HOW SMARTPHONE IS REDEFINING JOURNALISM
Just in case you have never come across the word, ‘‘MOJO’’, it’s a short term for mobile journalism.
It is an innovative form of reporting where people use only smartphones to create and file stories. These stories are usually videos, but they can also be audio reports or slideshows or photos and text.
Mobile Journalism makes journalistic video productions more affordable, flexible and faster.
In the last few years, there’s been a drift from the conventional way of covering news with the use of sophisticated cameras. Also, with the popularity of the internet, the way people access news is becoming dynamic
According to Pew Research, the internet has surpassed newspapers as a leading source of news.
In 2017 about 67 per cent of American adults somewhat rely on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat for news, compared with 62 per cent in 2016.
A 2017 Reuters study showed main source of online news in Ireland was The Journal.ie, it found 32 percent of people used it as their top source for news. It was followed by RTÉ News (31%), Irish Independent (30%), The Irish Times (23%) and Breakingnews.ie (19%), BBC News (16%), Sky News (14%), Yahoo! News (12%), Her.ie/Joe.ie (11%) and the Irish Examiner (10%).
There is a huge difference in uptake of TV, radio and newspapers between older and younger people, with the latter relying far more on social media. As a source of news, social media is also more popular among women than with men.
This is where mobile journalism comes in. With good internet connection and portable smart phones tablets, digital cameras or laptops, video productions more flexible and faster during shooting, live broadcasting, editing or sharing news.
PS: The idea of using a smartphone to do a news report sounded strange to me until I tried it myself. If you want to know how I fared then click.
It was worth trying because made some mistakes but I learnt a lot. Over the last few months, I’ve continued to improve my skills and I’ve shot better videos which are on my YouTube channel but you can check this one.
Please let me know what you think in the comments section.
JOE'S BLOG 