BBC is one of the few mass media outlets that has a worldwide footprint, and as someone who used to live in a region which is heavily covered by the BBC, it was very interesting to see the “outside perspective” that it brought in for issues which had a strongly localized context. With the BBC going into the practice of inviting participation (via social networks) to their reporting process, I think it would be very interesting to see the resultant blending of the local and the outside perspective.
The BBC has published their social media policy online, and as I was going through it, their editorial guidelines for using pictures from social media seemed very interesting to me. The guidelines cover three important areas – context, consent and amplification.
Context
Context can be seen from two different perspectives. One is, as the BBC calls it, the context of intention. As Sherry Turkle points out – a lot of the social media activity online is “performance”, and when bits and pieces of that exaggerated “performance” is re-purposed for journalistic work, it tends to convey the wrong sense. Moreover, the audience also matters – something that is targeted for a small group of close friends and family may not convey the same sense to the larger world. Authenticity is also another major issue when picking up photos that are online – anything and everything can be photoshopped. The other context is of course, the local vs global context. A picture of someone dressed up for Halloween may invoke very different reactions from a part of the world where people don’t have any idea what Halloween is. As an example, in 2008, Heidi Klum decided to dress up as the Hindu goddess Kali, which caused a lot of controversy not only in India, but also in the American Hindu community.
Consent
BBC uses the phrase “public domain” for describing content in online social media – which is a bit alarming to me. To it’s credit, the BBC does point out, that being online does not imply that it can be indiscrimately reused, but it talks about most of it in the context of appropriateness and privacy, and not in the context of licensing (eg: whether a photograph online is marked as freely share-able or not). There is discussion in the guidelines, about consent from the subject of the photos, but not much about the consent from the photographer of the photo.
Amplification
BBC’s guidelines raises an important question about amplification. Photos on the BBC has a wide reach and impact, and hence, the guielines point out, that has the potential to make a photo on the BBC a “badge of honour” for illegal/anti-social behaviour. Choosing the right thing to amplify is a daunting challenge, especially for a worldwide news covering organization like the BBC. Moreover, amplifying the “right” thing may also have unforeseen consequences – a photographer who just happened to be at a point of conflict and happened to share his photo with a small audience might suddenly find himself in the eye of the storm, simply because his photo is now on the front page of the BBC. Indeed, that is a thin line to walk on.