Revised Preliminary Research Topic

Looking at the news photographs, how much does the evaluation of a news event by the audience change depending on whether the images were produced by professional photojournalists or non-visual journalist and citizen journalists?

In today’s media environment, with the increase of citizen journalism practice and mobile devices with highly decent cameras, professional visual journalists, specifically photojournalists loose their jobs more often than ever before. Many media organizations started using pieces produced by the citizen journalists at free costs or started expecting their non-visual reporters to produce imagery along with their regular reporting.

In May 2013, Chicago Sun Times laid off its entire visual department within the span of a few seconds, which meant there were 30 plus highly accomplished visual journalists unemployed, left to their own destiny, adding up to the freelance market saturation all of a sudden.  On the same note, this also meant the readers of one of the major newspapers in a city like Chicago were bound to evaluate each story based on visuals that come from untrained eyes.

On a second occasion this past summer, when the Ferguson, Mo protests hit the streets, there were photojournalists covering it, and non-visual journalists and citizen journalists live covering it through social media. The drastic visual and news quality difference between the three sources were notable to observe.

I believe it is very important to explore the answers to these questions. Whether a visual was produced by a professional or not and how it affects the audience perception of a news event might change how and by whom the future events would be covered. Moreover, the answers can have further implications on the visual journalism market, particularly saturation of the freelance market.