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New CSM field report: How well did “Why Democracy?” collaboration work?
Posted by Greg Fitzpatrick on Aug 7, 2008 at 9:16 AM
In 2008, the Center for Social Media is producing a series of field reports analyzing innovative public media projects. This third installment in the series demonstrates the opportunities and challenges that come with engaging publics on a worldwide scale. “Why Democracy?” is an ambitious and ongoing international public broadcasting collaboration designed to spur a global conversation. The project was built around the coordinated broadcast of a core of 10 feature-length documentary films, each of which present views on democracy in various cultural and political contexts. Among these award-winning films is Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Darkside—the 2008 Oscar winner for Best Documentary.
Project planners envisioned the response to the films in part as an online discussion fostered through Web 2.0 tools, with social networking sites and user-generated content providing multiple methods for public participation. As the field report shows, though, these tools are not always the magic bullets that cash-strapped project organizers hope them to be. The impressive offline partnerships—which carried the project’s films to 180 countries through 40 broadcast partners and will contribute to future mobile screenings and public discussions—are not easily replicated in the still-nebulous online communication environment.
But public media makers may take some solace in knowing they’re not alone trying to navigate their way through this new world. Nowhere was this more evident than at the 2008 Congress of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) held last week in Stockholm, Sweden. I was there to present my analysis of the “Why Democracy?” project and quickly noticed the large number of papers on the agenda examining various aspects of online communication and media. Academic researchers around the globe are grappling with ways to make sense of how our online activities are changing our social and political interactions. From the potential for democracy in China to the realities of online participation in Norway and Brazil, the common theme suggests that online tools are greatly affected by, and largely reflect, the offline environment from which they originate.
The keynote speakers, Professor Annabelle Sreberny from the University of London and Professor Jan Nederveen Pieterse from the University of Illinois, addressed the IAMCR conference theme of “Media and Global Divides.” They echoed many of the concerns that bubbled to the surface of our own recent Beyond Broadcast conference. Prof. Sreberny noted that new media is increasingly being characterized around the world by blocks to access. With the video screen behind her cycling through images of a wide variety of maps, she warned of the political nature of maps that can only exist as metaphors and can’t fully represent the reality of a space. While we are at a unique vantage point to watch the production of new space for communication and interaction, we must remain mindful of the divisions within this space and how we understand them. Prof. Pieterse reminded attendees that new forms of media have no meaning in developing rural areas of the world and if we are to encourage real change, we must first dis-embed technology from capitalism. He pointed out technological change is inherently neutral and does not cause inequality, but the politics behind it can. He called for more civic diligence in challenging the free market rhetoric that has increasingly dominated politics and media.
Finally, former IAMCR President Cees Hamelink, suggested the element missing in the field of communication research is a focus on the future. He noted that most communication research studies the present and the past, since researchers “don’t get a lot of money for asking questions; [they] get a lot of money for answering them.” His entertaining and fascinating lecture started with the question, “Can my cat communicate with my robot?” and explored several futuristic communication models—from robot-to-robot and brain-to-brain, to cross-species and cross-mortality communication. It would take too much space here to explain each of these in detail, but the gist of his message was that “it’s time to remember the future.” It seems to me that’s exactly what the Center for Social Media is doing with its project to explore the Future of Public Media. Let’s hope the Center’s explorations of projects like “Why Democracy?” generate at least as many questions as answers.
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