Rittenhouse trial highlights rise of livestreamed video

When Andrew Mercado found himself in the middle of a protest following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last year, he was just figuring out how to livestream on Facebook. Livestreaming “fits into a larger cultural moment that we’re in, where people seem to want authenticity,” said Seth Lewis, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon. “It seems raw and real.” Mercado, who lives in a Minneapolis suburb, said that when he started documenting protests last year, he was a “devout Republican.” But amid mass protests over the killing of Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, he wanted to examine the issue of police accountability for himself. He told The Associated Press that he saw a livestream as “the most raw form of reporting” that would “allow people to make decisions for themselves.” But even with plentiful video footage from the scene of the shooting, Rittenhouse’s case has been cast into a cultural wedge that has been used by powerful interest groups, extremists, politicians and others to push their own agendas. “They still don’t provide all the pieces of the puzzle.” However, Lewis pointed out that smartphones — and their ability to instantly capture video — have completely changed how instances of police brutality are documented, particularly for Black people.