Mid-January 2005: I walked into a Los Angeles High School, ready to stage manage a show that 30 teenagers had written with local theatre professionals. I expected to be handed a script on that first day; instead, the kids had staged an creative intervention based on first person videos.

These teenagers explained to every adult in the room how they still very much cared about the themes already in their script. That’s when I learned it tackled the US Army Recruiters on campus, the pull between the arts and more acceptable careers, friendships, love, condoms—

But the day after Christmas in 2004, something had happened that these kids couldn’t ignore.

The Boxing Day Earthquake and Tsunami came fast

Many people, newsrooms included, learned about the Boxing Day Tsunami or Asian Tsunami through videos taken by everyday people who lived there or visiting. Tourists trying out their brand new camera phones were suddenly on the front lines of citizen journalism during one of the most destructive natural disasters to date.

For many people, and especially these Los Angeles teens, they watched as people were swept away, heard screams of “Get back!” They were witnessing footage that didn’t need to pass the gatekeepers of news standards because it was shared in newly common, newly accessible online areas.

And back in 2004, regular people sharing online video was still relatively new.

2004 had already been a pivotal year in Media History

Even before the tsunami on Boxing Day, the year 2004 had made its mark in the advancement of these internet subcultures.

• 2004 was the first time that the internet had a major effect on a Presidential campaign, for one. Democratic candidate Howard Dean had raised and organized millions using email for the first time. Although not translating to enough votes, those actions served a healthy dose of motivation to an ambitious team soon to rally multitudes of Americans around Barack Obama. But not quite yet…
• Camera phone sales had quadrupled digital camera sales in 2004, but the Chief Executive of Kodak, Daniel Carp, was maintaining a positive outlook. He had pointed skeptics to stats like how 70% of people never or rarely sent photos or videos to other phones, and don’t find the quality satisfying enough to reuse. But those stats had been recorded for 2003, and technology was moving faster than we were used to.

Many say this is when Web 2.0 began.

• We had Flickr, Facebook (still in a Harvard dorm room), Gmail had started sending invitations to exclusive users; MySpace, Friendster, Live Journal, Blogger, Wikipedia and more were moving just outside of niche circles. (We’re still a few weeks out from YouTube’s very first video getting uploaded)
• Vimeo had launched a month earlier, but still kept within filmmaker circles at first. They’ll come back in later…..
• Portable gaming systems are on the rise, highlighted by the much-anticipated Nintendo DS release. The DS’s big boast is that it is dual screen, with one being an LCD.
• The Apple iPod Mini caused a stir for many reasons, not the least of which was because you could choose from five stylish colors!
• DVDs of the original Stars Wars Trilogy sold over $100 million in their first day. Read this incredibly touching first person account when the author discovered: BONUS FEATURES.
• Janet Jackson’s career took a detour that never recovered after Nipplegate, which also launched a “decent crackdown” on broadcast radio, which still meant something back then….more on that soon.Read more on how citizen journalism played a key role in 2004.

Videos brought tsunami awareness from unlikely sources

In the hours following the tsunami that killed 227,000-230,000 people in 14 countries, legacy news found themselves inundated with footage taken by accident, and citizens armed with more information than reporters.

By 5am in London, the BBC was learning of the importance of the story, not from the global news agencies but from the relatives of holidaymakers…a succession of phone calls recounting horrific tales from resorts in Thailand and Sri Lanka. One caller said his father had watched as 50 bodies were swept down the Sri Lankan street where he was staying. Callers like Mary Pickering, a senior BBC staffer who rang in from Phuket, were put on air to report from the scene.

“Never before have I worked on a story where the news was coming more from the public than the agencies,” says Whitney. “When you take 10 calls from all over the country at five o’clock on Boxing Day morning, you know it’s a big story. People were saying, ‘My daughter has been washed away and is lucky to be alive – why aren’t you covering this?’ From the British point of view we had a new agency: the public.”

How the first person videos touched a group of Los Angeles teenagers so deeply

Access to these first person accounts in 2004 was a shock to the system of these Los Angeles teens. Now, these were not sheltered children. The majority knew bad things happened in the world and much of the show (from my memory) centered on lack of control– in their lives or lack of ability to help people across the world.

The teens managed to integrate the tsunami into the show, and encouraged one another to continue action offstage as well. I never forgot how deeply they felt the need to do something, and think of that group of kids often.

That experience gave them just a taste of how first person narrative and unpolished video footage amps up their knowledge, awareness, and empathy. It’s the power and empowerment that one gets through primary sources. And the main tool they needed, an easily accessible camera phone, proved to be on the rise.

All over Live Journal and MySpace already, these teenagers were newly cheating and sharing their own perspectives and their own primary sources for history. Now in their thirties, at the time these teens were prime candidates for a site where posting video was both easy to do and free to use, but even more importantly: Easy to share from.

They would only have to wait a few weeks for that, on the fateful Valentine’s Day in 2005 when the YouTube platform was born.

All sources listed here

Read/listen to more Media History here.

This piece is adapted from our Out Think Media History podcast series, where I navigate families through more recent histories and how they still affect our lives today.

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