Hunched over their laptops: phenomenological perspectives on citizen journalism

Donald Matheson (2003) writes of war correspondents ‘scowling at their notebooks’, and this is not meant as caricature but the corporeal expression of an epistemological orientation to the world in which facts have to be wrestled into submission. This article takes a phenomenological approach to ask whether there is a distinct orientation of citizen journalism and blogging, exploring the corporeal, temporal and spatial aspects of non-professional practices of media production. Hunching over a laptop suggests an epistemology in which facts and opinions are urgent and potentially subversive, though it is also tied to the romanticised individualism with which citizen journalism in particular is associated.