The purpose is to brainstorm some key aspects of citizen journalism, including principles, techniques, tools, business models and more.
The conference will be in the ‘unconference’ format. That is, the audience will be the experts — no formal panels, but rather excellent moderators drawing out what we collectively know — and the idea is to learn from each other.
This should be another great opportunity for these two groups to meet, discuss, share ideas, form collaborations and help bridge the gap between community television, print, and the Internet.
Last week’s Boston Globe article mentioned podcasting efforts underway at Emerson College, but did not mention any public podcast subscriptions available through the school–only faculty and staff internal initatives, which is still great. As an incoming student in the fall, I was curious to know if any of these lectures were in fact available to the public.
A quick search on Google with the terms “Emerson College”+”Podcast”, yielded a few results:
“Emerson Experience“, located at the website of Undergraduate Admissions, is a “weekly showcase of the Emerson college community. Produced by the offices of Student Affairs at Emerson College.” - iTunes Music Store Description (link to podcast on iTunes)
JSONS (Journalism Online Students’ News Service) has a weekly podcast (link to feed address), “the week’s top JSONS stories on Emerson, Boston, New England and the nation.” - JSON’s podcasts
I’m sure there’s probably more, but this was great to see from a quick search. What would be even better, would be if the Emerson Experience and JSONS podcasts were located on a blog, as is the Fred Freddy podcast.
For the Emerson Experience, a blog could invite feedback from accepted undergrads to increase opportunities for online communication with the admissions department.
For the JSONS audio blog, while making the podcast available in iTunes, it could also provide an opportunity for students, teachers at Emerson, and anyone else around the world to participate in online conversations about content found in the podcast.
The reason I am so glad that AudioBerkman has moved to a blog, is that it finally allows for listeners to continue the conversation, from issues raised in the podcast, on the blog–increasing opportunities for further learning and access to knowledge.
Putting audio or a link to a podcast on a website is one thing, but creating an online space where conversations can continue with people interested in the content is essential. Particularly for producers, like myself, who can spend many hours creating podcasts. Instead of just ending up in an online archive, an audio or video blog with coursework or other learning material would allow for longer lasting opportunities for sharing ideas and learning.
I’m also interesting to know if there have been Emerson faculty who have created public course blogs?
Again, the main problem I had with the Globe Article, is it’s reinforcement of the damaging belief that students won’t show up if educators publish their lectures as a podcast. Quite frankly, this is crap. Teachers take attendance. If you miss a class, your grade will go down.
If you skipped a class to listen to the podcast, at least that’s better than skipping the class and not paying attention to the class at all. Furthermore, teachers also grade based on class participation. If you graded your class on course blog participation, this would be one aspect of participation that should be considered alongside in-class participation.
It’s frustrating to continue to see the newspapers play on fears (as they commonly do) to sell newspapers–specially when it comes to education and opportunities to use new media tools for learning.
Blogging and podcasting (and videoblogging) can provide important opportunities for students to participate in coursework. Going a step further, public course blogs could increase access to knowledge and help stimulate a culture of sharing, instead of a culture that locks down ideas and opportunities for learning. This would have been nice to see in the globe article, at least a mention of it.
On a lighter (and exciting) note: I also found Emerson’s Digital Media Group blog. It’s a little out of date, probably given the summer. But, it’s really great to see students at Emerson embracing Free Culture. I hope it continues in the fall.
A recurring theme I’ve noticed over the past year, has been the growing relationship between public access producers (those who produce for public access television) and citizen media folks (bloggers, podcasters, videobloggers, etc.) who are using media to tell stories about stuff happening in their communities.
At the ACM conference there were many great ideas for connecting access centers to web tools (particularly open source resources) for online production and distribution. The workshops were very successful.
Citizen journalism is on the rise with sites like iBrattleboro.com and many others. There are also some great efforts taking place here in Boston (more on this soon).
How can producers telling stories using public access centers connect with citizen journalism folks? This is beginning to happen independently of one another, but not in a comprehensive way with one another–that could be found, say on a single website that promotes this vision and recognition of the two working together. Perhaps a website like this this already exists?
For example:
(1) Community newspaper, (2) public access center offshoot website, or (3) online only website, forms online participatory website, encouraging submissions from residents in the community
Website reaches out to public access producers asking for short digital video submissions to increase user experience
Website is located on a blog where feedback is encouraged and stories–from both citizen journalists and public access producers–could be rated/voted on.
This is just one idea.
This seems to me to be key. These two worlds are naturally colliding. How can folks share resources and work together in collaborative media making processes to fill the void where traditional media is failing to tell the stories of local communities here in Boston and in other cities?
I’d like to see a website where these two camps–public access producers and citizen journalists–reach out to, and begin to work with, one another, to create a more robust online picture of events happening in local communities to increase civic engagement and participation.
This would also be an excellent opportunity to share resources, skills, and knowledge between the two groups, while hopefully benefiting offline communities at the same time.
I realize that many of my blogposts relate back to the Berkman Center. This is because much of what has gone on at the Berkman Center, since I started working there, is of great interest to me based on my background in media studies.
So much so, that I believe I will take many of the concepts I’ve learned, and have been able to participate in, with me into my graduate program at Emerson College.
Three related areas in particular, strike me as issues with which I might be able to focus my scholarly attention during the coming years:
1. The Role of Digital Media in Education
2. Citizen Media and Participatory Culture
3. Public Access and Community Media
The Role of Digital Media in Education
I am currently working on a podcast for AudioBerkman with my co-worker Amanda featuring the results of research conducted by William McGeveran and other members of the Digital Media Project team.
“(1) the ways in which digitization alters the use of content by teachers and scholars in their educational mission; (2) what obstacles (legal, technical, or institutional) prevent the full potential of digital learning; and (3) what reforms might improve the situation.”
Since beginning work on the podcast, I’ve been curious to know if there has been any attempts to build an online database of Creative Commons educational curricula available for educators for use in the classroom and also for use in sharing with other educators.
This seems to me to be a worthwhile endeavor considering the increasing difficulty for educators to create and share educational content on the web–which Bill McGeveran’s project looks at in great detail.
Citizen Media and Participatory Culture
While I have great admiration for mainstream journalists and their craft, I am also concerned about the role that the bottom-line plays in the ability for journalists to do their job–to help create and sustain an informed “democracy”.
It’s not news, that those with affluence, influence, and access take center stage in the headlines, shaping the debate in our mainstream media and society. This, coupled with the fact that fewer multinational corporation control more of the media which most people consume, has contributed to a culture of decreasing public debate, excluding many from having a seat at mainstream media’s table.
How often do we here about structural racism in the news? Or, about the impact that media consolidation has had on media ownership and localism?
The status quo does not cover the status quo. “Voices from the edge” on the internet, with new communication tools like blogging, podcasting, and videoblogging, are rising up to challenge mainstream dominated public opinion offering many new voices in the debate–challenging traditional media and their economic models.
It’s no surprise that Net Neutrality has taken center stage, threatening to stifle innovation, freedom of speech, and civic participation on the Internet. The “promise of the Internet” has created much debate. Many of the arguments I have agreed with.
But, it does not mean that we should allow politics and policy dictated by the powerful few, to overcome the possibility of a new communication medium that is slowly, but increasingly proving to be successful in providing a platform for those who have been and continue to be marginalized and shut out of the mainstream debate.
So, how can the role of Citizen Media continue to provide an outlet not just for those with access to the world wide web, but for those who have been economically and, as Andy Carvin points out, culturally denied access to relevant content on the web?
Global Voices continue to play a significant role in this area, through the communication and sharing of ideas and events “on the ground” around the world, redefining the definition of participatory culture and the world wide web.
Public Access and Community Media
As a Staff Assistant at the Berkman Center and a member of the Board at Cambridge Community Television, I have been fortunate to be at the center of two important worlds coming together for creative and innovative collaboration and future possibility.
Thanks to Charles Nesson, Harvard Law School and Berkman Center founder, a relationship has been established this year between CCTV and the Berkman Center. Recognizing CCTV’s embrace of new media technologies, the Berkman Center has reached our to CCTV and the two have come together with similar goals in mind to help create and share content on the web in new and innovative ways.
Two of the inagural projects have included CCTV’s coverage of the Berkman Center sponsored Beyond Broadcast conference and Charlie Nesson’s “At Charlie’s Table” series.
In my work as President of ACMEBoston, I am excited about the upcoming videoblogging workshops that ACMEBoston will participate in with members of the Boston Neighborhood Producer’s Group, “Boston’s first and only nonprofit advocacy group which was formed in response to the need for increased neighborhood representation and involvement in the public access television process.”
The purpose: to train public access producers in Boston to learn the tools, skills, and knowledge to share content produced for public access television on the world wide web. And as an advocacy organization for public access and community participation in media content production, BNPG members will gain the skills needed to share their mission and vision using the Internet as a tool to help accomplish these goals.
1. The Role of Digital Media in Education
2. Citizen Media and Participatory Culture
3. Public Access and Community Media
With these three areas outlined above, and also from my work as a podcaster for AudioBerkman, I am looking forward to focusing these interests during my graduate program at Emerson, with the help of collaboration and learning from faculty there.
Over the past year, I have been very fortunate through working at the Berkman Center to have been able to assist Dan Gillmor as a Fellow working on developing his Center for Citizen Media.
This week, two important contributions to the project have been submitted online both available for download.
In the inagural podcast, Lisa speaks with Nashvilleistalking.com’s chief listener, Brittney Gilbert on how traditional news outlets are embracing new communications technologies like blogging to connect with readers and create opportunities for citizen paricipation.
On Monday, August 7th, following Wikimania 2006, Dan Gillmor will be convening an “unconference” on citizen journalism.
Here are the details:
“On Monday, August 7, Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media, and his co-coordinators plan to bring about 100 people together to discuss citizen journalism. The purpose is to brainstorm some key aspects of citizen journalism, including principles, techniques, tools, business models and more.
The conference will be in the “unconference” format. That is, the audience will be the experts — no formal panels, but rather excellent moderators drawing out what we collectively know — and the idea is to learn from each other.
The gathering will take place at Harvard Law School’s Pound Hall, beginning at 9 a.m. and finishing at 4 p.m. We’ll also have birds-of-a-feather dinners in Cambridge, most likely hosted by several speakers, for those who want to stick around.
The event will either be free to attend or very, very inexpensive. More details, including signup instructions, will be posted on the Center for Citizen Media site in the next few days.” - Wikimania 2006
But after posting the original video, I wasn’t too sure about the compression I chose to use for the video using iMovie. Actually, I have never really been sure about which codecs to use for video . . . there are a lot of them.
So, I hopped on over to Freevlog and found some great tutorials that showed me how to compress my video for the web. I watched the one for iMovie. It helped a bunch!
Now I can edit the rest of my video from the ACM conference and post them on the ACMEBoston Video Blog.
