7. Social and Mobile Media in Times of Disaster

This chapter looks at the rapid uptake of social and mobile media and its impact on broadcast journalism practices in the Indo-Pacific. Using interviews with working journalists from mainstream news outlets focusing on disaster and crisis reporting, this chapter examines how social media platforms have changed the way broadcast journalists work with communities. This chapter discusses how journalists from advanced liberal democracies have been the dominant disseminators of information about communities in the Indo-Pacific to the rest of the world. It then discusses the shift in the production of journalistic content from professional journalists to ordinary citizens through the increase in the availability of mobile devices which allow people to post and livestream their raw, unique eyewitness material. Outlining the way in which new technologies have changed how journalists engage with communities, this chapter notes the vulnerabilities ordinary people have when they take on the role of communicator. It shows that technologies have empowered communities and, as a result of COVID-19, forever changed the way journalists work. Significantly it underscores the continued importance of journalists partnering with people to tell stories to the rest of the world.