Bearing Witness Black Lives Matter Protests as Media, and Mediated, Event
Citizen journalism has reached its apotheosis in the digital age. Although eyewitness reportage predates the information revolution, its rise coincides with the evolution of accessible recording devices and the democratisation of media outlets. Modern citizen journalism can be traced back to one of the most important films in history: bystander Abraham Zapruder’s home-movie recording of the assassination of then–US president John F Kennedy on 22 November 1963.1 This inadvertent capturing of an unforeseeable event simultaneously created its own offshoot: accidental journalism.2 Many more amateur films have since accidentally borne witness to historic events, including the 1991 beating of Rodney King by police and subsequent LA Riots, the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and the 2004 Asian tsunami.
It required digital technologies, however, to make it possible for citizens to reach out to one another and pass on information in real time, including eyewitness reports of social unrest (such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement), civil war, natural disasters and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.3 The ubiquity of the mobile phone4 – and prevalence of social-media accounts – has potentially turned everyone into an accidental journalist, and there is arguably no more momentous recent instance of citizen journalism playing a key role in historic change than the recordings that sparked the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.5
Caught on camera
The demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists against systemic racism and police brutality in 2020 spoke to the power of the moving image. Two separate videos from last year – each recorded on the same day, 25 May – proved to be particularly mobile and powerful.
The first documents a white woman, Amy Cooper, calling 911 and falsely claiming that the black man asking her to observe a park ordinance, Christian Cooper, is acting in a threatening manner. In the video, the avid birdwatcher requests that she put her dog on a leash, and she counters, warning, ‘I’m taking a picture and calling the cops … I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.’ It’s pretty clear, however, what she really felt threatened by: the camera filming her. Perhaps that’s why she cast herself in the role of damsel in distress and played to the camera accordingly. The most telling thing about the recording, however, is her offensive manoeuvre: we see her weaponise her race in order to gain control of a public space. Like many Viewers of the recording not only saw a disturbing instance of racial profiling traditionally associated with the criminal justice system, but also received a history lesson in systemic racism within ninety seconds.
