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YouTube and Evidencing Warcrimes: The Role of Digital Video for Transitional Justice in Syria

Josepha Wessels

Tidskriftet POLITIK, volume 19, issue 4 (2016), pp. 30-52

"The enormous collection of user-generated content (UGC) in the form of YouTube videos from the Syrian war provides an unprecedented and diverse collection of shared digital memories of conflict and violence. The central question of this article asks what the value is of UGC on YouTube for legal evi ... dence of war crimes and future Transitional Justice. It is beyond doubt that the surge of uploaded videos from the Syrian uprisings revolutionized the way in which contemporary wars are observed and documented. The sheer amount of user-generated content online has given rise to manifold ways of interpreting what is happening on the ground, inspired creative resistance, led to a surge of professional and independent Syrian documentary films and increased the connectivity between those who undergo the war inside the conflict zone and those who are observing the situation from a safe distance. Many YouTube clips from Syria are likely to be rejected as stand-alone legal evidence though, as it often lacks sourced information about meta-data, date, time, geographical coordinates, identity of the participants, the identity of the perpetrator, and other contextual information crucial to establishing judicial facts for war crimes prosecution. The everexpanding body of videos from Syria will give rise to a wide and varied landscape of interactive media that has surpassed the old approach of political mainstream media to inform and possibly manipulate their audiences for their own agendas, whatever those may be. As a platform of digital memory and space to express moral outrage, YouTube served a crucial and important role in the Syrian crisis and the UGC is of immense value for digital memorialisation and historicization of the Syrian crisis. The vast amount of UGC on YouTube was categorized in 8 different types of footage and we can conclude that only small number of videoclips on YouTube can in fact function as crime-based evidence for war crimes. This does not mean that the UGC on YouTube has no value, however as a legal evidence it can be problematic to use YouTube videos if not corroborated and verified properly. The main issue is the lack of meta-data in many of the UGC on YouTube. The YouTube video revolution in Syria did bring to the surface many brave video activists who are now professionally involved in producing high quality footage for international news broadcasters, the most recent example of that is the important work of Waad al Kataeb inside eastern Aleppo with the British Broadcaster Channel Four News (Channel 4 2016). Through a series of edited 5-6 minute mini stories from the ground, Al Kataeb’s work provides a credible and important source of evidence." (Conclusion, page 22-23) more

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Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting: A Guide to Online Search and Research Techniques for Using UGC and Open Source Information in Investigations
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Craig Silverman (ed.)

Maastricht: European Journalism Centre (2015), 121 pp.

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Making Secondary Trauma a Primary Issue: A Study of Eyewitness Media and Vicarious Trauma on the Digital Frontline

Sam Dubberley, Elizabeth Griffin, Haluk Mert Bal

Istanbul: Eyewitness Media Hub (2015), 69 pp.

"The rapid and incredible growth of eyewitness media (also known as user-generated content or UGC) has led to the emergence of a new cadre of journalists, humanitarian and human rights professionals whose job it is to seek out, verify and edit the most disturbing and traumatic raw images captured by ... non professionals and posted online. These professionals are tasked with viewing and sifting through massive volumes of eyewitness media - that is, raw, unedited, authentic footage now captured regularly on smartphones - to enhance their investigations, reporting, operations, prosecutions and advocacy. Professionals who work with eyewitness media watch disturbing footage from war zones, natural and manmade disasters and accidents over and over again to verify its veracity and to edit out images that are deemed too extreme for viewing by the general public. Viewing traumatic images of death, destruction, blood and unimaginable horrors all day every day - often for years on end - is now an integral part of the daily work of many desk-bound staff working for news, human rights and humanitarian organisations who are often located thousands of miles away from where the actual horrors occur. Whether it is a broadcaster, publisher, human rights or humanitarian professional, symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are now evident amongst staff working in offices on what we call the digital frontline. This study builds upon previous research that proved that viewing distressing eyewitness media can lead psychological injury, including, but not restricted to, such conditions as PTSD and major depression. The principle aim of this research is to explore the following questions: How much distressing eyewitness media are professionals, who work in the three professional sectors, watching? How frequently, and in what volumes are professionals viewing distressing eyewitness media? What kinds of eyewitness media do professionals find particularly distressing?" What coping mechanisms, if any, have been developed by staff to help mitigate the potentially negative effects of viewing distressing content? - What support, if any, do professionals receive from their organisations and senior managers? - Does organisational culture encourage or prevent professionals from requesting support from their organisation’s hierarchy? What training and preparation is provided to raise awareness of or mitigate the adverse impact of trauma exposure on university graduates, newcomers and those established in post? What resources do organisations provide to prevent, mitigate and treat the adverse impact of trauma exposure? Which of those resources have been used? Which are found to be the most useful? What do staff who experience vicarious trauma need and expect from their organisations in order to support them? Based on an online survey (to which we received 209 responses from people working with eyewitness media across all three professional sectors) and 38 in-depth, anonymous interviews we find that: the impact of eyewitness media on journalism, human rights and humanitarian work means that the frontline is no longer geographic. A new type of frontline has emerged that is digital. Staff at an organisation’s headquarters who work with eyewitness media do so daily and often see more horror on a daily basis compared to their counterparts deployed in the field. Consequently, organisations have a duty of care towards office based staff working on the digital frontline who are at serious risk of vicarious trauma and PTSD [...] " (Executive summary, page 3-5) more

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Witnessing images of extreme violence: A psychological study of journalists in the newsroom

Anthony Feinstein, Blair Audet, Elizabeth Waknine

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Open, volume 5, issue 8 (2014), 7 pp.

"Objective: User Generated Content – photos and videos submitted to newsrooms by the public – has become a prominent source of information for news organisations. Journalists working with uncensored material can frequently witness disturbing images for prolonged periods. How this might affect th ... more

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Online Comment Moderation: Emerging Best Practices

Federica Cherubini, Alexandra Waldhorn

Darmstadt: World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) (2013), 77 pp.

"The news organisations that we spoke to could be broadly divided into two camps with regards to their attitudes to online comments: there are those who embrace comments from users, often as part of a wider strategy of involving their readers in their publication, and there are those who see them as ... more

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2013 Social Media Guidebook

Christian Möller, Mike Stone (eds.)

Vienna: OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (2013), 153 pp.

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Amateur Media: Social, Culturual and Legal Perspectives

Dan Hunter, Megan Richardson Ramon Lobato, Julian Thomas (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2012), xv, 238 pp.

"This edited collection provides a much-needed interdisciplinary contextualisation of amateur media before and after Web 2.0. Surveying the institutional, economic and legal construction of the amateur media producer via a series of case studies, it features contributions from experts in the fields ... more

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Deciphering User-Generated Content in Transitional Societies: A Syria Coverage Case Study

Juliette Harkin, Kevin Anderson, Libby Morgan, Briar Smith

Washington, DC: Internews; Annenberg School for Communication, Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) (2012), 40 pp.

"The objective of this study is to look at how two prominent Arab-language news organisations, BBC Arabic and Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA), have used social media and user-generated content — photos, videos and comments — to provide coverage of the uprising in Syria. Due to the unique pressures in co ... more

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Guía para radios y televisiones sobre la promoción del contenido generado por el usuario y la alfabetización mediática e informacional

Martin Scott

Barcelona: Editorial UOC; UNESCO; Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación (UAB) (2011), 125 pp.

"La web 2.0 ha llegado también a las televisiones. El contenido generado por los usuarios ha crecido en todas las cadenas del mundo. Sin embargo, no se trata todavía de una práctica extendida. La UNESCO quiere impulsar este fenómeno a través de esta guía. En ella, se recogen orientaciones para ... more

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Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers

Jane B. Singer et al.

Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell (2011), xi, 227 pp.

"This book is based on a collaborative research project by a team of journalism scholars from Europe, North America and Israel. It provides insights into how journalists at websites affiliated with leading national newspapers in ten Western democracies are thinking about, and dealing with, the inclu ... more

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Guidelines for Broadcasters on Promoting User-Generated Content and Media and Information Literacy

Martin Scott

London; Paris: Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA); UNESCO (2009), 58 pp.

"In 2008, the CBA and UNESCO published the results of a survey of 72 Commonwealth broadcasters which looked at the nature of user-generated content (UGC). It considered what use they make of UGC and their involvement in promoting media and information literacy (MIL). The survey identified a lack of ... more

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Online Newsgathering: Research and Reporting for Journalism

Stephen Quinn, Stephen Lamble

Burlington, Mass. et al.: Focal Press (2008), xii, 189 pp.

"Chapter 1 sets the scene for this book, looking in a broad-brush way at how the Internet and related technologies have changed journalism and media. It notes how audiences are fragmenting in an environment of excess information, and considers the boom in online advertising relative to mainstream me ... more

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Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking

Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, Graham Vickery

Paris: OECD (2007), 124 pp.

"Drawing on an expanding array of intelligent web services and applications, a growing number of people are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web. This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwid ... more

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Nutzergenerierte Inhalte als Erlösquelle für Medienunternehmen

Philipp Sebastian Rogge

Köln: Institut für Rundfunkökonomie an der Universität zu Köln (2007), 134 pp.

Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting: A Guide to Online Search and Research Techniques for Using UGC and Open Source Information in Investigations Key Guides

Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting: A Guide to Online Search and Research Techniques for Using UGC and Open Source Information in Investigations
Key Guides