On The Margins

Monday January 03, 2005

[ Web ] Video Blogs of Tsunami Scenes

As video webloging matures, it gains its own cryptic name: vlogging. While away on vacation last week, I took a glimpse of Anderson Cooper's show on CNN, where he noted calls that asked CNN to stop showing the horrific images of the recent tsunami disaster, and all I had seen were images of events quite mild compared to what must have really happened. (Cooper, to his credit, said he was not about to stop showing the clips.)

From what I saw last week, it seems to me that in general the traditional TV broadcasters have avoided showing the videos of the disaster in their boadest possible format. In fact, they are neither (perhaps, legally) equipped nor (perhaps, commercially) willing to do so. Rights may have to be purchased, ratings may go down, and it is difficult to sell advertisement next to horrific images. However, these very limitations can give rise to a more popular programming on weblogs.

It's terrible to watch others' misfortune as entertainment but I think most people who flock to the video weblogs of the recent tsunami do so out of a desire to improve their feelings of compassion and their sense of sympathy with the victims of the disaster. An emotional improvement which, by the way, makes the more shallow consumerist tendencies pale. I wonder what would happen if something similar happened with the images of the war, a human-historic event on which we had and continue to have much greater control than we ever will on a tsunami.

Antonio Regalado and Jessica Mintz of the The Wall Street Journal report on vlogs of the recent tsunami.

Some selected links are:

waveofdestruction.org (This has more than 25 amateur videos of the impact so far. "At a media company, I'm sure there are channels you have to go through -- copyright, legal, editorial, etc. Blogging is instant," said Geoffrey Huntley, the founder of Wave of Destruction, to the WSJ reporter.)

jlgolson.blogspot.com

www.drudgereport.com (Apple, which hosted this web site has taken down the video blogs here due to heavy traffic.)

www.punditguy.com

blogsnow.com has some statistics regarding these video weblogs. As of Jan. 2, there were about 500 unique Tsunami video weblogs. On December 28^th, the number was less than 100.

Finally, the BBC, always a trend setter, has devoted a site to the personal experiences of the tsunami.

2005-01-03 11:59:34.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.