Citizen Media and Occupy Wall Street

Many social movements have benefited thanks to the rise of citizen media and its ability to share information quickly across mass audiences. Citizen media is comprised of individuals participating in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and documenting information. Affordances such as Twitter, Facebook etc. equips citizens by recording this information and allowing publications to be highly accessible while documenting real-time news stories. Citizen media does have some disadvantages, such the difficulties that lie within being able to provide an un-biased argument. Sometimes citizens are unable to present a fair representation regarding a matter because of their pre-existing mentality, this results in slanted versions of the truth. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street is an example of a social incidence that utilized citizen media prominently to gather and raise awareness about a societal issue.

The Occupy Wall Street movement established on September 17^th 2011 in NYC, at Zuccotti park, and sparked a movement that in 3 short months, would spread across the country and around the world. The Occupy Wall Street movement was an alternative public sphere whose goal was to transgress against the corrupt powers that ultimately created an economic gap, resulting in a seizable recession.

This relates back to some course work in regards to week one when we discussed Habermas’ theory of the public sphere by being any given place where opinions are formed. And thus, individuals gathered in public spheres to discuss controversial issues such as the Occupy movement because it is a space easily accessible by mass audiences, individuals are able voice opinions, and it gives many various opinions (both bias and unbiased).

Within all public spheres counter publics arise because of conflicting ideologies and norms. There was concern regarding the inclusion of certain groups of oppressed individuals such as women for example, and within the article Feminism, Finance and the Future of Occupy by Silvia Federici, she argues that feminism was critical for the success of the Occupy Wall Street movement due to their participation in protests and face to face communication. and will continue to be in society. So a small group of Women of Colour successfully blocked consensus of the Declaration of the Occupation of New York to rewrite around race and gender. So there are many minor groups that participated in non-mainstream ways that aided the awareness of occupy. The picture below shows the most popular ways the Occupy movement was spread. 

(Federici, 6).

Occupy’s demands resided in fighting for democracy and challenging the corporate elite. #OccupyWallStreet on Twitter's platform was established in attempt of raising awareness for this issue and thus the tweet gradually became popular worldwide resulting in many retweets. Occupy relied heavily on social and citizen media because they provide and alternative to mainstream media because they are considered autonomous from corporate and government control. American mainstream media represents the bias infused corporate structure that is dominated by a select few elite groups that filter and control what is displayed for citizens to hear and read from news channels. So occupy decided to rely heavily on face-to-face communication, recorded rallies, and documented all group meetings to publish their concerns on the Internet in attempt of reaching further audiences and raising awareness for the protest.

Occupy Wall Street existed due to the influence of citizen media and participatory culture. Protestors blogged and tweeted about the unjust corrupt power and enough individuals within societies worldwide were interested in it enough to support the hashtag and continue the trend to raise awareness. This movement originated in NYC however, there was a smaller protest in Toronto due to the amount of Canadian citizens that also felt the corporate system was unjust. The Toronto movement was less popularized compared to NYC’s however, the protests in Toronto made NYC’s claims even more powerful. 


Another example of citizen media and journalism is during the 9/11 terrorist attack. It was a sudden and random occurrence that news channels were not prepared for (thus resulting in lack of coverage for such a controversial and upsetting event). The first plane crashed into the World Trade Centre Towers and majority of footage captured from the scene was citizens of New York City that happened to have their cameras out at that specific time. Word circled around quickly via social media and thus alerting family and friends about the devastating attack. Citizen media is an impactful component for not only unifying a group of individuals that have similar issues and taking action for them like Occupy, but it is also beneficial for crisis' such as 9/11, as an informative aspect that news channels might not have captured.