Hundreds attend Melbourne protest against child detention
This is “Hundreds attend Melbourne protest against child detention” by Sammi Taylor on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
by Samantha Taylor.
“Facebook’s dream is not to be your favorite destination on the Internet; its desire is to be the internet.” (Topolsky 2016).
Joshua Topolsky writes for The New Yorker that Facebook wants to ‘be the internet’. Facebook Live, their live video streaming tool, is the next step in achieving that goal. It’s an interactive audio and visual experience, and provides information and news in real time. You don’t need to turn on the television; Facebook seemingly has everything you need.
Facebook Live is the perfect platform for a live broadcast of a popular rally in Melbourne. I attended the emergency rally against child detention and torture at The State Library of Victoria on Saturday July 30. I used the broadcast as an opportunity to provide instant and updated information to a selected audience on Facebook (in this case, a small group of friends and journalism students) about the protest.
To accurately tell a live story and reach a wide audience you can use multiple platforms. While Facebook Live was the main platform I used to tell this story, I was also tweeting photos and updates from the protest on Twitter (so, Facebook isn’t quite the whole internet–yet).
Facebook Live is an appropriate platform for my story because it allows my audience to receive information and see what’s happening, without being present at the rally. They can interact with me by asking questions, which I can see and answer, live on air. In this case, I chose to only share this with a small and selected audience, however I could have broadcasted publicly to a large audience.
“Live is the best way to interact with viewers in real time. Field their burning questions, hear what’s on their mind and check out their Live Reactions to gauge how your broadcast is going.” (Facebook 2016, ‘Go Live on Facebook’, para.1).
Challenges I faced included finding an appropriate angle to film, estimating crowd numbers (my estimates of 600-700 where trumped by other news organisations estimates of over 1000!) and reporting live in a concise and confident manner.
There were also ethical issues to take into consideration as a lot of attendees and organisers of the protest are Indigenous Australians, and therefore there are sensitivities around showing visuals of this content. I first sought permission to be at the event by the organisers, and then consulted the ABC’s editorial guidelines on Indigenous content (ABC 2015, ‘ABC Editorial Guidance Indigenous Content’). I tried to ensure limited faces were in full view and identifiable in my first broadcast, but this was not possible for my second broadcast. This is something that I’ve learned from, and will endeavour to correct in future stories.
Facebook Live is a great and interactive tool to use while on Facebook, however using and sharing these videos later on other platforms can cause problems. I’ve had to put my videos onto Vimeo first, to embed the link into WordPress.
References:
Topolsky, J 2016, ‘Facebook Live: now you can never leave’, The New Yorker, 8 April 2016, viewed 11 August 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/facebook-live-now-you-can-never-leave
Facebook 2016, Go Live on Facebook, Facebook FAQ, viewed 11 August 2016, https://live.fb.com/about/
Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2015, ABC Editorial Guidance Notice Indigenous Content, ABC, viewed 11 August 2016, https://edpols.abc.net.au/guidance/abc-indigenous-content/
