How live video on Periscope helped 'get inside' the Syrian refugees story 

The negative side of coverage of the Syrian crisis has been dehumanising references to “swarms” of refugees, and an emphasis on numbers rather than people.
However, one journalist for German newspaper Bild has found a way to use his smartphone to help those people tell their stories direct to readers. Or rather viewers.
Paul Ronzheimer travelled with a group of Syrian refugees from the Greek island of Kos across Europe to their ultimate destination of Germany. Although he was filing copy as he went, he was also broadcasting live video using Twitter’s Periscope app.
“At the beginning I had about 1,500 followers, but now I have around 33,000. It became really big: one of the videos was played and replayed more than 90,000 times,” says Ronzheimer.
His broadcasts often focused on individual refugees, with several reappearing regularly to talk about their experience. Ronzheimer says that the unedited nature of the live broadcasts was an important factor.
“In Germany we have been having a big discussion about the intensity of media coverage of this story. But on Periscope, everybody could see it was live,” he says.
“It happened. No one was cutting it, no one was putting a two- or three-minute piece together after we filmed it. And for Germans, it was really good to understand the problems the refugees have been facing.”
He adds that he feels he was able to get “inside the story” in a way that would have been tougher with a camera crew. Indeed, at points in the journey, they would not have been allowed to film.
“Everybody has smartphones now, so with my small iPhone camera I was able to film without it being obvious that I was media,” he says – referring to border authorities, as the refugees he was travelling with were fully aware of his work.
Periscope’s features include the ability for viewers to comment during the broadcasts, which in this case often included questions that the refugees could answer live and unmediated.
“It was very interesting: a lot of the critical comments on Periscope came from the UK. ‘Why do they all have smartphones if they are refugees? Why are they wearing sunglasses?’ and so on,” says Ronzheimer.
“They could directly respond: ‘These are two-Euro sunglasses’ or ‘I need my smartphone to communicate with other refugees’. One even had to use his smartphone with GPS to navigate the boat to Kos with 30 people on it. So the most important thing for refugees is a smartphone, and he was able to explain that.”
Ronzheimer says that the majority of feedback was much more positive, including viewers asking how they could help the refugees, and offering recommendations for the countries they would be travelling through.

— Paul Ronzheimer (@ronzheimer) August 24, 2015

We made it to #hungary - will periscope soon from budapest. Thank you all for watching! @BILD pic.twitter.com/jJM2pHpfxs

One downside of Periscope for journalists is that videos can only be replayed for up to 24 hours after their live broadcast: follow any of the links tweeted out by Ronzheimer during the journey, and you’ll find the videos have been removed.
However, the app’s ability to save broadcasts to a smartphone was crucial here: Bild took the saved footage and turned it into a 16-minute documentary hosted on its website.
The footage also found its way into Bild’s print edition. “When the refugees came to the German border, I forgot to take pictures, because I switched on Periscope to capture the most important scene of the story: that emotional moment,” he says.
“So we only had this video and no photographs. But our print edition decided to print a screenshot of the Periscope video instead.”
Ronzheimer plans to use Periscope for more stories when it’s appropriate, based on the lessons learned during his journey with the Syrian refugees.
“It’s not enough simply to do camera shoots. You have to comment on what you see, and always explain why this story is important. And you have to interact a lot with the people, and answer questions and comments,” he says.
“For the refugee story, the personalisation is very important, I think. It’s not just showing lots of refugees walking on a road: you can ask them how they feel.”
Ronzheimer thinks that future news events will see more of the participants using apps like Periscope, as well as journalists. But he is excited about the potential for the latter.
“It’s a big time for young journalists willing to explore all these things, and just to do it. Not everything is perfect: at the beginning it can be frustration because you don’t have a lot of followers or comments,” he says.
“But for me, there has been such a revolution in the past five years: I am taking pictures on my smartphone, recording videos and now doing Periscope, and sometimes writing the text as well on my smartphone. You have to find the right balance, but this technology can be a new step in how we tell these stories.”