– YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Reflection
The innovative platform I used to create the above story, Melburnian artist censored on streets, was Snapchat, a photo sharing application.
Bloomberg reported in June that Snapchat had “passed Twitter in daily usage”, boasting approximately 150 million daily users (2016). With such a large number of consumers, Snapchat has begun to capture the attention of news organisations, with many now exploring ways to use the app for news telling.
According to Matthew Ingram, a senior media and technology writer at Fortune, media companies that view Snapchat as a “toy” should “reassess their position”, because the application “[taps] in to the needs and usage patterns of young mobile users” (2015).
One of Snapchat’s main appeals is that it is an incredibly visual and personal form of social media, with Snapchatters communicating directly through 10 second photos and videos captured at that moment.
Online journalist and author of e-book, Snapchat For Journalists, Paul Bradshaw argues that Snapchat’s focus on visuals, coupled with its “particularly informal” nature lends itself, in terms of journalistic use of the platform, to “softer topics” and “broadcasters” (2016).
For my Snapchat story, I looked at the work of Melbournian street artist, Lushsux, and how many of his recent works have been censored, raising questions about artistic freedom.
In line with Bradshaw’s arguments, I thought this would be an appropriate story to create and publish on Snapchat, given the wealth of visuals a story about street art provides.
I chose Lushsux as the artist through whom to explore the issue of censorship largely because his controversial murals have garnered much media attention recently.
I also figured Lushsux was a particularly appropriate artist to use for a story on this platform because he is a frequent Snapchat user, employing the app as an avenue to communicate with his supporters.
This story is also well suited to Snapchat because of the app’s instant publication of photos and videos – many of Lushsux’s murals are altered mere hours after he paints them, but Snapchat allowed me to capture and share these works before their alteration.
For Bradshaw, the introduction of Memories “changed everything”, because Snapchatters, including journalists, can now “create non-chronological sequences and stories” on the app, using “images or video they have not taken themselves” (2016).
The Memories feature has greatly increased the usefulness of Snapchat as an innovative news platform. The feature allowed me to include screenshots from Lushsux’s social media posts, providing necessary context behind my commentary.
Bradshaw adds that the introduction of Memories lets journalists “ask witnesses and experts to send you their own snaps to be included in your story”, an aspect I found particularly useful in communicating my story (2016).
I asked various Snapchatters for their opinion of Lushsux’s murals, then screenshot their responses and inserted them in my story; their inclusion enhancing my reportage by providing it with “more variety of voices” (Bradshaw, 2016).
Ultimately, Snapchat was an incredibly useful platform for my chosen story, given its highly visual, instantaneous and informal nature.
Bibliography
Bradshaw, P 2016, ‘Snapchat for journalists: A great big guide’, Online Journalism, viewed 9 August 2016, <https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2016/05/11/snapchat-for-journalists/>
Bradshaw, P 2016, ‘Snapchat Memories is nothing to do with memories – but it changes everything’, Online Journalism, viewed 9 August 2016, <https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2016/07/12/snapchat-memories-is-nothing-to-do-with-memories-but-it-changes-everything/>
Frier, S 2016, ‘Snapchat passes Twitter in daily usage’, Bloomberg, viewed 9 August 2016, <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-02/snapchat-passes-twitter-in-daily-usage>
Ingram, M 2015, ‘Here’s why media companies should be paying attention to Snapchat’, Fortune, viewed 9 August 2016, <http://fortune.com/2015/05/22/snapchat-media-journalism/>
Johnston, C 2016, ‘Lushsux: the divisive street-art man with no name’, The Age, viewed 7 August 2016, < http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/lushsux-the-divisive-streetart-man-with-no-name-20160805-gqlpyg.html>
