links for 2008-03-31
-
These cartograms show the world through the eyes of editors in 2007. Countries swell as they receive more media attention; others shrink as we forget them
« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »
March 2008
March 31, 2008
Political Tweets
There's a lot of talk about how social media might revitalise politics. And a lot of attempts by polticians to use social media to circumvent the press and broadcasters and reach the public direct. So I wasn't surprised to see 10 Downing St using Twitter to send out messages from their press office. But I was surprised to see them respond to questions via Twitter - it seems to be genuinely two-way. Good for them, I hope they manage to keep it up.
Unlike the US Presidential candidates for whom Twitter is a strictly one-way street.
March 30, 2008
links for 2008-03-30
-
Neil from the Media Re:Public conference says journalism needs to be palatable as well as serious.
-
Rebeccas Mckinnon on Tibet, Chinese attitudes and fitering the web
-
Penguin site - 6 authors tell 6 multimedia stories
-
Christian Payne photo/audio doc on Iraqi refugees
-
tracking photographic journalism sites
March 29, 2008
Media Re:Public 2
Some other observations from the day:
Paul Steiger, former Managing Editor at the Wall St Journal, has launched ProRepublica - an online investigative journalism site.
Lisa Williams from PlaceBlogger had uploaded her slides to Flickr and played them off the site. Some great observations:
"Problems are distorted and global; Media is consolidated and local"
"News organisations take things that are free and add value; Web organsiations take things that cost and make them free"
"Community is shared, lived experience; News is a tiny fraction of that lived experience"
And "Don't wait for Google to invade your newsroom - launch a counter-invasion. Join Google!"
Solana Larsen predicted there would be no Foreign Correspondents by 2013 - international events reported by those who live there. I agree the model of Foreign Correspondent is becoming rapidly outdated and needs re-inventing, not least to have authenticity with the subject which is lacking from many blow-dried parachute journalists.
Jonathan Krim of the Washington Post called for an end to "He Said, She Said" journalism in favour of declarative journalism where reporters say what they really know rather than ascribe it to others. I suggested that as long as journalism was evidence-led and transparent, reporters could already say anything they wanted. It's called objectivity (based on evidence or fact) as distinct from impartiality (absence of bias).
A great demonstration of Helium from Mark Ranalli - very interesting CitJo site. Peer based rating leads to true meritocracy in articles offered. They have 100,000 writers, and amassed a million articles in 15 months. Effectively they outsource the editorial process and allow peer review to ensure quality rises to the top.
They are also working with the Pulitzer Centre on supporting a number of projects designed to engage those who are currently un-engaged in issues. The most impressive seemed to be a multimedia project: Hope (living and loving with HIV in Jamaica)
Doc Searls also walked us through his VRM project and the RelButton which could redefine our relationship with vendors....
Media Re:Public
A really stimulating 24 hours at the Berkman-Annenberg conference on Journalism and the net.
Also being blogged by Ethan Zuckerman, David Weinberger, Charlie Beckett, David Cohn, and Martin Moore among others. This was a campfire gathering of some of those most engaged in the challenges of serious journalism and participation/collaboration.
Headlines for me.
Manuel Castells:
The link between power, democracy, communication and the media.
Power is asserted through the construction of meaning in people's minds - it is a relationship and democracy is the set of rules by which it develops. Communication delivers meaning - emotions are fundamental in the construction of meaning. (Examples, "War on Terror" the Green agenda, the way women think about their social role) Media is the battleground where politics is played out.
The rise of social media (self communication) has become a decisive instrument in society - but paradoxically it is owned by corporate media (eg MySpace). Corporate media has to commodotise Freedom of Expression or face being subverted. Social Media has the ability to overthrow governments (cf: Spain 2004). The amount of content is so huge that even if the high value/quality material is a very small proportion, it's still significant.
Need to focus on outcomes not Needs - does journalism have outcomes that make democracy better?
Journalism's social functions reflect time and place and evolve, affected by the way information is used, relations between journalism and government, journalism and the public. Should the goal be to produce highly informed elites or to move the masses? This has been a dilemma since the Founding Fathers (citing Hamilton v Jefferson) and is still reflected in bloggers denouncing media gatekeepers and the professional media citing the importance of their specialist skills.
Revolutionary fervour now in decline and we can recognise that social media and professional media can co-exist and support each other.
Many metaphors or frameworks for the web are too comfortable: "Ecosystem" suggests a natural balance where there is none, "Pro-Am" suggests money is key where really it's quality, "Info Flow" - news and journalism is about more than pure information.
He prefers "Abundance": We don;t know how to deal with an abundance of the good, control doesn't scale. "In an age of abundance of good the struggle is over metadata". We now have an abundance of metadata (where in old classification systems there was very little). This places more power in the hands of the reader, the public.
Metadata affects the mix of sugar and castor oil - how you tempt people to take the medecine, news that they might not choose but which an elite think is good for them. (Hammocking in TV) Those days have gone.
Showed his work in mapping blogs and their relationship to other media and the links between them all. It reveals unexpected concentrations and pockets of interest. His maps show a network structure around what people are doing and talking about online.
He's mapped a number of languages including the Iranian blogosphere - main clusters of interest: poetry, secular - expat reformists/ conservative-religious. Most Iranian blogs are visible in spite of the authorities blocking some.
Ethan took better notes:
His analysis shows that different types of media have different attention patterns: mainstream news stories tend to peak very quickly, while wikipedia articles are linked over very long periods of time. YouTube videos tend to peak as quickly as mainstream media, with a small exception for videos that truly go viral. Kelly believes it may be more common for videos to be put on YouTube by people attempting to set agendas in mainstream media - they seed YouTube, then point to it as a way of arguing that “the bloggers are talking about a story”, even though they’ve planted the story.
March 28, 2008
California Dreaming
Im in the Los Angeles sun for some business meetings - and also to attend "Media Re:public" a conference looking at the collision of journalism, social media and politics organised by the Berkman Center and the Annenberg School for Communication.
I was invited to give the opening address - which has been blogged by Ethan Zuckerman. and by David Weinberger.
Pictures on Flickr courtesy of Fabrice Florin of NewsTrust.
There's a full day of discussion tomorrow which I'll post about. It should be good, as delegates include, as well as Ethan, Dan Gillmor, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Solana Larsen, John Palfrey, John Bracken, Susan Mernit, Martin Moore, Neil McIntosh, Mark Jones, Charlie Beckett and one or two others of my regular RSS feeds.....
March 27, 2008
A Day in Our Life
Washington Post humourist spends 24 hours locked up with only the US news cycle for company. And survives.
March 25, 2008
links for 2008-03-25
-
How to be a successful blogger
March 23, 2008
The Way We Were
[Hat Tip Kristine Lowe among others]
March 21, 2008
links for 2008-03-21
-
David B with sound advice for fastening the seat belt as we - maybe - head towards harder times...
Subscribe:
The Music Blog
Categories
Journalism News
BBC News
![BBCi: Javascript is not available
on this browser](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/bsp/hi/services/htmlsyndication/img/synd_js_error_js-inactive.gif")
.
