Now anyone can become a citizen video-journalist

Some scenes and interviews at the Penang Social Media Convention last Saturday.

During the convention, I shared at the workshop on Citizen Journalism that it was important for citizen journalists to exercise critical thinking – even it was not favourable to the parties they may generally support. Citizen journalists do no favours to their parties by overly flattering or glowing reports – for it then gives these parties a false sense of security and affirmation.

The workshop also highlighted the importance of analysing social and economic trends and statistics to explain to larger society what was really going on behind the scenes.

At the convention, I bumped into people like Kee Thuan Chye and bloggers Sak Mongkol, Topeng Perak, Perisik Rakyat, Malaysia Waves, Tulang Besi, Hisham Rais…

During the workshop, I met this guy, Victor, who was gushing with enthusiasm about using film as a means of social communication – but without using any expensive video cameras, just his regular cell-phone camera. And then some simple editing using free software that could be downloaded from the Internet. And voila! the edited video recording can then be put on Youtube.

Victor produced the above video clip of the convention. Nothing fancy, no frills. Just raw video footage, slightly edited. But it captures a lot of what the convention was about.

Now anyone can become a citizen video-journalist – if you have a cell-phone. Maybe I will give it a try some day.