YouTube and mainstream journalism: Strange bedfellows?

College

College of Liberal Arts

Document Type

Archival Material/Manuscript

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

This exploratory study is one of the very few that have looked into the unethical activity of posting and sharing videos of human rights violations on websites like YouTube. Eleven videos were sampled from 9,109 videos that resulted from an intensive search on YouTube. Results show that inappropriate human rights violation videos are currently on the website and are very much accessible to anyone who knows how to use the Internet despite the fact that user guidelines specifically sa that YouTube does not accept offensive videos. This problem does not end here; this unethical practice affects mainstream journalists as well and would continue to do so as more and more people turn to the Internet for news and information. This study looked into how the YouTube phenomena is proving to be a big challenge to mainstream journalists in the course of fulfilling their responsibility of informing the people while at the same time, minimizing harm. This study contributes to both communication theories and journalism ethics studies especially in considering, as Jack M. Balkin puts it, the changes in the way societies communicate and interact.

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Disciplines

Communication Technology and New Media | Ethics and Political Philosophy | Social Media

Keywords

Human rights; Journalistic ethics; YouTube (Electronic resources)

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