Reports from the Frontline: How Small World News Trains Citizen Journalists and Captures Footage from Libya data sheet 4166 Views
Armed with a few Kodak Zi8 cameras, 6 HTC Wildfire mobile phones, energy, expertise in training citizen journalists, Small World News is working to share stories from Libya with the larger world.
Small World News is on the ground in Benghazi training Libyans to capture and tell video stories of events in this volatile region. Along the way, the team has also captured footage that no other main stream media outlet has been able to get. MobileActive.org chatted late last night with Brian Conley, founder of Small World News, to hear how things were going. What we learned is that capturing and sharing stories from Libya is as much about technology as it is about establishing trust and connections with the journalists on the ground.
Small World News and Alive.in
Small World News is a documentary and new media company that provides tools to journalists and citizens around the world to tell stories about their lives. We wrote about Small World News last when it helped an independent Afghan news agency integrate mobile phones and SMS into news reporting.
As part of its work in Libya, Small World News captures audio reports from individuals on the ground to broadcast to a larger international audience. It does this via Speak2Tweet, a collaborative project from Google, Twitter, and SayNow, which allows a caller to Tweet by calling a phone number and leaving a voicemail.
Our latest case study features Small World News, reporting live from Benghazi with citizen media efforts in Libya. About a dozen young Libyan citizen journalists are capturing and sharing video content of life on the ground in Benghazi, right now. And they are scooping many major media outlets in the process -- check out their footage captured yesterday from the eastern gate of Ajdabiyah, a city east of Benghazi where heavy artillery is moving in.