Technology is infuriating. If things go wrong, they really go wrong, and it’s tricky to fix issues quickly. Case in point, my experience using the live streaming app Periscope to broadcast a Green Left Weekly protest to shut down the Hazelwood mine.
Replace Hazelwood rally
Green Left Weekly rally to protest the ongoing existence of the Hazelwood mine
I woke up at 7 am on a Monday to get to the protest on time, and everything was looking lovely: angels holding letters that spelt out “REPLACE HAZELWOOD”, the leader of the rally yelling about green alternatives through a microphone, and even Adam Bandt showed up to speak.
Where I ran into trouble was with my iPhone, and the intricacies of the Periscope app itself. When I first started broadcasting, my screen went black, even though I was recording. I could not see what I was recording, which is why there are some absolutely horrifying shots of my face in the video. This app uses an extraordinary amount of power (my iPhone actually heated up), and as a result, my iPhone battery died about 10 minutes into the rally, preventing me from gathering more (and better) footage of the event. Despite the poor quality of the minimal amount of footage I was able to procure, I still got 25 viewers on my live stream, and someone even sent me love hearts (which is a feature the app provides).
This platform engages people really effectively because, as their website says, Periscope is a way to “explore the world through someone else’s eyes”. It is a great way to broadcast things like rallies or protests, sporting events, press conferences, government addresses and extreme weather in real time without editing or delay. One of the drawbacks is that it doesn’t really lend itself to balanced stories, which is one of the fundamentals of hard news values. Because it’s a live broadcast, it doesn’t give a journalist an opportunity to seek out alternative views. What you see is what you get, which is good to a certain extent, but really only works for the situations I listed above, and means that you get a very limited amount of information. Another issue I had with this app is that it allows viewers to type questions (which is amazing in terms of creating an interactive news space) but it does not allow the broadcaster to type back, so you are forced to answer questions aloud, which is problematic in a lot of situations, i.e. when you need to be quiet at an event.
My experience with this app has not been very positive, but I can see that it could have useful employments in very specific ways. Perhaps not such a great space to break big heavy news stories, but a great way to show people what is happening “now” from anywhere in the world.
