Having asked about finding examples of citizen journalism on the CAN forum, one of the students mentioned that he had been involved in the ‘Umbrella Movement’ in Honk Kong in 2014. When I looked it up I found both the story and images really interesting.
This is one of the images that made the umbrella symbolic of the movement
The umbrella movement were a series of sit in protests led by students against the Chinese governments decision regarding reforms to the Hong Kong electoral system. The protesters who numbered into their thousands totally blocked main roads in Hong
Peter said that the umbrellas were used to protect people from the pepper spray being used by the police and yellow is symbol of the pro democracy movement in Hong Kong.
With lots of people there having camera phones it means there are lots of images of the same incident from different perspectives. This means you’re not getting just one persons view of an event, but many. So whereas one person’s image may be misleading or misread, the existence of many images of the same thing a more honest view of the event.