Journalism and Chat Apps in Academic Literature
Reporting on political unrest has always posed challenges for journalists.28 These include censorship and surveillance, misinformation, and distortions introduced by witnessing events at a distance. Correspondents might not know local languages, or may be sent to a place temporarily as so-called “parachute journalists.”29 Chat apps thus afford new opportunities for reporters to fulfill the core objectives of crisis coverage: “being there” fast and first with eyewitness accounts. In addition to old challenges, reporters covering political unrest must also deal with new complexities arising from online journalism. Gaining access to news sites and sources (especially elite sources), verifying facts, protesters’ access to media, and relaying information to newsrooms all involve practices and pose challenges for general news reporting and critical coverage of political unrest.30
The academic literature on chat apps notes how reporters are using chat apps to solve these long persistent challenges. For example, Lee and Ho write that Chinese authorities have aggressively censored coverage of sensitive events from public-facing platforms such as Weibo (a platform similar to Twitter) and QZone (similar to MySpace), but rarely have done so on more closed, peer-to-peer platforms such as WeChat, which is often monitored by the Chinese authorities. 31,32 While apps like FireChat can leave protesters open to surveillance, in contrast others can encrypt information, helping reporters contact sources who may not otherwise feel secure (see Barot and Oren 2015 for examples of journalistic use of Telegram in Uzbekistan and Iran).33 Other studies have focused on how journalists use email and SMS to source content, which could be instructive in chat app scenarios. For large and complex stories, chat apps allow a reporting team or individual journalists to share information in real time with each other and with newsrooms. Journalists with cellphones can communicate with their newsrooms while out in the field, or obtain information without being physically present at the scene34 both on chat apps and social networking platforms. Chat apps provide opportunities for journalists and individuals taking part in political unrest to communicate more directly than before, over the course of a breaking news event—for instance, when a group uses Voxer, Viber, and WhatsApp to coordinate and organize street protests.35,36,37 As a result, it’s been reported that chat apps foster a sense of shared identity and solidarity among participants (see the Treré 2015 for study of YoSoy in Mexico)38 and build social bonds.39 While these studies shed light on several aspects of journalistic chat app usage, they do not address whether chat apps represent a shift in newsgathering behavior in terms of discovering online discussion and eyewitness media.
This report provides a unique perspective on how and why protestors and official sources use chat apps; how news organizations use chat apps to organize themselves; and how foreign news organizations have used chat apps for newsgathering, as well as internal coordination and information sharing.