Professional astronaut, space commander and tweeter

Chris Hadfield sings David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in the International Space Station. This music video was uploaded to his Youtube account, and has garnered almost 20-million views to date. 

Col. Hadfield launched into space in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Dec. 19, 2012. Hadfield, along with Tom Mashburn, an American physician, and Roman Romanenko, a Russian Airforce officer, left Earth together and headed to the International Space Station, where they remained for five months. They overtook the ISS from the previous crew, who headed home in March. Hadfield assumed the leadership role as the ship's commander.

I watched the live coverage of the spacecraft taking off on television. Although coverage of their lift-off was widespread, both in broadcast and print, their actual mission in space, in their 5-month stay, were not as publicly discussed by the mainstream news media. As a common fate that breaking stories face, after only a couple of days, the timeliness of the news story had passed, and the fire had fizzled. 

Looking at CBC's online report on Dec. 19, 2012, when Hadfield and two other astronauts blasted off into space, you can see a heavy reliance on other informative platforms. The clip CBC provided, where Peter Mansbridge reports, uses the live-streamed footage shot by NasaTV. In the online article, they also embedded a window that follows the live tweets of NASA and Chris Hadfield during the launch. 

It is arguable that in order to construct a story around this event, CBC used only external sources of information. Because NASA conducts its projects with great confidentiality, security and bureaucracy, this was most likely a hindrance for news outlets to shoot the event with their own equipment, or to speak directly with the astronauts and team involved with this mission. It is evident that their coverage on the story depended solely on the information given to them by NASA and the individuals who were directly involved with the mission. 

 

As mentioned previously, Chris Hadfield's twitter-feed played a primal role in completely telling the story of their mission. His activeness on this social media platform, and the reliance of mainstream news organization on his tweets, prove the significance of citizen journalism in stories that are not always physically accessible to journalists. The images only Hatfield and his fellow astronauts were able to share reflected what they observed from space, and mirrored the world in which we live in. These space images could only be captured, accessed, and shared by those who have the means and involvement to do so. In addition, not only did journalists on the ground rely on their reports, but so did NASA's ground station, who would then relay information to the public. 

The popularity of Chris Hadfield's tweets and the public's trust in his own personal reports from space more than highlights the importance of citizen journalism. It emphasizes the necessity for first-hand accounts from those who are embedded in a certain environment, place, or culture, in telling a story accurately, truthfully, and fully. We needed Hadfield's knowledge and experience in making sense of the space photos they took from the ISS. Because of citizen journalism, Hadfield was able to make the unknown known to the public. Specifically with a subject as foreign as space, journalists on Earth simply can't match the perspective of an astronaut in orbit around our world. 

The Australian Outback is effortlessly crazily beautiful. pic.twitter.com/wspJub04WF

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) April 21, 2013

Tonight's Finale: Dawn sneaking in under the Northern Lights. When we turn our lights down, nature lights up the sky. pic.twitter.com/GyFmRcxzhg

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) March 23, 2013

CBC's presentation of the news online was more of a compilation of information from external sources, rather than a story that they invested time and effort in. I found that Hadfield's tweets were more reliable and accurate representations of their space mission. I believe that citizen journalism is changing public discourse, in that the way we are communicating and sharing ideas to one another is becoming simultaneously personal and communal. Hadfield's tweets, accessible by every person on the internet, created a dialogue between a human's personal experience in space and humankind's personal experience on earth. To be given the opportunity to view our planet from the exterior has created, I hope, a mutual understanding of how grand our world truly is.