Week 10- Who found my Mojo?
This week we discuss the mobile phone as an exiting tool for journalism. Perhaps we have finally found a good use for a previously underused setting on our mobile phones. We have all seen mobile phone footage on the news and current affairs programs, often involving street violence or bulling incidents in schools.
Citizen and professional journalists are finding new ways to tap into this technology and use it as a valuable resource when it comes to reporting and recording.
Often snapping quick photographs and recording footage without the entire set up of a camera crew can enable a reporter to obtain a different more spontaneous perspective.
Reuters, a major news bureaus has embraced mobile phone technology when it comes to reporting and news gathering giving reporters a ‘mobile journalism toolkit’, making for a more convenient and less intimidating approach to interviews and filming.
Disadvantages of the ‘mojo’ technology are that sound can be quite bad quality espesially on windy days, also the picture quality is far less quality than that of a professional camera often appearing pixelated and delayed.
However, as mobiles get more and more advanced so will the quality of this type of journalism, Nokia claiming to produce mobiles with HD camera quality in the coming years.
One phone I found particually impressive for this purpose was the Nokia N93i, with its features being a 3.2 mega pixel camera and up to 90 minutes of filming time.
This tool will not be replacing high quality cameras in news but will provide a perfect alternative benifiting both citizens and professionals jounalists.
An interesting video link to the future of citizen mobile journalism…
