Protest fatigue is real. No matter what the cause, there always seems to be someone out there marching for this and demanding that.
Although many of the rallies are mundane - the annual march for the rights of the endangered Madagascar radiated tortoise will never set the world alight - they often generate powerful and occasionally amusing videos that are featured in media outlets across the world. After all, what better - and cheaper - way to broadcast footage of an anti-China rally in the outer reaches of the Congo than through the eyes, or cameraphones, of the passionate supporters in attendance, rather than fly an entire crew on an expenses-paid trip to the region?
So let's start with looking at how videos emerge from protests, how the media obtains them, and then watch some of the most notable protest causes of the last decade and the videos that emerged from them and were sold to the media.
What is a protest?
We don’t need ChatGPT for this! A protest is simply a group of people who come together to voice their collective anger over an issue. The target of their wrath more often than not is the government of the day. And more often than not, the shouts and occasional screeches fall on deaf ears.User-Generated Coverage (UGC) of protests
User-Generated Coverage (UGC) is incredible, showing all angles of a mob eruption. Professional TV cameras cannot be everywhere, and their cameramen, should they even decide to send them, are given strict instructions to capture a certain type of shot and stay well back from any danger. They certainly would never have caught this incredible moment showing a glass bottle smashing in the face of a female photographer when it was hurled by Thai police at protesters in Bangkok in 2022. Indeed, such was the strength of the video captured by ViralPress cameraman that it was featured by Reuters in their safety training seminars for photographers attending riots (stay back from stray missiles).Licensing videos of protests from social media
On any given day, national and international websites in most semi-free Western countries will feature a conflict or protest of some kind. In the developing world and the United States, these eruptions of rage are a little more spontaneous and happen on weekdays, whereas Brits are somewhat more organised and protests are scheduled conveniently for weekends, when those in attendance don’t have much else to do.Ten causes that have produced incredible User-Generated Videos (UGV) of protests
The current decade has seen some incredible protests in many countries. Here are just a few of them:- Colourful anti-government protests in Bangkok
- Hong Kong’s last stand against China
- Drawing attention to animal rights
- Orange man bad, Musk man bad
- Climate crazies
- Farmers protests in the UK
- Maori rallies to protect their culture
- Taking the knee for Black Lives Matter
- Storming the Capitol
- Protests in Germany against coal mines
Why protest videos can make money
This is the best part of the article - how the average person can make money from their phone video. You could be a flag-waving crazy or someone who just spotted the anarchy on their way home from the shops - the media doesn’t discriminate (most of the time). Simply press record and capture the chaos.Note: It’s also possible for a single person to protest. Gandhi was the originator of this in his demonstrations against his nemesis, the Colonial Brits. In Vietnam, lone operator Thich Quang Duc staged a fiery and ultimately fatal protest against the equally expansionist Chinese. A toddler might like to protest alone when they can’t have ice cream, though they may not be in the same category as Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst just yet.
Whereas in the past, a handful of newspaper reporters may have covered such protests, these days, there are all manner of vloggers, self-proclaimed independent reporters, and alternative media outlets in attendance. Although these admirable and enthusiastic but often-untrained journalists post their videos online, mainstream media outlets are more interested in the raw, unfiltered videos of the protest captured by members of the public. These are recorded and uploaded instantly to social media - usually X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and increasingly TikTok, at least for as long as the overlords in the US regulatory departments allow, following the platform’s divestment from the Chinese owner’s Bytedance, who have been remarkably liberal with everything outside of the CCP’s tentacles.
The videos appear online with keywords in the post title or even hashtags. The TikTok algorithm even pushes these in front of the people who have shown an interest in the protest, though nobody quite knows how Mr Bytedance does this, whether through AI telepathy burned through a user’s irises or simply by how often, for how long, and in what depth someone interacts with a similar post. Which begs the question, how does TikTok know what is a similar post? That’s presumably through geo-tracking of the people posting the videos as well as AI recognition of what is being displayed on the screen, such as cars being set alight, people waving flags or climbing onto government buildings.
So to escape from this rabbit hole of TikTok theories, let’s consider how the media takes the videos from social media onto their websites, channels and shows.
Instantly, once the demonstration is significant enough or violent enough, hordes of cyber journalists from a variety of leading outlets, such as ViralPress, CNBC, FoxNews and the DailyMail, among others, scour social media for videos from the gathering. Often, they can be seen like this, bombarding a post to ask for permission to use the video:
The poster may occasionally reply with an affirmative ‘Yes’ and grant non-exclusive rights to the media outlet for them to publish the video or, as is the case with the agencies in the post above, syndicate the video far and wide.
In addition to videos in which the filmer grants non-exclusive rights to a media outlet, a more entrepreneurial filmer may ask for payment. They will then enter negotiations with the somewhat disappointed cyber-journalist who was hoping to acquire the video for free and, eventually, if the clip is unique, have a sum deposited into their PayPal account within a few hours.
That was the case with Davyd Bychkoviak, who recorded this video of a helicopter crashing onto a highway in Sacramento, California.
Though it’s not a protest, David was shaken from seeing the chopper plummet to earth, but his nerves were steadied by the payment he received from ViralPress for his video. Video of the protests can also be paid. Brendan Gutenschwager is one such user who has turned recording protests into a lucrative job and something of an art form, as this video of a bizarre water fight between Trump supporters and BLM activists shows.
Check the video you want to upload is suitable without any music, edits, sound effects, voice-overs or other such additions. ViralPress wants the raw, unfiltered goods.
Follow the link to the ViralPress upload page and select upload, choose files and select the clip you prefer
Add any important details or points you wish to make for yourself or your organisation. This will be included in the video caption when it’s distributed to the media, so keep it clean!
Look out for a notification email to confirm the video has been published, followed by an email confirming, hopefully, that it has sold to a newspaper, website or TV show
