COLUMBIA
JOURNALISM
REVIEW
SPRING
2021:
A le x andria
N eason 4 2
Viewers Like You Public access programming, past and present
by Alexandria Neason Illustration by Richard A. Chance
L
ast summer, people across the United States flooded out of their homes, which had been converted to quarantine bunkers, and into the streets, risking one crisis in protest of another. It was not the first time that demonstrations against state-sponsored anti-Blackness had consumed national attention, our screens all tuned to the same channel. I found myself straying away from journalistic coverage, however. I preferred, instead, to watch the protests unfold in real time on videos and livestreams—first via Instagram and Twitter, then on Twitch, where surveillance-like footage flowed for hours on end. As the summer wore on, I found Twitch to be the ideal place to follow the demonstrations. I spent
days watching things happen, or nothing happen at all. I remember seeing a protest in Portland; the camera was hitched up high, on a light pole, I think, or the corner of a tall fence. The lens was pointed down, offering a bird’s-eye view of an intersection, where it captured protesters marching, running, and chanting; there was never any commentary. Unlike videos shot by a reporter, a protester, or a bystander, Twitch footage seemed to hold no specific outlook; some videos came from accounts using pseudonyms, and there could be no way of knowing who had placed the camera. The experience of watching wasn’t quite the same as being there—the fixed position of the shot meant that my line of sight was reduced to whatever fit in the frame, so I couldn’t
