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Citizen journalism and video diaries on Facebook

Facebook wanted to build a better understanding of what was important to teens and young adults in the 13-to-24-year-old age group This group is often seen as homogenous, and Facebook needed to build a more detailed and granular understanding of the individuals who would represent the next generation of consumers.
Working with research agency Crowd DNA, an expert in cultural research, a range of research approaches were applied including a large-scale online survey and interviews of consumers across 13 key markets (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Norway, Sweden, UK and the USA). A subset of this group was selected to take part in a form of citizen journalism to use their mobile devices to record short mobile video accounts of various aspects of their everyday lives, such as friends, family and their social and educational lives.
This technique, and the ability for it to enable participants to collect research data without being accompanied by a researcher, created a degree of candidness and depth that would not have been available from traditional techniques. Additionally, the importance of using visual rather than text-based methods to reach these demographics was highlighted by the researchers:²⁵

people growing up today express themselves via a new visual vocabulary, often replacing the need for text. It’s important that brand content be in a language that young people speak and that language is increasingly visual. Our work highlighted the need for brands and marketers to think about assets that will resonate for an image-oriented generation.