The Online Journalism Review covers the TV news in Japan picking up phone video of a 12-car pileup.
Everyone with a phone that can take an image can transmit "live" news. Organizations should be playing with this approach as they document protest, illegal acts or arguments. It is not much different the activist video project except now folks can document disturbing images and transmit in the same moment publishing to a personal web page, blog, organization web page or directly to the news. (more on advocacy video)
Advocacy groups have had cameras broken, tapes confiscated and been intimidated by on site “security officers” into exposing tape. The ability to move the data off site live would have protected valuable content.
There is a multi-billion dollar network of communication infrastructure at the end of our cell phones. We have just begun to figure out ways to co-opt it for democracy rather than commerce.
