Stirring up virtual punishment: a case of citizen journalism,authenticity and shaming

Film clips and still pictures captured by civilians are increasingly used as evidence to prove specific accounts of events. This kind of visual data are not without problems, however. The aim of this paper was to analyse how viewers perceived a citizen journalistic mobile phone film clip as naturalistic data, enabling processes of shaming and eventually a ‘justice’ process on the Internet, including virtual punishment of the person filmed by the citizen journalist. In the clip, a taxi driver records video of an agitated female customer whom he hinders from leaving the taxi. The film is then distributed on YouTube, where it attracts remarkable negative attention. However, the citizen journalist’s film clip is only one of several possible accounts of the filmed incident, as demonstrated by the police crime report about the incident as an alternative account showing that viewers cannot rely on the citizen journalistic film clip as objective, naturalistic data.