Early citizen journalists

The first widespread use of the Hi-8 camera in features as opposed to news came in 1993 with the BBC programme called Video Nation. It showed “video diaries” shot by non-journalists over one year where they filmed their everyday lives. This could be seen as the birth of the citizen journalist, for the Community Programme Unit distributed a number of cameras across the UK to ordinary people. It became immensely popular and more than 10,000 tapes were shot and sent into the BBC who edited and showed around 1300 of them. The first one was called Mirror by Gordon Hencher. Viewing figures were between one and nine million. This success was described in The Guardian as:

“the immediacy of these programmes is entirely different to anything shot by a crew. There seems to be nothing between you, not even the glass (