LxC Task 6: Citizen Journalism during UPR strike raises awareness to brutalities.

Citizen Journalism can be considered an increasingly popular medium of mass media today, that usually communicates narratives that institutions, governments, or corporations prefer go untold. The University of Puerto Rico's two-month long strike (the longest-lasting strike organized by students in history) against drastic increases in tuition, and cuts in financial aid, was not particularly received in a kind manner by the authorities. Thousands of University students who took it upon themselves to commit civil disobedience, also had the initiative to record many of the struggles that they encountered on their two-month long journey. Students who captured the police brutalizing, and using excessive force on unarmed people, shed awareness to the low-tolerance the governor and his administration have on civil disobedience, protesting, and the citizens of Puerto Rico voicing out their opinions against federal institutions, and their policies. [1]

Even though, the public over the past few decades has lost confidence in media, (i.e fake Georgian war), the public can confide in itself more often to report was it really happening. The students of the University of Puerto Rico had a lot of support from the public; many bystanders dropped off food and water for the students, despite police orders and force not to do so.

In the end, the students of the University of Puerto Rico received most of what they demanded from the UPR's administration, and the accounts of their trials and journey were available for all to see. Hardt states in Myths for the Masses: an Essay on Mass Communication:

"As a result, the mass production of information... supported by an authoritative, economic interest in public responses to commercial or political appeals... has steadily eroded the give and take of participatory communication. Indeed, the past century is marked by an increasingly complex and desperate struggle between individuals and institutions over social, political and economic forms of existence on the territory of communication." [2] Their recorded narratives showed the world what tends to happen when people, particularly students, stand up against an issue in a historic manner."

Participating in mass media as a citizen, usually with lack of protection, and support from major news corporations, or without prominent social or economic status, citizen journalists often times find themselves in a bit of pickle, fearing the response of those in power, or the antagonist in the narratives that they expose. Indeed the past century has shown citizens all over the world communicating happenings through any of the available mediums of communication that are present to the, and showing the world things that possibly would be censored otherwise.

Abuso Policiaco En Arresto a Desobediente Civil - Huelga UPR. Perf. UPR Students, Supporters, and Police Officers. Youtube/Abuso Policiaco En Arresto a Desobediente Civil - Huelga UPR. SubVERSIONES, 19 Jan. 2011. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_CAdgDtU8&feature=related. [1]

Hardt, Hanno. Myths for the Masses: an Essay on Mass Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print. [2]