Sure, it’s definitely incentive enough - but its not the impetus for the phenomenon on a whole, not by a long shot. There’s an undeniable instinct to prove one’s very existence in the act of commiting something to permanence: “If I had an opinion, and no one was around to hear it, did I really have an opinion?” etc etc. I’m sure, in the realm of breaking news and “celebrity journalism”, that mainstream acknowledgment (compensation even!) plays a more significant role, but its not a singular cause… and, in the grand scheme of the vox populi represented via our fun new technologies, it’s an outlier at best.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s always been a feasible notion that by being the person closest to the proverbial car wreck, you should get attention too. People have been selling each other out to the press since forever. It’s just now easier with Twitter and the constant readiness of a camera—and easier for the press to identify you as a witness by making that sharing publicly available in real-time search. Who needs to call Page Six anymore? They’ll come to you. Read this bit from the TechCrunch post on Tearah Moore:
“Unsurprisingly, Moore’s coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative bullshit that was hitting the wires.”
Moore was aware that the Fort Hood incident was a breaking story getting a lot of press attention. She broke hospital rules and eschewed any common decency because she knew how easy it would be to have her speculations validated by the media. Sharing with her friends was a means to have them spread her information even further.
