEC
11-DEC
Figure 5: The top news stories containing UGC on the Web
1. U
GC was used to tell the story of the Syrian conflict almost
every day
Content related to the Syria conflict appeared almost every day during the
sample period on at least one of the channels under analysis. Covering the
Syrian conflict has been an ongoing challenge for news editors. Limitations
placed on foreign journalists to enter or move freely within the country has
20
meant news organizations have had to rely upon UGC as a way of telling
the story. This is reflected in the consistent presence of the green column
in Figure 4 and the blue column in Figure 5. Of the 2,115 times UGC items
coded as appearing on television over the three weeks, 842 were out of
Syria. However, those 842 pieces were broadcast over the entire period. In
contrast, all 349 of the UGC items identified during the Glasgow helicopter
crash appeared on November 29 or November 30, and December 2.
2. Glasgow helicopter crash was a breaking-news story
where UGC filled the gap while news organizations waited
for other pictures.
The yellow column in Figure 4 represents the amount of UGC used in the
coverage of the Glasgow helicopter crash. The crash occurred late in the
evening (GMT) of November 29, causing a peak in UGC on November 30,
when pictures first emerged. Of all of the one-off stories (i.e., not stories
like Syria, Ukraine, and the Thailand protests, which were ongoing during
the three-week sample period), coverage of the helicopter crash included
the most UGC use.
There was a clear peak on November 30, because, in the first hours after the
crash, most news organizations relied on pictures taken by eyewitnesses
and posted on Twitter. For example, BBC World broke the story at 22:08
GMT, and over the following three hours it used 35 minutes and 15 seconds
of UGC. It is important to note that those 35 minutes were made up of
four pictures sourced from Twitter and an unidentified 13-second video of a
police cordon. While the economic element of UGC is not part of this phase
of research, it has to be acknowledged that 35 minutes of free content is a
significant amount of money for a television news channel to save.
21
The crash happened late on a Friday night in Europe, a time when newsrooms are traditionally lightly staffed. However, as the story developed,
news agencies and the news organizations themselves were able to get
their crews in place in Glasgow. When professional images started to come
in, the reliance on UGC was noticeably reduced.
3. N
elson Mandela’s death had a direct impact on the amount
of UGC appearing on the television channels.
Nelson Mandela’s death, which was announced late in the evening (GMT)
of December 5, directly impacted the amount of UGC that was used. Overall, a very small amount was employed during the coverage of Mandela’s
death, and the blanket coverage on almost all channels meant other stories
were not relayed with the same level of detail. In the immediate aftermath
of the announcement, the channels switched to their long-prepared obituaries and, when in place, were happy to go live to correspondents in South
Africa. As this was a breaking-news event into which news channels had
invested a lot of money over several years, the channels went into autopilot
without the need to use UGC.
RQ3a: A
re photographs or videos more likely to be used?
What is apparent is that UGC is used when other content is not available
to tell a story. Television requires moving pictures. Web formats encourage the use of still images, whether through photo galleries, live blogs, or a
still image to illustrate a digital article. Therefore, we expected significantly
more photographs to be used online, when compared to television. This
wasn’t the case. It was roughly even.
22
Table 6: Amount of photographs and videos used on TV and the Web
Television
Web
Video
70%
49%
Photographs
30%
51%
It is not really fair, however, to compare those Web sites associated with
television news channels with news Web sites overall. There was a great
deal of video posted to these Web sites and in almost all cases they were
running the same packages online that had appeared on television. It would
be interesting to extend this research to newspaper Web sites, as well as
Web-only news organizations such as the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed.
RQ3b: Was the content described as UGC in some form?
As part of the analysis, we examined whether each piece of UGC was
described as content produced by someone unrelated to the newsroom,
i.e. not a professional journalist. In addition, we examined whether the
uploader was given a credit onscreen or online. Describing the content as
UGC took a number of forms (e.g., onscreen captions of “amateur footage,”
“activist video,” or “youtube.com”). Sometimes UGC content was obvious
because it was embedded online, so the fact that it was a picture from
Twitter or a video from YouTube was evident. Alternatively, each television channel had a program dedicated to social media. On Al Jazeera English, it was The Stream, on BBC World, it was BBC Trending, on France 24
there were two: Les Observateurs and Sur Le Net. These programs would
play a YouTube video showing the full YouTube page. And sometimes there
wouldn’t be a specific caption, but the reporter or presenter would use language such as, “These pictures have emerged online.”
23
As Table 6 illustrates, on television the majority of UGC was not described
or labeled specifically as content that had been created by someone unrelated to the newsroom. It is worth noting that it is much clearer on Web
sites that content has been sourced from the social Web, and is therefore
UGC. This is due to the structural character that exists online, which makes
it possible to embed content directly from social networks like Twitter,
YouTube, Instagram, or Vine. When the descriptions are compared by
channel, it was clear that some channels were more likely to describe content as UGC than others.
Table 7: Percentage of content NOT described as UGC in some way
Percentage of content
NOT described as UGC
TV*
Web
74%
30%
*It’s important to note that this data does not include Al Jazeera Arabic as it was impossible for us to know whether the captions
on screen or the voiceovers were describing the content as UGC.
Table 7 shows that 51 percent of CNN International content on television
was not described explicitly as UGC. Telesur didn’t label any content as
UGC and NHK World failed to label 97 percent of the UGC it used.
24
Table 8: Total number of pieces of content not labeled or described as UGC
TV
Web
Total pieces of UGC
Percentage
Total pieces of UGC
Percentage
Al Jazeera English
386
61%
5
0%
BBC World
254
81%
78
45%
CNN
355
51%
450
13%
Euronews
415
92%
53
30%
France 24
270
75%
114
51%
NHK
144
97%
0
0%
34
100%
3
33%
Telesur
*It’s important to note that this data does not include Al Jazeera Arabic as it was impossible for us to know whether the captions
There were a number of different ways UGC was described by different
news organizations on television as well as online.
Table 9: Ways in which UGC was described
Type of written credit or
spoken description
TV
Web
74%
30%
Via youtube.com/
facebook.com/twitter.com
9%
30%
User-Generated Content
0%
20%
Eyewitness photo or
video/footage
3%
11%
Amateur footage/video
or photo
8%
9%
These pictures can’t be
verified/unverified pictures
2%
less than 1%
Other
4%
less than 1%
No description that
content was UGC
25
Figures 6, 7, and 8 are examples of the different ways UGC was described.
BBC World used “Unverified Pictures,” Euronews used “Amateur Footage,”
and Al Jazeera English used “youtube.com/activist video.”
Figure 6: BBC World, December 8, 2013, 21:07 GMT Singapore Riots, Credit: BJ Chin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj2R7-JBRpI
Figure 7: Euronews, December 3, 2013, 07:07 GMT Syria
Figure 8: Al Jazeera English November 26, 2013, 08:21 GMT Aleppo, Syria
26
RQ3c: Were the people who uploaded the content credited?
The issue of crediting is a significant one, and will be covered in much more
detail in the final phase of our reporting. The intention with this quantitative analysis was to ascertain exactly how frequently uploaders were being
credited on television and online. Table 9 suggests that credits were regularly added when UGC was integrated into output.
Table 10: Percentage of content where the uploader was credited in some form
TV*
Web*
49%
72%
*This data does not include Al Jazeera Arabic as it was impossible for us (as non-Arabic speakers) to know whether the captions
However, these numbers don’t provide an accurate sense of what was happening. Many of the videos uploaded from Syria that were used by news
organizations were uploaded by activist groups. They watermark the videos with logos before uploading to YouTube. This means that the content is
“credited” without the broadcasters having to do anything themselves (see
Figures 7 and 8). As Table 12 illustrates, 41 percent of the content within
the sampling period had a watermark or logo added by the uploader.
27
Table 11: Who added the credit to the content?
TV*
Web*
Percentage
of stories per
channel where
the credit
was added
by the news
organization
Total number of
pieces of UGC
that were used
on television
Percentage
where the
uploader credit
was added
by the news
organization
Total number of
pieces of UGC
that were used
online
Al Jazeera English
1%
386
100%
5
BBC World
9%
254
49%
78
CNN International
81%
356
79%
450
Euronews
21%
415
13%
53
France 24
1%
270
15%
114
NHK
4%
144
0
0
Telesur
0%
34
0
3
*This data does not include Al Jazeera Arabic as it was impossible for us (as non-Arabic speakers) to know whether the captions
In Figures 7 and 8, the activist logos were accompanied by a caption added
by the broadcaster explaining that this was content unrelated to the news
organization. However, on 356 occasions (52 percent), a video with watermarked logo had no further explanation about what the video was or who
had uploaded the content (See Figures 9 and 10).
A viewer or reader could assume the logo in the top left hand corner was
the logo of another television station. We argue that this type of content
should be clearly described as UGC and the name of the activist group
should be spelled out. Because of the number of Syrian activist groups
that add their own logo, which could be described as a form of credit, we
wanted to examine how frequently the news organizations themselves
actively added a credit.
28
Figure 9: BBC World News, December 7, 2013,
10:22 GMT
Figure 10: France 24, November 25, 2013,
21:40 GMT
Table 12: Percentage of the content per channel where the news organization actively credited the uploader
when it used a piece of content
TV
Web
Percentage of content where the uploader added a credit
to the content themselves (e.g., watermark or logo)
41%
23%
Percentage of content where the news organization
actively added the credit
17%
56%
As Table 11 illustrates, looking at TV only, CNN International adds these
credits frequently (81 percent of the time). The rest of the news organizations credit very infrequently. For Al Jazeera English and France 24, only
one percent of the UGC output had a credit onscreen, which was added
by the broadcaster. Crediting on the Web is more common, although
not universal.
29
Why This Matters
After much research into UGC, we can conclude that UGC is treated
like any other source.9 News organizations still act as gatekeepers, filtering and aggregating UGC in ways they believe are useful and valuable to
their audience.
While the terms “user-generated content” may be soothing to journalists,
reassuring them and the industry at large that UGC does not offer any particular threat to the status quo, what it also means is that the considerations
which are necessary when dealing with sourced content are frequently
ignored. A picture filmed by an eyewitness on his or her camera and uploaded
to Twitter is not the same as a picture filmed by a stringer10 who is then paid
a standard fee by a newsroom. Similarly, it is not the same as a video sourced
from, for example, Reuters or APTN, news agencies that are paid a monthly
or annual subscription fee for their content by news organizations.
Obviously, if the person who filmed the video or took the picture wants to
remain anonymous, a newsroom has a responsibility to not only ensure the
content is not credited, but also to privatize the person’s identity during the
newsgathering process. In the majority of cases, however, the people who
take a photo or films a video during a breaking-news event are simply too
shocked to know how to respond to the deluge of news requests for use
that come to them via their social networks and have no idea that they own
the copyright, and, in almost all cases, grant usage rights.
It is reassuring that journalists now know that they should be seeking permission for the use of content sourced from the social Web, and in almost
all cases during our sampling period, we could trace individual reporters’
requests for use from Twitter (far less on YouTube, however).
30
Figure 11: Requests by news organizations on Twitter to use eyewitness pictures by Twitter user
@scotscribbler of the Glasgow helicopter crash. It is worth noting the last tweet in this screen grab, which
shows how worldwide distribution deals can be sought and, at times, agreed upon in 140 characters.
But while permission was sought and granted (Figure 11), credit was very
rarely added to the content when it was used on screen or online. This was
even the case when the UGC was distributed by Reuters and APTN. In the
instance of the Glasgow helicopter crash, the agencies advised of the need
to credit the uploader (Figure 12) in the distributed “dopesheet”,11 but this
request was not upheld by the broadcasters in our sample.
Figure 12: Reuters dopesheet asking clients to credit uploaders accompanying UGC content distributed on
the Glasgow helicopter crash
31
By treating UGC as any other source, it also means that it is not described
as such to the audience. While the issue of running unverified pictures is
discussed by journalists privately, these challenges are kept from the audience. Viewers don’t know that what they are looking at is sourced from
someone unrelated to the news organization, and in the case of the Syrian conflict, the person filming the video has a particular political position
from which he or she is documenting events. The audience also doesn’t
know whether the content has been verified.
In a couple of rare instances, the phrase “unverified pictures” was used,
which from an audience point of view seems additionally confusing. It also
fails to capture the fact that verification is a process. Journalists and editors
often want a piece of content to be proven as 100 percent accurate. In fact,
the everyday reality is far messier.
For every piece of content, there are three key verification checks: location,
date, and source. It might be possible to be 100 percent sure about the location from which a photograph was taken, by cross-referencing landmarks
on the image with satellite images. And it might be possible to be 99 percent certain that a photo was filmed on a specific day through the EXIF
data embedded in the image (there is always an element of doubt with
EXIF data as internal clocks on cameras can be changed). But it might not
be 100 percent clear who uploaded the content. Cross-referencing usernames on social networks might provide a number of clues, but it still may
not be possible to find a real name, and certainly not a phone number for
contacting someone directly.
Some news organizations—CNN International and Al Jazeera English, for
instance—are very good at adding the location to user-generated content
and even a date. Overall, however, much of the UGC used (especially from
Syria) offered very little information about what the news organization did
or did not know about the content and its uploader.
32
Conclusions
UGC is being used on a daily basis by the largest 24-hour news channels.
However, if asked, their audiences would probably have little idea that this
is the case. The numbers show that UGC is rarely labeled and is credited
even less frequently.
User-generated content is used when other pictures are not available, as
the ongoing reliance on it to cover the Syrian conflict demonstrates. The
way that UGC was integrated during coverage of the Glasgow helicopter
crash and the razing of Lenin’s statue in Kiev during the Ukrainian protests
suggests that UGC is often employed as a stopgap before news agency pictures emerge—interestingly, even if the professional ones are less dramatic.
This was demonstrated during the coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death.
The news organizations had so much material stockpiled from planning for
the event that there was no need to seek out UGC. This, even though there
were compelling pictures filmed by people on the streets of South Africa
documenting the way the country was reacting to Mandela’s death.12
UGC also inspired stories that would otherwise have been ignored, as long
as the pictures were compelling enough. Within our sample there were
a handful of stories that were driven solely by the UGC that emerged.
Some were kicker stories like one about a ship’s cook who was unexpectedly found alive by a dive team sent to investigate a sunken ship. Others
were shocking cases of police brutality captured through secret filming on
camera phones.
As far as we could tell, the vast majority of UGC was sourced via the social
Web, mostly Twitter or YouTube, as well as some from Facebook. It also
seems that much of the UGC used was not sourced directly by the news-
33
rooms. These eight news organizations rely on different news agencies for
professional content and UGC. All eight channels are subscribers to one or
both of the traditional news agencies Reuters and APTN, four of the channels participate in the Eurovision News Exchange, and some are clients of
the social media agency Storyful. Only through our qualitative interviews
will be able to ascertain whether some of the most widely used pieces of
UGC broadcast during our sample were discovered by the newsrooms
themselves, or whether they were delivered via the agencies.
Although a great deal of content was sourced from the social Web or via
news agencies, some news organizations also received content directly from
viewers. CNN International and BBC World have very strong relationships
with their audiences in terms of UGC. CNN International has iReport,
which is now a very well-established part of its newsgathering operation.
Content that has been uploaded directly to iReport was recorded regularly
during our sampling period. Similarly, BBC World, via its regular instructions on the rolling bar across the bottom of the screen and at the bottom
of online stories, encourages people to send content in to yourpics@bbc.
co.uk or whysvideos@bbc.co.uk. It was startling how much content, used
particularly on the BBC Web site, had been sent directly to the news organization via email.
Finally, a surprising finding from this analysis was the absence of viral videos. A viral video, one that reaches over one million views on YouTube in
a short period of time, typically involves a talented toddler, a cute animal,
or a jaw-dropping sports stunt. In the period sampled, none of these types
of videos appeared online or on air.13 With the success of websites such as
Buzzfeed and Upworthy, the power of viral videos to drive traffic has been
well documented,14 and many online news sites have a viral video section
themselves. It was, therefore, surprising that this type of content did not
feature in our sample period.
34
This first phase of research has provided the foundation for the next, which
will involve qualitative interviews with over 60 journalists, editors, and
news managers from these eight channels, as well as other newsrooms
around the world. In those interviews we will use the data from this report
to frame the questions, with a particular emphasis on the reasons for the
absence of credits and descriptions of UGC. We will also discuss issues of
discovery and verification, and—if anyone will be honest with us—payment. How do newsrooms find UGC and do they undertake their own
verification checks or rely on external organizations? How do they deal
with ethical considerations, the impact of traumatic UGC pictures, and
considerations of taste and decency in terms of what to show audiences?
This phase of the research has demonstrated that with the reliance on UGC
that exists in most major newsrooms these questions are vital ones. And
hopefully their answers will help shape the creation of practical materials
to support newsrooms in their daily integration of UGC going forward.
35
Endnotes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Beckett, C. & Mansell, R., (2008); Hänska-Ahy, M.T. & Shapour, R. (2012); Jönsson, A.M., &
Örnebring, H. (2011);, Newman, N. (2009); Paulussen, S. & Ugille, P. (2008); Hermida, A. &
Thurman, N. (2008); Wardle, C., Williams, A. & Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2008).
medium.com/i-m-h-o/b9e7ae3e512d
There is some very good research into these networks exploring how some activist groups have
created stronger ties with news organizations outside Syria, for example www.usip.org/sites/
default/files/PW91-Syrias%20Socially%20Mediated%20Civil%20War.pdf
www.quernstone.com/archives/2010/11/user-generated.html and www.rooreynolds.
com/2009/05/07/alternatives-to-ucg/ are two examples of the widely shared opinion that the
phrase UGC is unpopular and actually unhelpful.
The five days we analyzed were: November 27, 2013; November 30, 2013; December 2, 2013;
December 5, 2013; and December 11, 2013. The Web site capture software failed on three of the 40
occasions that are included in this sample. For those days, the previous day was analyzed.
Average refers to the mean average.
The UGC video was actually submitted directly to Guardian Witness, the UGC initiative from the
Guardian newspaper. The video was so dramatic that it was syndicated to a number of different
news organizations, including the BBC. It is also worth noting that the video was not described as
UGC or credited.
Two non-news features on CNN included very high numbers of UGC. These were not included in
this table as we wanted to compare stories that appeared on more than one channel.
“‘Doctor Who’ turns 50 and fans’ lives will never be the same,” CNN, November 20, 2013,
www.edition.cnn.com/2013/11/20/showbiz/doctor-who-irpt-dw50/?hpt=hp_bn8
“North Korea beer tour?,” CNN, November 24, www.edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/
international/2013/11/24/nkorea-package-tour.cnn&hpt=hp_bn4&video_referrer=
Hänska-Ahy, M.T. & Shapour, R (2012), Harkin (2012) Hermida & Thurman, (2008), Wardle et al.,
*2008), See also Kevin Anderson’s recent primer on why newsrooms should integrate UGC:
www.kbridge.org/clear-editorial-goals-essential-to-effective-ugc-strategies/
In journalism, a stringer is a freelance journalist or photographer who contributes reports or
photos to a news organization on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of
published or broadcast work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringer_(journalism))
A dopesheet is metadata that agencies send to accompany a video package to describe the content
of the video in written form. It includes a written shotlist, storyline, dates, restrictions on use, and
crediting requirements.
It is worth noting that there was absolutely no UGC broadcast on television related to Mandela’s
death. There was a small amount of UGC included in Web coverage.
The only content that could be described in this category was a two-minute roundup showcasing
online responses to Miley Cyrus’ appearance at the American Music Awards in front of a giant
lip-syncing cat. It showed the audience’s responses, which appeared in tweets, Vine videos, and
pictures posted to social networks.
37
14
38
A nice roundup of recent discussion about this subject appears as part of Neiman Lab’s weekly
update here: www.niemanlab.org/2013/12/this-week-in-review-questions-on-journalists-handlingof-nsa-files-and-the-value-of-viral-content/
References
Anderson, K. “Clear Editorial Goals Essential to Effective UGC Strategy.”
(22 March, 2013.) www.kbridge.org/clear-editorial-goals-essential-toeffective-ugc-strategies/.
Beckett, C., and Mansell, R. “Crossing Boundaries: New Media and
Networked Journalism,” Communication, Culture & Critique, 1:1, 92–104.
(2008.)
de Rosa, Anthony. “Disconnect Between Traditional Media and UGC.” (12
August, 2013.) www.soupsoup.net/2013/08/12/the-disconnect-betweentraditional-media-and-ugc/.
Hänska-Ahy, M.T. and Shapour, R. “Who’s Reporting the Protests?”
Journalism Studies, 13:1, 1–17. (2012.)
Harkin, J., Anderson, K., Morgan, L. and Smith, B. “Deciphering User
Generated Content in Transitional Societies: A Syria Coverage Case
Study.” Internews Center for Innovation and Learning. (2012.)
www.internews.org/sites/default/files/resources/
InternewsWPSyria_2012-06-web.pdf.
Hermida, A. and Thurman, N. “A Clash of Cultures: The Integration of
User-generated Content Within Professional Journalistic Frameworks at
British Newspaper Websites,” Journalism Practice 2(3), 343–356. (2008.)
Jönnson, A.M., and Örnebring, H. “User-generated Content and the
News: Empowerment of Citizens or an Interactive Illusion?” Journalism
Practice, 5:2, 127–144. (2011.)
39
Lynch, M, Freelon, D., and Aday, S. “Syria’s Socially Mediated Civil
War,” United States Institute of Peace. (January 2014.) www.usip.org/
publications/syria-s-socially-mediated-civil-war.
Newman, N. “Working Paper on the Role of Social Media and its Impact
on Mainstream Journalism,” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
(2009.) www.thomsonreuters.com/content/news_ideas/white_papers/
media/487784.
Paulussen, S. and Ugille, P. “User Generated Content in the Newsroom:
Professional and Organisational Constraints on Participatory Journalism,”
Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. University of
Westminster, London, Vol. 5:2, 24–41. (2008.) www.westminster.ac.uk/__
data/assets/pdf_file/0005/20021/003WPCC-Vol5-No2-Paulussen_Ugille.
pdf.
Reynolds, R. “Alternatives to UGC.” (7 May 2009.) www.rooreynolds.
com/2009/05/07/alternatives-to-ucg/.
Sanderson, J. “User Generated Content.” (26 November, 2010.)
www.quernstone.com/archives/2010/11/user-generated.html.
Wardle, C., Williams, A., and Wahl-Jorgensen, K. “ugc@thebbc: UGC and
BBC News AHRC Knowledge Exchange.” (2008.) www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/
knowledgeexchange/cardiffone.pdf
Wardle, C., and Williams, A. “Beyond User-generated Content: A
Production Study Examining the Ways in Which UGC is Used at the
BBC,” Media, Culture & Society, 781–799. (2010.)
40
www.towcenter.org

Amateur Footage: A Global Study of User

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