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BBC starts experimental citizen journalism project

Posted: 19/12/06 By: Oliver Luft

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The BBC has launched a citizen journalism project to explore new multimedia story telling ideas using mobile phones and GPS.

BBC Innovation is collaborating with the University of Brighton, Nokia and mobile and web engagement specialist Ymogen for the Geo-stories project to investigate how video, stills and text combined with location and time information can create new narrative formats.

The month-long project, which started this week, will culminate when students from the University of Brighton present the results of the citizen journalism experiment as an online gallery on 18 January.

Mark Hardwick, Ymogen's CEO, said: "We're trying to understand the different ways that you might combine a variety of media with location information in order to create engaging stories using mobile devices. This is an incredibly exciting project."

The 18 students have each been equipped with a Nokia Nseries multimedia computer and a Garmin Etrex GPS device with which to experiment.

Priya Prakash, innovation executive, BBC Innovation, said: "At BBC Innovation our job is to expand the BBC's future media services, encourage awareness of trends in technology and social behaviour, and plan new products that will keep the BBC at the cutting edge of new developments in media technology."

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