Citizen Journalism After A Natural Catastrophe: The Emergence Of An Alternative Public Sphere (original) (raw)

2013, Tosoni, S. ,Tarantino, M., Giacardi, C. (eds.) Media & The City: Urbanism, Technology and Communication

In 2009 a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck L’Aquila, a thirteenth- century city on the mountains of central Italy. The seism caused serious damage to L’Aquila and the surrounding villages, destroying many parts of the medieval centre, killing more than 300 people and leaving 65,000 people homeless. Immediately after the disaster, numerous citizens of L’Aquila started to use Internet platforms on a massive scale in order to voice their opinions and share information related to the actual situation people were undergoing during the post-earthquake phase (Farinosi & Micalizzi, 2012). These online environments offered citizens new channels for reporting, speaking and acting together and substantially contributed to an explosion of citizen journalism practices. An array of social media platforms, blogs and content-sharing sites was flooded with news, posts, comments, videos and photos related to issues regarding the emergency and the post-emergency situation, daily life in L’Aquila after the devastating earthquake, the city’s rebuilding problems, the recovery efforts and the social re-appropriation of public spaces damaged by the seism. This work explores the production of grassroots information in a context that could be described as “out of the ordinary”. We first provide a review of current literature on the phenomenon of citizen journalism (section 2). Then we illustrate the aims and methods adopted (section 3) and describe and discuss the findings of our research (section 4). Finally we draw some conclusions and sketch some future challenges for research into this topic (section 5).