Book Review: Amateur Images and Global News

Abstract

Amateur Images and Global News. Kari Anden-Papadopoulos and Mervi Pantti, eds. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2011. 213 pp. $40 pbk.It is easy to get caught up in the idea that the Internet has changed everything. Despite regularly assigning my History of Journalism students Michael Schudson's 1997 JMCQ article, Toward a Troubleshooting Manual for Journalism History, I still occasionally find myself unconsciously arguing for the technological determinism of the Internet and, increasingly, smartphones.But I think I've turned the corner after reading the engaging Amateur Images and Global News, edited by Kari Anden-Papadopoulos and Mervi Pantti. Anden- Papadopoulos is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at Stockholm University, and Pantti is an associate professor in the Department of Social Research, Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki. Their carefully selected chapters historicize and contextualize the use and circulation of amateur photographs in a nuanced way that ultimately leads to more provocative questions not about how the Internet has supported amateur photographers, but about how the web has changed and will continue to change the distribution and meaning of amateur and professional photographers alike.The book begins with three chapters exploring the historical use of amateur photographs in the pre-Internet, pre-video era. For example, in chapter 1, Karin Becker describes how private family photos of Titanic victims were incorporated into mainstream newspapers. Then Stuart Allan describes the early history of war reporting in a chapter that will become required reading the next time I teach journalism history. Allan's contribution, paired with Liam Kennedy's later chapter on the distribution of personal photos by soldiers in the war in Iraq, highlights that although pocket cameras have been marketed to soldiers since World War I, authorship is now more transparent and mechanisms of distribution and publication are more diverse.Part II of the book, which includes a chapter by the editors on the incorporation of citizen footage of Iran's Green Movement in the international press, presents a series of case studies on how various news organizations organize and describe amateur photographs and videos. Here the establishment of journalistic authority is expressed vis-a-vis the contributions of eyewitness amateurs, whose pictures may lack the aesthetic quality of professional journalists.Finally, part III includes contributions on the dissemination of citizen media and their interpretation by audiences. We learn that, in general, audiences are more supportive of citizen journalists than the mainstream media. Liina Puustinen and Janne Seppanen conclude in chapter 10 that audience reading of user-generated content as more authentic reflects a more profound cultural condition in which authenticity works as a part of late modern life politics. …