Media Re:public

How to improve the media in Eurasia? About 150 people from local and international media development NGOs working in former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as funders and others interested in the region have gathered in Paris to talk about their common problems. It’s a regional subsection of the Global Forum for Media Development. We’re winding up now with a fun training on creativity.

There have been some lively discussions about whether or not to work with governments, how to convince donors that media is important, what we’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t, the perennialy painful question of how to evaluate the success of media development. Today several of us discussed new tools and how they might help this work.

I tried to encourage my former colleagues to consider the work that is being done with various forms of participatory media to enhance their own work and the work of the traditional media they support. I tried to encourage them to look at projects that offer platforms for both citizen and professional reporting from their region, like Global Voices, Transitions Online, and Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Also some of the sites where stories from around the world are discussed, such as allvoices, ground report and topix. And briefly touched on examples like Everyblock, Public Insight Journalism

New media is a hard sell in this group. The countries they work in don’t have very high Internet penetration, there is lots of work to do with traditional media, most of the people in the media in these countries and the media support organizations are not of the digital native generation. I’m not at all sure I convinced anybody, probably only confused them. But perhaps the confusion will lead them to look at new media again.

Tags: GFMD, Eurasia, Media Development

Very excited and crackly voicemail Monday from my Internews colleague Jeanne Bourgault, who was attending the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas. Something along the lines of “Oh my God Persephone [inaudible] just gave the most amazing speech, he said he wasn’t going to give the speech they were supposed to do Q&A but then he gave it, it was unbelievable. They turned off the cameras but I’m sure you can find the video somewhere, it was worth the whole trip. Call me.” I’ve been to the NAB show many times and I was busy talking about the future of public media and so I thought great I’m glad Jeanne’s having a good time, learning some stuff, I’ll find out what she was talking about later.

Well of course the inaudible name was Tim Robbins who brilliantly skewered the commercial broadcast media in his keynote Monday. It is a classic right up there with the Colbert Press Club speech, an absolute must-read. The full text is at the Huffington Post, full audio at Broadcasting & Cable, and cellphone video at ar-d.com.

My favorite parts are in the hilarious first half:

“But what is the state of broadcasting today? Some critics have noted that there is a dangerous lack of diversity and opinion. That may be true, but imagine the nightmare of having to rectify that situation.

I propose a much simpler solution, which I’ve separated into three prongs, or a Satan’s trident if you will.

First, erase all diversity. Thankfully the majority of what is broadcast over television and radio is of two opinions and that feels good. That’s simple. But unfortunately there is a tiny minority out here on the airwaves expressing a different view outside of the Democrats and Republicans nexus trying to confuse us all. Can we please shut them up? How expensive could it be to buy Pacifica Radio? These people are driving us apart.

Secondly, let’s stay focused on Sex Scandals. Stop with the in depth reporting that gets outside of the sound bite. More sex scandals! Surely with a little more prying, a little more effort we can find more sexual deviants. And trust me, sexual deviancy is something we can all agree on. It’s deliciously intoxicating to watch unfold. It’s titillating….

Third, find more racially divisive news and play that constantly. As long as we hate each other we will never be bothered with this gnawing lefty obsession with information. Let’s make the purpose of the media salacious entertainment, not information….”

Beautiful.

At the end, of course, he felt compelled to use his celebrity superpowers for good and exhorted the broadcasters to discover their inner altruist:

“…You have the power to turn this country away from cynicism. You have the power to turn this nation away from the hatred and the divisive dialogue that has rendered such a corrosive affect on our body politic. You can lift us up into a more enlightened age. Or you can hide behind that old adage; “I’m just a businessman, I provide what the audience wants.” Well, I’m here to tell you that we don’t need to look at the car crash. We don’t need to live off of the pain and humiliation of the unfortunate. We don’t need to celebrate our pornographic obsession with celebrity culture. We are better than that….”

Sorry, Tim, but even our pornographic obsession with YOU is unlikely to make that dream come true.

tags: Tim Robbins, NAB, Las Vegas, celebrity, media criticism

Larry Lessig might actually dare to delete your offensive personal attacks (unless they’re against him). Good for him, I say.

Having been twice thwarted by technology (I’m sure it’s my fault, it usually is) from leaving a comment directly on the blog in response
to his apparent request for us to bless his new policy, here’s what I wanted to say:

I find this policy so reasonable that it’s weird to me that you feel the need to get permission to initiate it. Perhaps this is the result of spending time with the European media and FoE (Freedom of Expression) crowd who would see it as a normal measure against hate speech. They have been known to refer (lovingly, of course) to their US counterparts as “First Amendment Nazis.” I suppose some of their tolerance of intolerance has rubbed off on me, but I say delete those nasty personal attacks without a second thought!

Tags: Lessig, Freedom_of_Expression, Free_Speech, Comments, Hate_Speech

Catching up on my Global Voices reading, got to this disturbing reminder of the international stories that go quickly back to being local after the crisis fades. A blogger called Buddhist Warrior

publishes a statement from the All Burma Monks’ Alliance and the 88 Generation Students under the unambiguous title “The United Nations is a Failure“. Naturally this plea to the UN Secretary General was picked up by mainstream media everywhere, (if everywhere is India, Thailand and Norway, and Burmese-focussed media is mainstream).

1, 2, 3, 4, … , 2217 (Bagan, Myanmar),
originally uploaded by jmhullot.

A fascinating new report on the Persian language blogosphere has been released by my colleagues at the modestly named Internet & Democracy project. They’ve been working with Berkman collaborator John Kelly of Morningside Analytics who presented some of his work at the Media Re:public Forum last month (slides from that presentation will be up on the project site soon, he promises).

The research is also featured in Neil MacFarquhar’s piece in Sunday’s New York Times.

John Kelly’s pretty colored dots explain it all for you

Tags: Iran, Persian, Blogs, Berkman, Internet_&_Democracy, Morningside_Analytics

Most of us (present company so very much included) talk about how democracy could work better, Larry Lessig is doing something about it, join him Friday afternoon in Ames Courtroom, located on the second floor of Austin Hall, Harvard Law School Campus! If you can’t be there in person, watch the webcast.

Having other people document your conference for you: priceless

2008_03_27-28_mrforum_23

Originally uploaded by dsearls
Your insightful comments not there? Send them to us!
Tags: mediarepublic

The 140 journalists, bloggers, academics, nonprofits, and media executives who attended the Media Re:public forum at USC Annenberg March 27 and 28 have returned home, but their work goes on. Discussions about the engagement of “the people formerly known as the audience” with the work of professional journalists, the transformation of the profession of journalism to a high-tech profession, and which new web-authoring tools are most conducive to resisting the commodification of freedom will continue thanks to a remarkable new collaboration tool, forum organizers announced today.

2007_09_09_bos-iad-lhr090.JPG

Originally uploaded by dsearls
The ThoughtCloud group visualization software will allow participants to communicate with their fellow Media Re:publicans without regard for time zones, language, or volition. The Beta version of the open source ThoughtCloud application, developed by the Berkman Center in collaboration with dozens anonymous developers who volunteered their time while sitting at their desks at the world’s Internet giants, was installed wirelessly in the brains of all participants sitting in the auditorium with assistance from USC Annenberg technicians.

Using a dynamic list of keywords, the software scrapes participants’ brains for any thoughts related to participatory media, blogs, democracy, credibility, public media, advertising, social media and American Idol. Small electrical shocks will gently notify participants whose thoughts drift away from these topics for more than 48 consecutive hours. Preliminary results of this “mind-blowing” collaboration will be released at the May 15-16 Berkman @ 10 conference in Cambridge.

Tags: Mediarepublic, FOSS, ThoughtCloud, collaboration
April 1, 2008
Cambridge, MA

When the A/V guy here at USC remembers, we’ve been playing a 15-minute audio collage as people filter into the auditorium. It’s called

“We’ve Got Your Back, Ashley Dupré”

It was created for Media Re:public by Love and Radio author Nick van der Kolk and features the voices of John Henry Purcell, Nishima Chudasama, Ian Gray, Sharlene Leurig, and Tim Terway.

If you want to hear it, it’s now up on the Berkman’s site and also here. Enjoy!

Wouldn’t dream of competing with the experts. My colleagues David, Doc and Ethan (alpha order, just for David W) are blogging this forum at various velocities.

I’m busy trying to follow the twitter feeds, the IRC channel (#berkman on freenode) and the Question Tool.