Reporting disasters from inside a repressive regime: a citizen journalism case study of the 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster

AbstractNew technology has changed the face of global reporting. Digital technology has given citizens the capacity to report from restricted frontlines that professional journalists cannot access. This study investigates the role of citizen journalists reporting on the Cyclone Nargis disaster in 2008 from one of the world’s most repressive regimes—Myanmar. The paper shows how and why citizen journalists reported the catastrophe, which killed 140,000 people. Until recently in Myanmar, disasters were unreported and hidden from the outside world. But citizen journalists demonstrated during the disaster that digital technology has become an important tool in telling stories from inside repressive regimes