BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chen Bin keeps the wolf from the door selling insurance, but he's also an amateur paraglider and a member of China's army of citizen journalists who share their stories online.
Chinese view Chen as a member of the paike (meaning amateur cameraman literally), an emerging group in the country who make digital videos and upload them onto the Internet for the general public to access.
The 42-year-old man became an Internet star after his video clips of an aerial view of the deadly Wenzhou train crash scene in Zhejiang province last summer became a big hit online.
The fan of powered paragliding recorded the scene from the air the morning after two bullet trains collided near Wenzhou city on July 23, leaving 40 dead and hundreds injured.
The video quickly went viral as Chinese wanting to discover the truth about the accident eagerly viewed it. They were after information other than that provided by the local authorities.
The video clip was used by dozens of TV broadcasters, including the national broadcaster, CCTV, in their news reports of the accident.
The video clip Chen shot is reportedly the earliest one of the crash scene and was a valuable reference for rescue workers.
"(After the video was broadcasted,) many friends from all over China called me. I have never expected such influence," said Chen.
Chen works for a local insurance company but he dedicates much of his free time to leading a non-government air search and rescue team. It was his passion to help others that motivated him to capture the scene on video to assist the rescue work.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM
Paike, like Chen, are changing China's media landscape. They provide video clips for Chinese video websites such as Nasdaq listed Youku.com, Tudou.com, and some paike, who used to shoot videos just out of interest, have turned it into their profession, said Chen Zhihua, vice president of ifeng.com, a leading news web portal in China.
When Chinese video websites were just established, they mainly served as platforms for programs produced by TV broadcasters to be shared. However, with the development of new media technology as well as China's efforts in protection of intellectual property rights, video websites have shifted their attention to original-made videos and have encouraged Internet users to shoot and upload interesting video clips.
Video websites have launched exclusive channels that rely on news captured by the paike. The ifeng video channel announced this month that it had earmarked 10 million yuan (1.58 million U.S. dollars) to pay video clip contributors.
The video website will contract 2,000 to 3,000 paike and initiate 10 training programs for them this year, according to the vice president of ifeng Chen Zhihua.
The website of the Hongkong-based television broadcaster Phoenix has also established a platform where video clips sent to Phoenix are shared with TV broadcasters in Guangdong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces.
"Today, it is usually amateur paike instead of professional journalists who are the first to get to the scene of a news event," said Chen. "Our campaign is aimed to improve the quality of videos shot by paike and expand their influence with the help of our technology and communication network as a professional broadcaster."
POWERFUL, THOUGH UNPROFESSIONAL
Zhao Fujun, an IT industry columnist, said the paike, though unprofessional as journalists or cameramen, have become video websites' major sources of contents that attract users.
Even traditional media have launched special programs to encourage audiences to record and share what they see and feel in their daily lives with their cameras.
The paike have even become agenda setters for the public and media.
A video clip about a toddler hit twice by two different vans but left bleeding on the road as 18 passers-by walked by sparked an outcry and a national debate on Chinese people's "moral depravity" in late 2011.
The clip showed that no one did anything to help the two-year-old girl later nicknamed "Little Yueyue" until an old trash collector came to her aid.
The scene in Foshan city, Guangdong province, was captured by a surveillance camera and first aired by a local TV broadcaster. However, the event did not attract much attention until a paike made clips of the original video and uploaded it online.
Thanks to the paike, the incident gained huge media attention.
Yu Guoming, a professor of journalism at the Beijing-based Renmin University of China and an expert of public opinion, said the emergence of the paike in China has greatly influenced the media industry and promoted social progress as well.
The case of Little Yueyue is a very typical example that demonstrated the power of the Chinese grassroots, Yu said.
"The paike can spot, observe and quickly respond to social problems in a more keen and diverse perspective, which may well later become public topics," said professor Yu. "They might trigger some controversy initially, but in the long run, they will promote social progress."
According to a latest report released by China Internet Network Information Center, Internet users in China reached 513 million with 325 million Internet video users by the end of 2011 . And 63.4 percent of the video users said that they were more dependent on the Internet than TV.
(Source: Xinhua)
