Keynote: When Gaza Started Reporting Itself

What happens when European media organisations depend on images and testimonies produced by people living through the events they document? Facilitated by Hala Alnaji Since October 2023, reporting from Gaza has unsettled some of the conventional boundaries of journalism. With foreign journalists largely unable to report independently from inside Gaza and local journalists working under extraordinary conditions, another form of reporting has become increasingly visible: people documenting the war while simultaneously living through it. This keynote looks at how citizen and civilian reporting has changed not only who reports Gaza, but also what becomes reportable. Alongside airstrikes, casualties and destruction, social media accounts began documenting food, displacement, tents, neighbourhoods, family relations, humour, exhaustion, waiting and attempts to maintain ordinary life. Gaza appeared not only as a site of catastrophe, but as a lived society. This shift also raises difficult ethical questions. What happens when the witness, journalist, source and survivor are the same person? How do we think about verification, consent, safety, authorship and editorial responsibility? What happens when European media organisations depend on images and testimonies produced by people living through the events they document?