they the 24th of November today and I’m
not sure if any of you guys have checked
your phones if you haven’t please don’t
but the story that’s trending number one
at the moment is Oxford Circus we’ve got
an Irish audience everybody knows
somebody in Oxford Circus you must be
worried I’ll tell you what’s happened
allegedly there’s been an attack shots
were fired hundreds of people were seen
running down Oxford Circus I know what
you’re thinking not again
not another attack and somebody like me
I’m thinking I hope the guy doesn’t have
a name like mine
Youssef Omar the thing is nothing
happened in Oxford Circus today there’s
over a hundred thousand tweets and yet
the police can’t find any weapons any
suspects or anybody even injured but do
you know what did happen today over 200
people were killed in a terror attack in
the Sinai in Egypt but that’s not
trending as number one and the thing is
in the old days we could blame big men
in news media organizations in New York
and in London for deciding what were the
top five stories of the day but today we
have to blame what’s trending and what’s
trending is determined by algorithms and
algorithms are determined by us and the
stories that we share and what we talk
about and what we write about and what
we do with our mobile phones and only we
can take responsibility for changing
what is important and what stories we
should be prioritizing and we can do it
using our mobile phones the mobile
device is the singular most powerful
thing we may ever own it’s got more
computing power than the Apollo missions
that took us to the moon
since 9/11 it hasn’t been big broadcast
cameras that have been documenting the
biggest stories of our lives it’s been
people with mobile devices that have
been finding amazing stories the
mainstream media traditional media are
designed to go for the most universal
story generalizations but it’s mobile
phones that gets the specifics I’m a
mojo
a mobile journalist that means I shoot I
edit I produce entirely with my mobile
phone I travel a lot sometimes I don’t
even know where I’m going all I know is
that I miss firing stories which the
world needs to hear that are hard to
reach in difficult to access places I
wanted to be a foreign correspondent my
entire life and I believe we are all
becoming foreign correspondents in our
own right we all have mobile phones and
we are all sharing stories all the time
and I believe we have responsibility to
do so especially when we see the very
best and the very worst of humanity we
have a responsibility to document it and
I believe it’s already happening when we
look at the witness accounts of the
young black men that are gunned down in
the United States of America and the
evidence that he’s used in these black
lives matter court cases it’s often
videos shot in the mobile phones thank
you get out his ID in his wallet
no he was read he had a fire army he was
reaching for his violent Grenfell tower
in the UK massive apartment block that
caught on fire in a young woman’s most
dire moments she was trapped high up
what did she do with her final moments
of life she did a snapchat video and a
Facebook live
[Applause]
and why why do we do this we do this
because it’s our generations way of
engaging with the world we’ve swiped
right through tinder and found our next
love we’ve scrolled down on LinkedIn and
found our next job for us sharing is
empowering we’ve started revolutions in
Egypt and for our generation from the
very day we were born
we have been thrust in front of the
cameras we’ve had digital cameras and
soon mobile devices almost immediately
after our birth I have been in front of
the camera my father and mother have
been taking pictures of me since the day
I was born even my first hanging out my
dad’s dental surgery was caught on
camera something I haven’t told anybody
though when I was 14 years old
and I was getting picked up from school
by my mother and all the other moms were
around and all the other kids are around
I was there too mrs. tipper told my mom
that I wasn’t coping that I wasn’t able
to read and write as well as the other
kids in the class what mrs. tippet
didn’t understand was that we were a
generation that we’re changing the way
we communicate yes we don’t read as much
as the previous generation but that
doesn’t mean we don’t engage and
communicate as much we use our camera as
a way of engaging with the world of
sharing as I said I wanted to be a
foreign correspondent I wanted to cover
Wars and natural disasters and every
news organization said you don’t have
enough gray hairs on your head you’re
not as experienced you’re not old enough
we’re cutting back on budgets we’re not
sending as many foreign correspondents
around the world so I decided to do it
anyway I didn’t need them in 2010 with a
backpack full of old t-shirts a head
full of young dreams and a little mobile
device I hitchhiked from South Africa to
Syria from Durban to Damascus up 12,000
kilometers for three months telling
stories just with a little camera
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
it was shaky it was handheld the audio
was terrible and nobody cared we were
answering a generation where what we
trusted was real and raw and an arm’s
length away and somebody telling you
exactly how they felt and for me this
trip was an ability to tell a different
story of the African continent that it
wasn’t this dark scary place that in
fact it was full of hope and opportunity
and I had a fantastic time and there was
nothing for me to be afraid of
in 2012 I tried to apply the same
self-feed storytelling selfie journalism
style to news gathering and an a
munitions depot had exploded in the
Congo they keep weapons in the middle of
civil populations in cases in uprising
and in this instance this a munitions
depot has set alight and for three days
it was like the biggest fireworks
display you’d ever seen and this time
just like how I’m wearing a camera on my
face right now I’ve got a flashing light
and that’s the camera this time I
strapped a camera to my head and I
wanted people to feel like what it was
like to be walking through that kind of
a place
[Music]
it’s quite scary walking it’s
essentially like walking through one
and around me is ammunition somewhat
still live most it has exploded and
everything’s just being plastic in every
direction
[Music]
nothing’s changed at preventing – the
situation is far worse than before
through kilometres in every direction
everything’s just flattened
and it really gave you a sense of not
like hey I’m coming to your life from
the frontlines of Congo no it was far
more human and intimate and you’re able
to speak directly to the camera and look
at people in the eye and tell them
exactly how I felt to be there on the
ground this is a dramatic version of
selfie German selfie Germans and can
happen everywhere in every community all
the time to give us access to hard to
reach stories in 2014 I was smuggled
into Syria with a group of surgeons that
were building a hospital in the province
of da de guiche Enid Lib this was one of
the most horrific experiences I’ve ever
had in my life and and this time I
started taking just like how I’m live
right now on Facebook even though they
told us not to record this I’ll record
my talk just like how I’m live right now
on Facebook I was able to use live
broadcasts to broadcast the bomb by bomb
what I was experiencing on the ground in
Syria just seconds ago we saw a child
basically a car cane screaming in here
blood pouring out there’s a child he’s
been shot just below the heart at the
moment we understand it was some sort of
an accident
I’m just getting word an update on the
child that has been shot it’s coming
through now personify this hospital I
wanted to do this small life and having
done it
even one centimeter closer
Oh
security situations
this is by far the most scary part of
the trip the spa really loud explosions
now not far away from where his thing
it’s definitely an eerie feeling in my
stomach that things are taking a turn
for the worse yes and things did take a
turn significantly for the worst 24
hours after that happened mortar was
firing just a couple hundred meters away
from us and we were evacuated from Syria
the thing is everybody who I’ve got
close to during my time in Syria has
died
this is Nihad I stayed at knee hards
house and he evacuated his family to
Turkey just so we would have space in
his house I used to ride on the back of
his motorcycle every day to the hospital
he was killed a few weeks after we left
this is stuff one Safwan was a guy he’s
just a student he was my age he was
learning English and during wartime he
was forced to become a translator to be
able to help the doctors the surgeons
the journalists he too was killed and
now it’s too dangerous for conventional
journalists to be on the ground and
we’re relying almost entirely on the
voices of selphie storytellers like this
young girl her name is vana alibied
she’s seven years old on an irregular
basis with the help of her mother she
livestreams on periscope from East
Aleppo at a time when there are no
journalists in that area and this is her
voice now of course that view is not a
journalist of course it’s not objective
and neutral but that doesn’t mean that
it’s not a value it’s about us having
those perspectives about us having those
angles about us being able to
contextualize the voice of a
seven-year-old and somewhere amidst this
chaos she was rescued and she’s now in
Turkey somebody listened to that selfie
story cell and I asked you how many
selfies storytellers are we listening to
we’ve heard today about alcohol abuse
and all sorts of problems that are
plaguing the society maybe if we start
tapping into the voices of people who
are able to document their most
sensitive and emotional stories on their
mobile phones instead of pouring a big
broadcast camera onto them we’ll have a
better understanding of what’s happening
in our communities since I left Syria
I’ve dedicated my life to building more
mobile storytelling
you know training people to do what I do
to tell stories of their phones in South
Africa we took 12 young people we gave
them mobile phones we train them up for
three months and we set them off to be
able to give us stories and diversify
our coverage in India we were able to
get six students we trained them up how
to use snapchat and we had them document
the most stressful six weeks of their
lives trying to get into university and
we captured their sex lives politics of
their family all the kind of expose in
India covering rape and sexual abuse in
India you can’t show the face of a rape
survivor even if they want to show their
identity because they get ostracized
from their communities they get thrown
out of their societies we were able to
give them a mobile phone and have them
swipe through snapchat and find face
filters but find one that could hide
their identity while allowing them to
tell their story while we could still
see their eyes their mouths their
expressions without having to blur out
their faces or show silhouette I was 5
years old when it happened and in Europe
we’re now working with refugees and
we’re trying to change the narrative
away from brown men in rubber dinghies
arriving on the European coast to
actually tell stories of who they are
and what they’re like training this
young man from Afghanistan his name was
it was there he’s now a selfie
storyteller telling us about his fight
for education in Serbia
my name is Jose Snickers are they for us
engagement increases empathy if we can
connect people that don’t like refugees
with stories from refugees we can create
empathy but isolation kills it in India
one community that are not listened to
by the mainstream media is waste pickers
people that collect garbage from the
streets so we train them up how to tell
stories on Instagram stories I don’t
miss my post of hyena I’m a second and
the thing is we heard almost nothing
from them we heard nothing for like
literally nine months we heard nothing
and so the Indian government raised the
GST taxes directly impacting the
livelihoods of these men they raise the
taxes on a recyclable plastics and out
of nowhere we suddenly started seeing
these waste pickers pick up their phones
and start sharing stories and then
suddenly we saw the Indian newspapers
and TV stations start running with these
stories and just a month ago the Indian
government announced that they were
going to reduce the GST taxes on
recyclable plastics so it worked
somebody listened to the selfie story
tell us their voices were heard we are
the next billion users we’re here to
engage and inform empowering mobile
storytellers to bring about reform I
believe that we don’t need satellite
trucks that’s a fact we are infinitely
faster and cheaper than that for me good
storytelling has always been about more
voices and mobile cameras simply means
more choices we have more angles we have
more perspectives and we have more truth
than before there’s a different way of
telling stories and we need to explore
it I don’t want to ignore traditional
media success but I believe that we are
better than this I believe that stories
are being drowned in conversations
they’re ending truth and Trust is being
lost but mobile storytelling commend it
we need to find narratives in the noise
we don’t need to conform let’s identify
voices being lost in the storm see a
lack of media diversity is what’s really
affecting me we talk about fake news but
we don’t listen to enough real views of
stories I mean drownded the conversation
has ended truth entrusted me lost
but mobile storytelling commend it thank
you so much
[Applause]
not sure if any of you guys have checked
your phones if you haven’t please don’t
but the story that’s trending number one
at the moment is Oxford Circus we’ve got
an Irish audience everybody knows
somebody in Oxford Circus you must be
worried I’ll tell you what’s happened
allegedly there’s been an attack shots
were fired hundreds of people were seen
running down Oxford Circus I know what
you’re thinking not again
not another attack and somebody like me
I’m thinking I hope the guy doesn’t have
a name like mine
Youssef Omar the thing is nothing
happened in Oxford Circus today there’s
over a hundred thousand tweets and yet
the police can’t find any weapons any
suspects or anybody even injured but do
you know what did happen today over 200
people were killed in a terror attack in
the Sinai in Egypt but that’s not
trending as number one and the thing is
in the old days we could blame big men
in news media organizations in New York
and in London for deciding what were the
top five stories of the day but today we
have to blame what’s trending and what’s
trending is determined by algorithms and
algorithms are determined by us and the
stories that we share and what we talk
about and what we write about and what
we do with our mobile phones and only we
can take responsibility for changing
what is important and what stories we
should be prioritizing and we can do it
using our mobile phones the mobile
device is the singular most powerful
thing we may ever own it’s got more
computing power than the Apollo missions
that took us to the moon
since 9/11 it hasn’t been big broadcast
cameras that have been documenting the
biggest stories of our lives it’s been
people with mobile devices that have
been finding amazing stories the
mainstream media traditional media are
designed to go for the most universal
story generalizations but it’s mobile
phones that gets the specifics I’m a
mojo
a mobile journalist that means I shoot I
edit I produce entirely with my mobile
phone I travel a lot sometimes I don’t
even know where I’m going all I know is
that I miss firing stories which the
world needs to hear that are hard to
reach in difficult to access places I
wanted to be a foreign correspondent my
entire life and I believe we are all
becoming foreign correspondents in our
own right we all have mobile phones and
we are all sharing stories all the time
and I believe we have responsibility to
do so especially when we see the very
best and the very worst of humanity we
have a responsibility to document it and
I believe it’s already happening when we
look at the witness accounts of the
young black men that are gunned down in
the United States of America and the
evidence that he’s used in these black
lives matter court cases it’s often
videos shot in the mobile phones thank
you get out his ID in his wallet
no he was read he had a fire army he was
reaching for his violent Grenfell tower
in the UK massive apartment block that
caught on fire in a young woman’s most
dire moments she was trapped high up
what did she do with her final moments
of life she did a snapchat video and a
Facebook live
[Applause]
and why why do we do this we do this
because it’s our generations way of
engaging with the world we’ve swiped
right through tinder and found our next
love we’ve scrolled down on LinkedIn and
found our next job for us sharing is
empowering we’ve started revolutions in
Egypt and for our generation from the
very day we were born
we have been thrust in front of the
cameras we’ve had digital cameras and
soon mobile devices almost immediately
after our birth I have been in front of
the camera my father and mother have
been taking pictures of me since the day
I was born even my first hanging out my
dad’s dental surgery was caught on
camera something I haven’t told anybody
though when I was 14 years old
and I was getting picked up from school
by my mother and all the other moms were
around and all the other kids are around
I was there too mrs. tipper told my mom
that I wasn’t coping that I wasn’t able
to read and write as well as the other
kids in the class what mrs. tippet
didn’t understand was that we were a
generation that we’re changing the way
we communicate yes we don’t read as much
as the previous generation but that
doesn’t mean we don’t engage and
communicate as much we use our camera as
a way of engaging with the world of
sharing as I said I wanted to be a
foreign correspondent I wanted to cover
Wars and natural disasters and every
news organization said you don’t have
enough gray hairs on your head you’re
not as experienced you’re not old enough
we’re cutting back on budgets we’re not
sending as many foreign correspondents
around the world so I decided to do it
anyway I didn’t need them in 2010 with a
backpack full of old t-shirts a head
full of young dreams and a little mobile
device I hitchhiked from South Africa to
Syria from Durban to Damascus up 12,000
kilometers for three months telling
stories just with a little camera
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
it was shaky it was handheld the audio
was terrible and nobody cared we were
answering a generation where what we
trusted was real and raw and an arm’s
length away and somebody telling you
exactly how they felt and for me this
trip was an ability to tell a different
story of the African continent that it
wasn’t this dark scary place that in
fact it was full of hope and opportunity
and I had a fantastic time and there was
nothing for me to be afraid of
in 2012 I tried to apply the same
self-feed storytelling selfie journalism
style to news gathering and an a
munitions depot had exploded in the
Congo they keep weapons in the middle of
civil populations in cases in uprising
and in this instance this a munitions
depot has set alight and for three days
it was like the biggest fireworks
display you’d ever seen and this time
just like how I’m wearing a camera on my
face right now I’ve got a flashing light
and that’s the camera this time I
strapped a camera to my head and I
wanted people to feel like what it was
like to be walking through that kind of
a place
[Music]
it’s quite scary walking it’s
essentially like walking through one
and around me is ammunition somewhat
still live most it has exploded and
everything’s just being plastic in every
direction
[Music]
nothing’s changed at preventing – the
situation is far worse than before
through kilometres in every direction
everything’s just flattened
and it really gave you a sense of not
like hey I’m coming to your life from
the frontlines of Congo no it was far
more human and intimate and you’re able
to speak directly to the camera and look
at people in the eye and tell them
exactly how I felt to be there on the
ground this is a dramatic version of
selfie German selfie Germans and can
happen everywhere in every community all
the time to give us access to hard to
reach stories in 2014 I was smuggled
into Syria with a group of surgeons that
were building a hospital in the province
of da de guiche Enid Lib this was one of
the most horrific experiences I’ve ever
had in my life and and this time I
started taking just like how I’m live
right now on Facebook even though they
told us not to record this I’ll record
my talk just like how I’m live right now
on Facebook I was able to use live
broadcasts to broadcast the bomb by bomb
what I was experiencing on the ground in
Syria just seconds ago we saw a child
basically a car cane screaming in here
blood pouring out there’s a child he’s
been shot just below the heart at the
moment we understand it was some sort of
an accident
I’m just getting word an update on the
child that has been shot it’s coming
through now personify this hospital I
wanted to do this small life and having
done it
even one centimeter closer
Oh
security situations
this is by far the most scary part of
the trip the spa really loud explosions
now not far away from where his thing
it’s definitely an eerie feeling in my
stomach that things are taking a turn
for the worse yes and things did take a
turn significantly for the worst 24
hours after that happened mortar was
firing just a couple hundred meters away
from us and we were evacuated from Syria
the thing is everybody who I’ve got
close to during my time in Syria has
died
this is Nihad I stayed at knee hards
house and he evacuated his family to
Turkey just so we would have space in
his house I used to ride on the back of
his motorcycle every day to the hospital
he was killed a few weeks after we left
this is stuff one Safwan was a guy he’s
just a student he was my age he was
learning English and during wartime he
was forced to become a translator to be
able to help the doctors the surgeons
the journalists he too was killed and
now it’s too dangerous for conventional
journalists to be on the ground and
we’re relying almost entirely on the
voices of selphie storytellers like this
young girl her name is vana alibied
she’s seven years old on an irregular
basis with the help of her mother she
livestreams on periscope from East
Aleppo at a time when there are no
journalists in that area and this is her
voice now of course that view is not a
journalist of course it’s not objective
and neutral but that doesn’t mean that
it’s not a value it’s about us having
those perspectives about us having those
angles about us being able to
contextualize the voice of a
seven-year-old and somewhere amidst this
chaos she was rescued and she’s now in
Turkey somebody listened to that selfie
story cell and I asked you how many
selfies storytellers are we listening to
we’ve heard today about alcohol abuse
and all sorts of problems that are
plaguing the society maybe if we start
tapping into the voices of people who
are able to document their most
sensitive and emotional stories on their
mobile phones instead of pouring a big
broadcast camera onto them we’ll have a
better understanding of what’s happening
in our communities since I left Syria
I’ve dedicated my life to building more
mobile storytelling
you know training people to do what I do
to tell stories of their phones in South
Africa we took 12 young people we gave
them mobile phones we train them up for
three months and we set them off to be
able to give us stories and diversify
our coverage in India we were able to
get six students we trained them up how
to use snapchat and we had them document
the most stressful six weeks of their
lives trying to get into university and
we captured their sex lives politics of
their family all the kind of expose in
India covering rape and sexual abuse in
India you can’t show the face of a rape
survivor even if they want to show their
identity because they get ostracized
from their communities they get thrown
out of their societies we were able to
give them a mobile phone and have them
swipe through snapchat and find face
filters but find one that could hide
their identity while allowing them to
tell their story while we could still
see their eyes their mouths their
expressions without having to blur out
their faces or show silhouette I was 5
years old when it happened and in Europe
we’re now working with refugees and
we’re trying to change the narrative
away from brown men in rubber dinghies
arriving on the European coast to
actually tell stories of who they are
and what they’re like training this
young man from Afghanistan his name was
it was there he’s now a selfie
storyteller telling us about his fight
for education in Serbia
my name is Jose Snickers are they for us
engagement increases empathy if we can
connect people that don’t like refugees
with stories from refugees we can create
empathy but isolation kills it in India
one community that are not listened to
by the mainstream media is waste pickers
people that collect garbage from the
streets so we train them up how to tell
stories on Instagram stories I don’t
miss my post of hyena I’m a second and
the thing is we heard almost nothing
from them we heard nothing for like
literally nine months we heard nothing
and so the Indian government raised the
GST taxes directly impacting the
livelihoods of these men they raise the
taxes on a recyclable plastics and out
of nowhere we suddenly started seeing
these waste pickers pick up their phones
and start sharing stories and then
suddenly we saw the Indian newspapers
and TV stations start running with these
stories and just a month ago the Indian
government announced that they were
going to reduce the GST taxes on
recyclable plastics so it worked
somebody listened to the selfie story
tell us their voices were heard we are
the next billion users we’re here to
engage and inform empowering mobile
storytellers to bring about reform I
believe that we don’t need satellite
trucks that’s a fact we are infinitely
faster and cheaper than that for me good
storytelling has always been about more
voices and mobile cameras simply means
more choices we have more angles we have
more perspectives and we have more truth
than before there’s a different way of
telling stories and we need to explore
it I don’t want to ignore traditional
media success but I believe that we are
better than this I believe that stories
are being drowned in conversations
they’re ending truth and Trust is being
lost but mobile storytelling commend it
we need to find narratives in the noise
we don’t need to conform let’s identify
voices being lost in the storm see a
lack of media diversity is what’s really
affecting me we talk about fake news but
we don’t listen to enough real views of
stories I mean drownded the conversation
has ended truth entrusted me lost
but mobile storytelling commend it thank
you so much
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: