Manuela Farinosi, a post-doctoral researcher at the Università di Udine, interviewed 20 of the most active citizen contributors who gathered and shared news after the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, and presented what motivated them at the Neo-journalism conference.
The most common answer was mainstream media coverage. The contributors judged Italian reporting of the disaster incomplete and pro-government, and frustration at what they saw as poor journalism was what pushed them to publish. The second reason was a wish to make the voice of the people heard, with the same aim of giving a fuller picture of conditions on the ground. The third was narrower and local: sharing information with neighbours to prompt debate among residents, rather than reaching a national or international audience.
What limited them was resources and visibility inside an ecosystem the mainstream still dominated. Farinosi’s conclusion was that they were using ready-made platforms such as YouTube to bypass the established media and build an alternative public sphere in its place.