Trustworthy Citizen-generated Images and Video on Social Media Platforms Jessica Bushey, MAS The Law of Evidence in the Digital Environment Project University of British Columbia, Canada jbushey@mail.ubc.ca Abstract The convergence of digital cameras into mobile phones with Internet connectivity and the proliferation of social media platforms for accessing, sharing, managing and storing digital images and videos has transformed news reportage and provided the opportunity for citizen journalists to capture and disseminate visual documentation, which shapes contemporary events, informs future decisions and over time, becomes part of the historical record and societal memory. Or does it? What are the obstacles to ongoing access and long-term preservation of citizen- generated content in social media platforms? This paper provides a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the trustworthiness of online content, utilizing literature from the fields of journalism and the law, as well as findings from archival studies on record-making and recordkeeping in the digital environment. Recommendations to citizen journalists are provided to assist in the capture and storage of trustworthy digital images in social media platforms. 1. Introduction The incorporation of digital cameras into the professional practice of photojournalists in the 1990s enabled in-camera editing and increased the speed of transmitting digital images to news services via satellite phones. The adoption of digital technology by photojournalists also had an impact on the public’s belief in the trustworthiness of news photographs. Unlike fine art photography or photographic images used in advertising, which are guided by aesthetics and sales, news photography is presented as visual evidence of something or someone in the real world, and the truth of a news image rests in its correspondence to reality [1]. Instances of manipulation of news images by photojournalists prompted professional press associations to update their codes of ethics and publicly reprimand offenders [2]. Although academics and practitioners in the field of journalism concur that the photograph’s fidelity to the real world has been subject to speculation long before the transition to digital media, the impact of the shift from film-based to pixel-based visual reportage created fissures in the credibility of the institution of journalism. In recent years, the availability of affordable mobile phones with high-resolution digital cameras and video capabilities coupled with Internet connectivity and the spread of broadband services throughout the globe has enabled a new form of visual reportage, citizen journalism, which is characterized by the non- professional status of the creators and the participatory nature of their involvement with the public event. Initial responses to the role of citizen journalists by professional photojournalists have been critical, emphasizing the lack of adherence to professional codes of conduct and an ignorance of professional photographic practices that incorporate metadata capture to establish the reliability and ensure the authenticity of the digital image or video [3]. Ironically, informal studies reveal that the blurry, amateur quality of camera phone images may increase the public's confidence that the footage is authentic [3]. The current widespread use of photo and video- sharing sites (e.g., Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube) and social networking sites (e.g., Twitter and Facebook) to access, share and store digital images and videos created by individuals, regardless of their professional or amateur status, is gaining the attention of archivists interested in exploring the long-term preservation of user-generated content in social media platforms [4] [5]. This paper draws upon literature from the fields of journalism and the law that address the trustworthiness of digital images, as well as the findings of research conducted by archivists and information professionals on contemporary record-making and recordkeeping practices of individuals in the digital environment. The multidisciplinary approach provides an opportunity to explore the phenomenon of citizen- generated content from different perspectives filtered 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 1530-1605/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2015.189 1553