‘You say you want a Revolution’ talk about how new video technology changed newsgathering and story-telling forever

Published on: 03/24/23 3:47 PM

The theme of this year’s World Storytelling Day is ‘Together we Can’. Organisers say that ‘Worldwide events have made storytellers in society help build community spirit and inspire change’.

Vivien Morgan’s talk is entitled-‘You say you want a Revolution’.*(Beatles song) She looks back at the year 1989 when the shape of Europe was to experience massive social and political change.

As the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the beginning of the end for Communist countries first in East Germany and then like dominoes through the Eastern Bloc and the USSR. Because reporting of those momentous events changed too. How did we see and hear the stories of the people from formerly closed Communist countries? Through video

The technological revolution came in the shape of the domestic video camera- easy to hide and easy for journalists to bring live pictures to accompany their words. Videojournalism was born and since that day how we learn about world events is now image-led .

Mobiles with cameras have ensured that all of us can bring governments and corporations to account- using peoples’ testimony, their stories, as evidence.