MOG and Swiss TXT move together into a new era of mass journalism

Swiss TXT, a subsidiary of Swiss SRG SSR, and Tecnologie MOG have joined forces to lay the foundations for a new mass journalism based on the use of blockchain.

This partnership is the result of a successful collaboration in the Helios research project, sponsored and funded by the European Union.

The aim of the partnership is to further explore the technical and commercial potential of a revolutionary citizen journalism and social media exchange platform based on blockchain technology, as well as to test the potential of this platform for new business models and applications.

Within the scope of the project, MOG has developed a collaborative production platform, where anyone with a cell phone and without the need for additional installations, can use a browser to stream videos of live events in a wide variety of scenarios such as sports, news, music shows and cultural events, to name a few.

The platform allows citizens watching a live event to actively join the streaming ecosystem by capturing events with their own phones, and easily stream the recordings through the platform. Platform managers can then choose which recordings they want to use in the final broadcast or piece, and purchase them directly from the author.

The exchange platform accepts multiple simultaneous broadcasts and can be limited to a specific location or area radius (the event venue, for example), to better filter relevant broadcasts.

Within the platform, the manager can not only preview and switch between all live streams with virtually no latency, but can also clip and merge new highlights in real time, catalog them and send them directly to social networks.

The platform aims to give journalists greater control of their pieces with a broader library of live assets, while encouraging audiences to monetize their broadcasts through a digital marketplace.

Blockchain technology

Swiss TXT supports these live broadcasts with a mobile application called Citizen Journalist App. Thanks to blockchain technology, this app allows journalists to store videos and images decentrally in IPFS, work anonymously if necessary and be rewarded for their content in ether.

The app thus supports journalists in their mobile work and in distributing content on social networks. Via a decentralized web platform (DApp), contributions can be used for dissemination by private publishers.

MOG and Swiss TXT have been actively exploring the full potential of media sharing platforms like this over the past year, and intend to further test it at the upcoming Jungfrau-Marathon, which will take place in Switzerland in September 2021. There, the SWISS TXT platform will be tested live with MOG’s new live streaming function.