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| Woolwich attack highlights power of mobile technology as a news source | Woolwich attack highlights power of mobile technology as a news source |
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| A man covered in the blood of his recent victim, still holding the weapons, explains to a passerby with a camera phone the motives for his appalling attack. Peppered with political messages and carrying a clumsy apology to "women who had to see that", the bloodied man is not enraged that his macabre and twisted actions have been filmed, he is gratified. This is a 21st-century terrorist "press" conference, conducted on a pavement in Woolwich in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. | A man covered in the blood of his recent victim, still holding the weapons, explains to a passerby with a camera phone the motives for his appalling attack. Peppered with political messages and carrying a clumsy apology to "women who had to see that", the bloodied man is not enraged that his macabre and twisted actions have been filmed, he is gratified. This is a 21st-century terrorist "press" conference, conducted on a pavement in Woolwich in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. |
| The video obtained by ITV News, but evidently not actually shot by them, is uploaded and disseminated to the globe, through YouTube, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, on emailed links, on Reddit, Tumblr. Meanwhile on Twitter another witness, rapper "Boya Dee", whose timeline of mundane tweets previously focused on cheesy jokes, Arsenal and the appeal of Mila Kunis, was able to give a firsthand, dramatic and colloquial account of what he saw. It did not need a reporter or policeman to relay what he witnessed: "The two black bredas run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!" | The video obtained by ITV News, but evidently not actually shot by them, is uploaded and disseminated to the globe, through YouTube, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, on emailed links, on Reddit, Tumblr. Meanwhile on Twitter another witness, rapper "Boya Dee", whose timeline of mundane tweets previously focused on cheesy jokes, Arsenal and the appeal of Mila Kunis, was able to give a firsthand, dramatic and colloquial account of what he saw. It did not need a reporter or policeman to relay what he witnessed: "The two black bredas run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!" |
| Attacks by extremists which include filmed beheadings and executions are nothing new. Islamic extreme terror groups in the Middle East and Chechnya have deployed the tactic of filming and disseminating shocking footage for well over a decade. Increasingly it is a tactic also seen in the narcotic wars of Mexico, with a series of gruesome and public murders, beheadings and disembowellings of those seeking to interfere with the narco trade. It is distressingly easy to find all of these images online. | Attacks by extremists which include filmed beheadings and executions are nothing new. Islamic extreme terror groups in the Middle East and Chechnya have deployed the tactic of filming and disseminating shocking footage for well over a decade. Increasingly it is a tactic also seen in the narcotic wars of Mexico, with a series of gruesome and public murders, beheadings and disembowellings of those seeking to interfere with the narco trade. It is distressingly easy to find all of these images online. |
| The speed of uploading images and video, the quality and length of video on camera phones, the ability to stream live events from a phone without a battery of attendant satellite trucks, and the frictionless sharing of all material through social recommendation transform our expectation and experience of news. We still know very little about the planning and motivation for the attacks in Woolwich, but we know the tools of recording and dissemination are leading us into a world of streamed events and atrocity which will find us, unfiltered, through the phones in our pockets. | The speed of uploading images and video, the quality and length of video on camera phones, the ability to stream live events from a phone without a battery of attendant satellite trucks, and the frictionless sharing of all material through social recommendation transform our expectation and experience of news. We still know very little about the planning and motivation for the attacks in Woolwich, but we know the tools of recording and dissemination are leading us into a world of streamed events and atrocity which will find us, unfiltered, through the phones in our pockets. |
| What this means in a commercial, political and cultural realm is unclear. News organisations, such as the Irish start-up Storyful, focus on the verification of non-mainstream footage – a kind of 21st century Associated Press. The major platforms for dissemination; YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have tried hard to hold the line that they are neutral networks, but as their usage figures overtake those of mainstream media they too are forced to respond to difficult editorial and ethical problems thrown out by this hyper connectivity. Privately all organisations acknowledge that as the default news providers for the world, there has to be attention paid to both verification and filtering systems. Two months ago, Facebook removed gruesome footage of a beheading from its pages. It said it would be "re-evaluating" its content policy. | What this means in a commercial, political and cultural realm is unclear. News organisations, such as the Irish start-up Storyful, focus on the verification of non-mainstream footage – a kind of 21st century Associated Press. The major platforms for dissemination; YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have tried hard to hold the line that they are neutral networks, but as their usage figures overtake those of mainstream media they too are forced to respond to difficult editorial and ethical problems thrown out by this hyper connectivity. Privately all organisations acknowledge that as the default news providers for the world, there has to be attention paid to both verification and filtering systems. Two months ago, Facebook removed gruesome footage of a beheading from its pages. It said it would be "re-evaluating" its content policy. |
| Writing recently in the New Republic, legal scholar and columnist Jeffrey Rosen described semi-confidential meetings in Silicon Valley of a group he calls "the Deciders", effectively the legal and policy heads of social networks, who are trying to hash out a standard of free speech which can be applied to the open web. Rosen observes that the work in screening stretches to building complex algorithms, but that ultimately the broader interpretation of expression in accordance with US standards of free speech is likely to prevail. The challenges, though, of extreme acts of graphic terror are as much the problem now of these technology companies as they used to be of news and picture editors. | Writing recently in the New Republic, legal scholar and columnist Jeffrey Rosen described semi-confidential meetings in Silicon Valley of a group he calls "the Deciders", effectively the legal and policy heads of social networks, who are trying to hash out a standard of free speech which can be applied to the open web. Rosen observes that the work in screening stretches to building complex algorithms, but that ultimately the broader interpretation of expression in accordance with US standards of free speech is likely to prevail. The challenges, though, of extreme acts of graphic terror are as much the problem now of these technology companies as they used to be of news and picture editors. |
| The language of protest and shock have adapted themselves more quickly to the new technology platforms than any filtering mechanism or official media can keep up with. Whether it is the relatively benign topless ambushes of the Femen group of feminists, the handmade signs of Occupy Wall Street, or the hacking of Twitter accounts of the Syrian Electronic Army, protest can aggregate an international audience before the news anchor has brushed her hair. Terror has adopted the same path as we witnessed with the Boston bombings and now the butchering of a man in broad daylight on a south London street. | The language of protest and shock have adapted themselves more quickly to the new technology platforms than any filtering mechanism or official media can keep up with. Whether it is the relatively benign topless ambushes of the Femen group of feminists, the handmade signs of Occupy Wall Street, or the hacking of Twitter accounts of the Syrian Electronic Army, protest can aggregate an international audience before the news anchor has brushed her hair. Terror has adopted the same path as we witnessed with the Boston bombings and now the butchering of a man in broad daylight on a south London street. |
| The impact of events is as much in direct proportion to our ability to witness them vividly and instantaneously, with the filter of time and geography removed. When a fertiliser factory in the small town of West, Texas explodes, our understanding of the impact is delivered through an amateur camera phone video which is blown out of the owner's hand. Our understanding of the horror of the Boston marathon attack is relayed by a photo of a pale runner, his lower legs jagged and incomplete, being wheeled to an ambulance. It reaches the world before he reaches the operating theatre. | The impact of events is as much in direct proportion to our ability to witness them vividly and instantaneously, with the filter of time and geography removed. When a fertiliser factory in the small town of West, Texas explodes, our understanding of the impact is delivered through an amateur camera phone video which is blown out of the owner's hand. Our understanding of the horror of the Boston marathon attack is relayed by a photo of a pale runner, his lower legs jagged and incomplete, being wheeled to an ambulance. It reaches the world before he reaches the operating theatre. |
| When American Airlines flight 11, crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001, the precise moment of impact was captured by three people with video cameras: an artist in Brooklyn who was filming the Manhattan skyline for an installation project; a tourist who did not realise he had captured the first collision in the corner of a frame until months later; and a documentary maker filming firefighters. | When American Airlines flight 11, crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001, the precise moment of impact was captured by three people with video cameras: an artist in Brooklyn who was filming the Manhattan skyline for an installation project; a tourist who did not realise he had captured the first collision in the corner of a frame until months later; and a documentary maker filming firefighters. |
| Only a dozen years ago, the largest act of instantaneous terror taking place in the world's most photographed city, was captured on video by three people. Now, even the most mundane setting can yield the most potent and graphic images, filmed in real time, and shot to the world in a second. The future of how those images are received and filtered relies as much on the ability of networks to decide and implement their own rules and norms as on any top down filtering or editing process. | Only a dozen years ago, the largest act of instantaneous terror taking place in the world's most photographed city, was captured on video by three people. Now, even the most mundane setting can yield the most potent and graphic images, filmed in real time, and shot to the world in a second. The future of how those images are received and filtered relies as much on the ability of networks to decide and implement their own rules and norms as on any top down filtering or editing process. |
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