When I was a young girl, I remember waking up for school to find “Good Morning, America” blasting on the live television nearly every morning. After school, I would visit my grandmother’s house to see her catching the evening news. News stations have been our society’s primary source of information for decades. However, thanks to the internet’s new wave of consuming media, those days may be slowly coming to a close.
Mobile journalism, also known as MOJO, is a freelance or staff report that commonly uses portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, or laptops. Mobile journalists use these resources for gathering, shooting, live broadcasting, editing, or sharing news. It is easy to shoot, edit, and broadcast all in one place, removing the amount of time needed to distribute footage, speeding up the publication process. This benefit allows publishers to post instantly.
This modern age of technology has changed how today’s news consumers get information. One of the first instances of mobile journalism recorded is from wearable technology pioneer Steve Mann as a feature in a personal virtual assistant. He identified himself as a roving reporter.
In the beginning, he faced concerns from the press about privacy. He responded by writing http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~feiner/courses/mobwear/resources/mann-iswc97.pdf on The Tech of MIT on July 24, 1996, a guest column “Wearcam Helps Address Privacy Issue.” In the column, he stated that he was wearing his experimental eyeglass to bring awareness to the vast and growing number of surveillance cameras watching over citizens’ activities. He also stated in the article that he “exercises deference to others,” many of the photos he took were “architecture details, experiments in light and shade, posed shots done at the request of those in the picture.” Every year, hundreds of mobile journalists attend mobile journalism conferences. One of these is MojoFest, organized in association with RTE, the national public services broadcaster of Ireland.
According to a report by Verizon.com, A Pew Research Study, revealed that as of 2019, more than half of U.S. adults get their news from social media either often or sometimes. The study’s results seem to be more evident in the younger generation. As a junior in college, I cannot remember the last time I watched the news or listened to the radio. However, the assumption that young people do not care about news is untrue. As a future adult of our country, taking journalism classes have shaped my views on these resources throughout high school and college. I am currently in a class called Mass Media World Wide Web. This course examines how journalists and news organizations are using emerging forms of digital media for storytelling on social media and mobile platforms. I can definitely see a difference in what I learned in high school vs all the information I’ve learned in this specific course.
Today’s news companies focus on specific events and places by using strategies like the framing theory. For years, the framing theory has steered American minds into thinking many things, including stereotypes and political views. Despite this, mobile journalism gives consumers the freedom to choose what news they consume. Instead of watching CNN report on an event in Africa, you can find news sites in Africa for a more authentic point of view. Instead of watching FOX News report on the BLM movement of 2020, you could read the stories of the people there on Twitter. Mobile journalism allows you to view current events from all perspectives. These resources give a broader view on the world around us and a new found sense of understanding.