The anatomy of online media where regular people can practically bring into discussion and view subjects they consider intriguing both from their perspective and from the perspective of the community they represent has added (fairly recently) a significant extension. This “new limb� has taken the shape of video uploads. A mobile video upload, for instance, is another form of citizen news in images.

Thus, brief films caught on video cameras or on mobile phones are turned into a succinct illustration of what’s new or shocking or out of the ordinary or beautiful (and the enumeration could go on endlessly) around us. Most frequently, a short commentary accompanies such instances of hot clips, a commentary communicating, first of all, the opinion or the attitude of the “upload generator� toward the uploaded image. Then follow the viewers’ commentaries (if any, but most of the times intriguing pictures are completed by remarks).

We have called them hot clips with the sole purpose of putting an emphasis on the value and the newness (at times, even strangeness) that a mobile video upload of the kind reveals in most of the cases. Therefore, there is no reason to associate hot clips (at least not in our case) with improper or vulgar notions or scenes. Rather we associate hot clips with the special connotations that certain moments elicit. These are the connotations that, ultimately, give birth to this particular online community which opts for the mobile video upload or for any other kind of video upload in order to communicate issues of common interest. In fact, these are the connotations which turn citizen journalism (in any other form as well) into such an active system.

Subsequently, you can connect online citizen journalism with the image of an immense sea (it is, in point of fact, a genuine ocean of data shared out there) where the greatest waves are created by these hot clips. A mobile video upload is likely to have a significant impact due precisely to the fact that it is an image. And we think that it is already widely acknowledged that images (the more that they come associated with sound and commentaries) are equipped with the possibility of determining some of the most powerful responses. And, in an online community interacting also through hot clips, responses are the element which gives coherence to the whole group.

Of course, everybody is aware of the fact that no communication is possible without coherence. Even though we still share the remnants of a postmodern era where communication has been torn apart and then sewn back in every possible theoretical way, the ensuing reality is that, in practice, interaction (therefore communication) is defined by reactions from both sides or from the entire group engaged in it.

As a result, a piece of “citizen news� in the form of a mobile video upload will most likely generate the necessary cohesion component. In the virtual world of hot clips and of the online communities which interact through them, the shared video moments operate the change of a certain occasion (which someone found important enough to share it with the other members) into some sort of reaction, be it an anticipated one or a totally unexpected one.

Look at it in another manner: compare the pieces of information shared through hot clips with the data comprised in the more than popular blogs. (A brief parenthesis here: blogs are also a form of citizen journalism). Consider the impact that some well established or intriguingly proposed topics have. The emergence of mobile video upload technologies can also represent an alternative for boosting the significance that certain written pieces of information (or even such information accompanied by photos) bear.

There’s no need here to discuss additionally on the superior impact of film over written text; the problem has already been underlined and what is important is precisely this conclusion: that images, in truth, can create quicker, more explicit and sometimes more spontaneous reactions than written text. It is a trend, if you so desire, adopted by the younger generations mainly, the generations who have grown somewhat tired with being just an audience to the traditional sort of journalism, practiced by “professional journalists�, and have decided to give voice and image to their own particular preoccupations. Of course, they are aware that many of their preoccupations are likely to make the interest and to incite the curiosity of the rest of the community/communities the members of which they are.