Online crowd-sourced documentary and the politics of veridicality and authority

While online and digital technologies have enabled the democratisation of content provision, this also raises issues regarding the veridicality of the documentary as a genre. Where does the authority of online, crowd-sourced documentaries come from? And what expectations do audiences retain regarding the truth claims of digital documentary? With digital technologies offering the opportunity to not only record and upload ‘real’ events as they unfold, but also to manipulate images, questions continue being asked concerning the ethics and politics of such forms of representation. Using 18 Days in Egypt as an example, this essay examines the truth claims of crowd-sourced online documentaries, how these relate to the testimonies provided in such practices of media witnessing, and the underlying geo-politics of knowledge production that has been explored in scholar-activist groups such as Coloniality/Modernity.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17503280.2014.964946