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Who is doing social media training?
Posted by JD Lasica on Nov 17, 2008
A handful of us in the social media space are moving ahead with the idea of planning a series of Social Media Innovation Camps around the country. Two weeks ago Jessica Clark posed the question, Could “Social Media Innovation Camps” help power ground-up public media? We’re still at the stage of gauging reaction (positive so far) and garnering input on similar initiatives (sparse so far. So I thought I’d share what I’ve uncovered to date. The notion of increasing civic engagement through social media is not a new one, but it has taken on widely differing forms depending on which… more
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Where Hostile Governments Meet Public Media
Posted by Micael Bogar on Nov 14, 2008
How can public media develop in regions where governments are hostile to press freedoms? A look at emerging projects in the South Caucasus—a region of independent former Soviet countries linked both geographically and historically—offers some clues. We have created a list of five notable public media projects: Institute for Reporter’s Freedom and Safety, Caucasus Center of Peacemaking Initiatives, Internews, the South Caucasus blogosphere and lastly everyone’s favorite Facebook. Not quite initiated into the EU like the Baltic states, but not as far east as Borat’s Kazakhstan, the South Caucasus countries stand at the crossroads of capitalist western ideals and the… more
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Crowdsourcing the first 100 days
Posted by Jessica Clark on Nov 13, 2008
Now that the election’s finally over, all the energy that was poured into making social media for the campaigns is being redirected to citizen-driven agenda setting. Here are just a few current projects; expect this trend to escalate: The White House 2: Jim Gilliam of Brave New Films has struck out on his own to develop a site that allows citizens to “set the nation’s priorities.” Any U.S.citizen can join the site, suggest directions for the new administration, and endorse those submitted by others. Today’s top priority is “Invest in clean energy and create 5 million new green jobs.” ObamaCTO:… more
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Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Publication!
Posted by Micael Bogar on Nov 11, 2008
Here at the Center for Social Media, and in conjunction with the Program on Information, Justice and Intellectual Property, and the Media Education Lab, we are proud to announce our Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. Check out the article written by Jeff Young at the Chronicle for Higher Education and now you can get your very own copy here. Share it with any educators you know. This is a perfect tool to inspire and enable teachers and students to use copyrighted material in the classroom when it’s appropriate and necessary. more
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Vote on Every Human Has Rights Media Awards
Posted by Micael Bogar on Nov 10, 2008
Our friends at Internews have announced a great public media project titled Every Human Has Rights Media Awards, organized on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). They have asked the public to vote on the Public Prize. Internews explains here: Vote online to select the most eye-opening report, from a selection of 30 winning stories from journalists and bloggers around the world. The Public Prize will be awarded on 6 December 2008 in Paris, France during a ceremony supported by The Elders, the EHHR campaign for the 60th Anniversary of the UDHR.… more
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What do “white spaces” mean for public media?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Nov 10, 2008
Over the past week, media and consumer advocates have been trumpeting an FCC decision to make so-called “white spaces”—buffer zones in the communications spectrum between broadcast TV channels—available for providing wireless broadband access. The newly available spectrum is being called “WiFi on steroids.” It would allow for higher transmission speeds, and because the signal is stronger, could reach rural and mountainous regions that are poorly served by current broadband technologies. What’s more, the spectrum will be unlicensed—which means that many more broadband providers could enter the market, lowering consumer costs, offering us the promise of wireless access via a range… more
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Did These Mashups Use “Fair Use”? You Decide!
Posted by Claire Darby on Nov 7, 2008
For filmmakers working in the digital era, understanding how to use fair use to incorporate online video and other sources into your work is a critical skill. In AU Professor Larry Engel’s Advanced Documentary Technique class, ten grad students used the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video to try to create mashup videos that uphold the Fair Use principles. Take a look at the videos and decide how well (or not) they did! Post your comments and thoughts below. more
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So You Think You Can Be President?
Posted by Alison Hanold on Nov 4, 2008
This campaign season has been lively, intense, and the inspiration for a wide array of online video. We’ve spent nearly a year tracking political remix online, and showing how online video creators are exercising fair use of copyrighted material in order to create powerful and innovative commentary on the political landscape. The evolution of online video has become nationally relevant with this election season, and to commemorate election day, we have one last video to share. Jonathan McIntosh’s So You Think You Can Be President? This video cuts together the presidential debates with commentary from the judges of the Fox… more
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Should Online Video Look More like Wikipedia or TV?
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Nov 3, 2008
A clutch of people concerned with the future of online video, including Center director Pat Aufderheide, met at Yale on October 31 to talk about what it would take to make creating an online video look a little more like, say, creating a text document to share on the Internet. Turns out that online video faces serious challenges, if it’s to become a tool for participatory public media rather than just more TV. Most online video software and related programs (such as editing programs) have been developed by companies as proprietary products for specific purposes, rather than in the open-ended,… more
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Twitter Vote Report: Dynamic Public Media
Posted by Jessica Clark on Nov 3, 2008
After reporting on the surge in crowdsourced poll monitoring efforts, I decided to track the development of the Twitter Vote Report Project more closely in a piece in The American Prospect. The project, which invites voters to “tweet” about their voting experiences, has come together with remarkable speed. It’s also notable that public broadcasters have been key partners in building out the project. NPR staffers have been collaborating directly on Twitter Vote Report development. “We only have so many reporters who are able to tackle voting irregularities, and they’re going to be working like mad,” explained NPR Social Media Strategist… more
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Innovation in Focus: Diversity Beat Election Reports
Posted by Claire Darby on Oct 31, 2008
As this year’s election has heated up, so has attention to how related issues affect particular publics. Nowhere has this been more true than at Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT), where they have teamed up with National Native News (NNN) to offer special incentives to journalists to cover election issues in Indian Country. NAPT, the oldest of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Minority Consortia, is committed to developing, producing and distributing radio, television and online programming that is created for and by Native Americans. They also provide training opportunities to develop the skills of American Indians and Alaska Natives to… more
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A media horror story for Halloween!
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 31, 2008
An interesting but ultimately creepy exploration into where social media trends are leading us… more
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Could “Social Media Innovation Camps” help power ground-up public media?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 30, 2008
Earlier this week, JD Lasica of OurMedia posted a request on our blog for accounts of how media makers and technologists are being trained to produce public-minded social media. He asked because there’s a gap—while there are lots of national conferences where researchers and media makers trade best practices, there aren’t many ways for that information to trickle down to communities. So, we’ve been brainstorming a concept with Lasica and others: creating a series of traveling Social Media Innovation Camps—a nationwide series of educational bootcamps focused on increasing civic engagement through social media. The effort would be undergirded by an… more
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Activating the Archive
Posted by Barbara Abrash on Oct 30, 2008
Last week I visited Chimpanzee Productions for a sneak preview of an unprecedented experiment in marrying documentary filmmaking with multiplatform social networking. Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People is a 2-hour documentary film and multimedia outreach project, Inspired by Dr. Deborah Willis’ path-breaking book, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present (Norton, 2000), that reveals the ways in which African American photographers – known and unknown – have constructed representations of themselves and their social, political, and aesthetic worlds. In what filmmaker and president of Chimpanzee Productions, Thomas Allen… more
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Public Anthro Conference
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 29, 2008
On October 31st and November 1st at American University the Anthropology department is hosting the more
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Fair Use Question of the Month: Posting news clips on the internet
Posted by Claire Darby on Oct 28, 2008
QUESTION Dear CSM: In order to underline the importance a food safety issue, I’d like to highlight pertinent media coverage by posting tv news clips that cover the topic on our website. The source would have full credit and remain on our site only for 4-6 weeks - can this be done? Do I have to get permission from the tv stations? Thanks, Bronacos ANSWER Dear Bronacos: Context is everything in fair use. If you are repeating news in order to spread the news, you are re-using material for the same purpose that it was originally designed for. The owners,… more
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Civic media training
Posted by JD Lasica on Oct 24, 2008
Everybody is doing social media these days. But who’s doing social media training? More specifically, training sessions for public media—or if you will, public-spirited social media or civic media. Who’s holding workshops? What kind of information are you including that’s specific to the public interest, or civic action? Who are your primary target communities for these workshops? Please post your comments below, or email me at jdlasica[at]gmail[.]com. more
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Journalistic principles
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Oct 24, 2008
/www.american.edu/sis/” target=blank>American University’s School of International Service), was trying to imagine the entities that could issue and publicize standards; however, he said, the example of the Center for Social Media’s more
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Crowdsourcing poll-watching
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 23, 2008
As concerns about miscounted or undercounted votes have begun to swirl around, a number of groups are launching crowd-powered poll monitoring projects: On Twitter, Andy Carvin from NPR notes that he’s testing out a tag—#votereport—that Twitterers can use to report voting irregularities. (UPDATE: More information on this effort—which will include a map featuring real-time tweets re. voting problems—here.) Citizen journalism project The Uptake is planning to send reporters with live streaming camera phones to a number of battleground states to cover the polls for their Vote Chasers project. In this video they interview voters at crowded early voting sites in… more
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Campaign videos—fair use, not infringement
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Oct 20, 2008
Political campaigns have been busily clipping out snippets of news coverage and building them into campaign videos. And the TV networks have just as busily been sending demands to YouTube and other video sites to remove those videos as violation of copyright. Only problem: they’re not violations of copyright. They’re fully within the umbrella of fair use—the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment in some cases. Learn more at the /www.eff.org/files/filenode/ip_freespeech/letter+to+YouTube.pdf” target=blank”> letters to the networks and to Youtube suggesting that they recognize the law and even use resources such as the Center’s Code of Best Practices… more
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Talking Points Memo: from participatory to public media?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 20, 2008
A transcript of Joshua Micah Marshall’s keynote speech at the inaugural symposium of the Park Center for Independent Media offers some interesting clues about how open online platforms allow individual media producers to serve public media functions. Marshall started his blog, Talking Points Memo in 2000, during the Florida recount. At the time, he was the Washington editor of The American Prospect, a DC-based liberal magazine of opinion—a job he soon quit to freelance. The blog had a personal tone and a partisan bent, and started out very much as a one-man shop. But by 2004, Marshall had learned that… more
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Torturing Democracy postscript: WETA to air controversial documentary tonight
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 17, 2008
According to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, after the New York Times covered the controversy, officials at WETA announced late yesterday that they’d run the film today. Getler explains: Normally, programs that are approved by PBS are distributed to all affiliates as part of the National Programming Service. The Times story pointed out, however, that PBS officials said that no national air date was available for this program until Jan. 21, 2009, a day after a new administration is sworn in, and that the film’s producer, Sherry Jones, had rejected that offer. Jones, the Times reported, was appealing to individual stations… more
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Public broadcasting stations pick up the ball on Torturing Democracy
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 17, 2008
Last night, a number of public broadcast stations around the country began airing Torturing Democracy, a documentary exploring harsh interrogation of prisoners in U.S. custody. But Current notes that PBS has not responded to inquiries about why they refused to run the film nationally until after the current adminstration leaves office. The controversy broke on Tina Brown’s new meta-media site, The Daily Beast, where Scott Horton writes: No one who has seen this dramatic documentary is likely to buy into the “rotten apples” narrative any longer. Which may help explain why PBS appears to be suffering from acute corporate indigestion… more
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Open debates: linking copyright and the new public media
Posted by Jessica Clark on Oct 16, 2008
Last night’s tense exchange between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama marked the end of an extraordinary cycle of debates. The sheer number, combined with the unusual amount of public interest, forced organizers to innovate new forms and provide more openings for interaction. Now, a bipartisan coalition of newsmakers, media critics and bloggers are demanding permanent change to make the debates more “of the people,” in part by asking the networks to release debate footage into the public domain to be used for commentary and exchange on online platforms. In a letter to the candidates, the coalition proposed two… more
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Submit your film to the Media That Matters Film Festival!
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 10, 2008
Submit your film now for the chance to be one of the final twelve jury-selected films and become part of our outreach and distribution efforts to create social change through film. Following a New York City Premiere, Awards Ceremony and industry networking events in June 2009, your film will take part in the Media That Matters international, multi-platform campaign with DVD distribution, broadcasts, streaming and hundreds of screenings across the globe! We create accompanying discussion guides and screening materials to promote conversation and encourage educators, activists and organizations alike to Take Action around your film. All finalists will be awarded… more
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A Case of Selective Censorship
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 9, 2008
The recent pull of Saturday Night Lives’ Bailout skit has got us wondering — why did NBC choose to upload their popular Palin skits on several massive online video platforms (hulu.com, youtube.com) but in the same week, aggressively clean the web of this Bailout skit? Some have argued that this was done in fear that the Bailout skit would sharpen criticism of democrats and therefore hurt Barack Obama’s campaign. A closer look at the details offers the explanation of a potential law suit from “victims” of the bailout skit. The underlying issue for us at the Center, however, is the… more
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Wikipedia’s Town Hall on Sarah Palin Techn
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Oct 8, 2008
Some time ago, I argued that you could see Wikipedia as “the new town hall.” Wikipedia entries aren’t stable encyclopedia entries, even if they look like it; they are active, constantly morphing sites of public discussion about how to understand something. Others have made this point repeatedly, and probably Yochai Benkler has put the frame around the argument most authoritatively, in his Wealth of Networks. Now, take a look at the Sarah Palin entry on Wikipedia. Thanks to an analysis by Dan Cohen, the brilliant director of George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media, he shows 500 entries… more
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Blogosphere Blasts the Bailout Bill
Posted by Micael Bogar on Oct 3, 2008
So, it’s official, the House passed the bailout. It’s also official that the financial crisis has generated a groundswell of public media responses. These have ranged widely, from citizen initiatives to professionally produced tools from commercial outlets. According to Micah Siftry of the Personal Democracy Forum, the networked public sphere is rising and taking this bull by the horns. “Whatever happens with the bailout bill, I don’t think this genie can be stuffed back into the bottle. An old way of doing things is dying, and the new one being born isn’t quite in place yet,” he writes on an… more
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Fair Use Clip Discussion
Posted by Maura Ugarte on Sep 30, 2008
Over the course of three days, we are hosting a discussion on whether the clips posted below could be considered fair use of somebody else’s copyrighted material based on the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. This clip was pulled from Kartemquin’s In The Family, a documentary film about one woman’s journey after learning she has the gene associated with breast cancer. Watch for audio clips and a CNN segment about Myriad Genetics. You may want to look at The Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use for a code that is more tailored… more
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Fair Use Question of the Month: Do Cable and the Networks Even Accept Fair Use?
Posted by Claire Darby on Sep 30, 2008
QUESTION Dear CSM: If a filmmaker claims fair use for some material, what is the current state of affairs at the various broadcast/cable/satellite outfits on actually airing something with copyrighted material that has not been licensed? (i.e., can you actually get it on the air at PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, History Channel, etc.?) Thanks, Rick ANSWER Dear Rick: Can you actually get it on the air at PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, History Channel, etc.? There actually has been broad acceptance of the Statement of Best Practices for Fair Use in Documentary Film throughout the industry. PBS now uses… more
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Live from Main Street: Independent outlets band together to hone in on election issues
Posted by Jasmine Touton on Sep 29, 2008
Flip to a primetime news show or crack open a newspaper and chances are you’ll see a variation on the day’s news story surrounding the 2008 presidential election: Mr. Future President attends this church. Mr. Future President had that medical examination yesterday. Lipstick. But fifty independent media organizations and one popular radio host have banded together to shout over the ruckus of news media that have so little to say about so much, choosing instead to invite regular people onto the soap box to share their opinions about key issues. Host Laura Flanders, the personality behind GRITtv and author of… more
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Innovation in Focus: Link TV’s What Change Looks Like
Posted by Claire Darby on Sep 26, 2008
As the November 4th presidential election date nears, candidates on both sides have made a call for change their rallying cry. With gas prices going through the roof, the economy in turmoil and no end in sight for the war in Iraq, Americans and others from all over the world are clear that change is necessary, but less clear on how it will happen. What Change Looks Like, a new multi-media effort from Link TV, is examining people who are effecting change in their communities, revealing how they are implementing their ideas and how their actions will affect us all.… more
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Social Media Changes the Face of Debate
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 26, 2008
The presidential debates are coming! This year, they are sparking unprecedented forms of social media. Here at the CSM we’ve made a list of our top three social media debate initiatives. Check them out and get involved in one. 1. MYSPACE’s MYDEBATE: Just due to the sheer number of users (over 6,000 and counting) and beautiful design this takes the number one spot. This interactive program gets you prepped on the issues to be discussed, allows you to identify your favorite candidate and will have a live chat available during the debates for users to interact. 2. Debatepedia: This wiki,… more
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A Mosaic of Practices: Public Media and Participatory Culture
Posted by Claire Darby on Sep 23, 2008
Center Advisory board member Helen de Michiel has written a thoughtful meditation, in the latest Afterimage, from the viewpoint of a longstanding nonfiction filmmaker, on the possibilities of an ever-more participatory and interactive environment for her work. While finding it challenging, she also celebrates its opportunities: “Rather than feeling the panic of being caught in a riptide of change, nonfiction filmmakers have more to gain than ever before by working more deeply with collaborative and participatory models, and experimenting within th eprolieration of interactive, blurring, mobile and untamed places where media can now seep.” She heralds organizations such as Active… more
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Documentary Film + Direct Action = Social Media
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 17, 2008
What happens when you see a documentary film that moves you? Do you feel sad? Helpless? It is important to remember that social justice documentary films are a form of social media that require follow up to be fully effective. In order to take the leap from informed yet helpless spectator to empowered social media activist, it requires further investigation and action. At the Death House Door , one of the films chosen for our Human Rights Film Series , is a particularly poignant example of a way to take information from a film and act on it. At the… more
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Harry Potter and Fair Use
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Sep 14, 2008
Once upon a time, a man named Vander Ark was devoted to the world of Harry Potter. He created an online reference source, often quoting or paraphrasing directly from J.K. Rowling’s books; the source was widely appreciated, including by Rowling herself. Then he decided to publish it in book form. J.K. Rowling sued, and he defended himself with the copyright doctrine of fair use. And he lost. The judge found that he had taken too much of Rowling’s creative work. The decision went against a fair user, but it wasn’t a decision that was all bad for fair users. In… more
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Total Recut Video Remix Challange Winners Announced
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 12, 2008
We were happy to participate in the Total Recut Video Remix Challenge. Just recently the winners were announced. You can check out their impressive work at TotalRecut.com First place winner DJ Le Clown from France will receive a laptop for his remix ‘Xmas in New York City,’ embedded here. Second Place winner Jata Haan from the Netherlands will receive a digital camcorder for her remix, ‘Composition.’ Third Place winner Ricardo Carrion from Switzerland will receive a digital media player for his remix ‘Remix Culture II.’ Here’s what Total Recut Video had to say about the event: Those who submitted videos… more
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Knight Batten Awards for Innovation showcase public media innovators
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 12, 2008
On Wednesday July 10th at the National Press Club, in collaboration with J-Lab, the Knight Foundation presented eight awards for excellence in media innovation. Center for Social Media staffers were awed by the hard work, creativity and innovation of the winners. Wikiscanner, which won the top award of $10,000, was launched in 2007 and allows users to review edits made on Wikipedia. The information available on Wikiscanner is vast, but if you’re simply curious to check out the /wired.reddit.com/wikidgame/?s=top/”> “most salacious edits” you can do that. Wikiscanner users who find strange edits are encouraged to write an article about it… more
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Public Media Prototypes: The I-Witness Video Example
Posted by Claire Darby on Sep 10, 2008
The I-Witness Video Collective, which records police actions at demonstrations, has made some real impact with its citizen-surveillance work. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, video that I-Witness shot of the interactions between protesters and police directly led to charges being dropped against hundreds of activists who had been wrongfully arrested on the false testimony of police officers. But at this year’s Republican National Convention, their mission turned personal when the house where they were staying was surrounded and eventually raided by police, who handcuffed them and searched their belongings without a valid search warrant. Here at CSM we’ve been… more
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Remixing the RNC
Posted by Alison Hanold on Sep 8, 2008
In June Stephen Colbert viewed McCain’s delivery of a speech in front of a green screen as a request for mashup artists and remixers to “make McCain exciting.” (A green screen for those of you less tech- savvy is a mashup-makers dream come true, allowing artists to add a backdrop of nearly anything they can dream up, or rather “mash up.”) The result was a collection of funny, poignant, and often critical videos drawing attention to how out of touch McCain is with online culture. It is no surprise then that remixers have risen to the challenge of remixing the… more
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Are you a public media “game changer”?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Sep 8, 2008
Just one week is left to nominate yourself or your favorite public media project for the We Media Game Changers Awards, which “recognize people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media.” Winners will be recognized at the annual We Media conference, which takes place in Miami in late February.The conference has become an annual hub for innovators from different sectors to meet and share ideas about how media can make change, and has spawned an online community that matches media makers and entrepreneurs from different industries across a range of skills and interests. As… more
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Innovation in Focus: ITVS’ Digital Survey Report
Posted by Micael Bogar on Sep 2, 2008
New distribution technologies such as Snag Films and social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter could help social-issue filmmakers reach viewers and build networks of public action. But will they? And if they do, does anyone still need public broadcasting? According to a recent survey, the answers are yes, and yes. Independent Television Service (ITVS), public broadcasting’s production entity for “innovative programming for underserved audiences,” has for years reliably offered filmmakers market information that helps them adapt to a changing marketplace (sometimes in conjunction with the Center: go to the New Deal report and the New Deal 1.5 report).… more
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Center for Social Media and the University Film and Video Association Conference
Posted by Maura Ugarte on Sep 2, 2008
We had two great fair use events at UFVA’s conference in Colorado Springs this year. The Center’s Pat Aufderheide and Maura Ugarte presented on the panel Copyright, Fair Use, and Production Teaching: What You Need to Know. Pat discussed the new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, and Maura presented information on incorporating a fair use module in the classroom. The other panelists included Michael Donaldson of Donaldson and Hart, and Peter Decherney from the University of Pennsylvania. Michael discussed how the Statement of Best Practices changed his law practice, and Peter talked not only about… more
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Fair Use Question of the Month: Footage from a Video Game
Posted by Claire Darby on Sep 2, 2008
QUESTION Dear CSM: I am making a movie about massively multiplayer online role playing games (mmorpgs). The movie is an exploration and critique on their social and personal importance in today’s society. I have been trying to get permission from the game companies to use footage that I shot in the game (machinima). As of yet only one company has given me permission to use images from their game. The rest of the major game companies have not so much as answered a single one of my inquiries. So far we use a good amount of machinima from inside the… more
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Update: The Hurricane Information Center
Posted by Jessica Clark on Sep 2, 2008
Thankfully, Gustav has racheted down, but with more storms on the way, the extraordinary social media community that emerged over the long weekend to provide information to storm victims and volunteers has expanded its focus. Now dubbed the Hurricane Information Center, the network currently has more than 540 members, all creating and debating communications tools for disaster response. The network demonstrates the power and flexibility of using commercial Web 2.0 platforms for the public good. Built using Ning—a “white label” site for creating free customized social networks—the site includes a tailored news feed from Google News, a Google Map displaying… more
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Gustav Wiki: rapid-response social media for natural disasters
Posted by Jessica Clark on Aug 31, 2008
Finding it excruciating to watch Gustav creep ever-closer to the Gulf? Channel your anxiety into knowledge and action over at the Gustav Wiki, where volunteers are tracking the storm and aggregating resources for assistance, relocation, donations, volunteer housing, ham radio communications and more. The wiki was based on a similar shared resource built during Hurricane Katrina; volunteers are needed to help update info. While the Wiki hosts static content, real-time online discussions are happening over at the Gustav Information Center, a social network created by NPR’s Andy Carvin. Members are sharing strategies for tracking the situation on the ground, and… more
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NPR API: Open-Sourcing Syndication?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Aug 28, 2008
In late July, NPR took an unprecedented leap into open-source development by releasing its application programming interface (API), which enables users to create applications featuring content from an archive of NPR programs dating back to 1995. This move makes it much easier for NPR content to migrate across platforms—featured widgets based on the API include players for iPhones, Facebook, and Google’s Desktop Sidebar. It also offers developers the chance to search and display targeted NPR stories on their own sites through various widget-based interfaces. NPR is among a crop of news organizations—including Reuters and the New York Times—that are exchanging… more
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A Peek Under the Hood of the NPR API
Posted by John Tynan on Aug 28, 2008
Public broadcasting is in a moment of experimentation, moving beyond traditional broadcast platforms and structures and trying to reach publics where they live and work, through issues that they care about. Large structural innovations—like the release of the NPR application programming interface (API) in late July—are combining with experimentation by stations, staffers and audiences to create new uses for public media content. An open API is a wonderful thing for making content public: it provides a simple way to query an online database and extract things from it for display. An open API allows anyone to access, reuse, and “mash… more
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“Let’s Go Crazy” lawsuit results in fair use victory
Posted by Alison Hanold on Aug 27, 2008
In the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video,a team of legal experts and media scholars judged the incidental use of copyrighted material to be an eligible form of fair use. It seems that the courts agree. In a recent lawsuit filed by Universal Music against a woman who posted a video of her child running around her house while the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” played in the background, a federal judge ruled that copyright owners should consider fair use before filing any copyright infringement complaints. Below is more from Wired.com: The 10-page decision (.pdf) came… more
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A New Look for the Website
Posted by Claire Darby on Aug 25, 2008
You might have noticed that our website is looking a little bit different these days. In the next few months, we will be conducting a major re-evaluation and re-design of the website, but in the meantime, we’ll be making some small tweaks to the current layout and design. Please forgive the small shifts and changes, and we hope you’ll share with us your thoughts (in the comment section below) about how we can make the new site even more innovative, exciting and interesting! more
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Fair Use Muscle-Flexing in Academia, over Kids’ Fashion Ads
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Aug 20, 2008
Colleague Chris Boulton, a student of the moral implications of popular culture, is also a warrior for the copyright rights of new creators. He’s among the supporters of the SPARC Author Addendum; created by Creative Commons and SPARC, it’s a clause attached to the license academics sign with any publishing house that allows the authors to retain certain key rights (rights usually denied by publishers) and ensure a broader distribution of their work. Whereas usually these publishers are absolutely rigid, Chris and his fellow authors report that they just got the publisher of an academic journal to agree to the… more
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Snag Films Creates Broader Audience for Documentaries
Posted by Claire Darby on Aug 20, 2008
Documentary filmmaking has never been for the faint of heart. After a struggle to find funding to get your film made, countless hours of research and filming, and the painstaking process of editing your film to say exactly what you want, you still have yet to guarantee that anyone will ever see it. And with fewer documentary films successfully finding theatrical release, finding an audience for your film has never been tougher. Until now. Newly launched website Snag Films brings film distribution to the virtual realm and creates a world-wide audience for the documentary films it features. How it works… more
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Pubcasters and community engagement
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Aug 18, 2008
Whether you’re in public broadcasting or not, it’s worth it to take a look at the just-posted remarks of National Center for Outreach director Maria Alvarez Stroud on trends in community engagement (made at the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference), are fascinating. She takes note of several hot trends, including corporate social responsibility, and says, “One of public broadcasting’s greatest assets is our foundation of rich and varied relationships with citizens. While corporations may be seizing community engagement as an opportunity to sell, it is our job after all is to keep it real, to keep it focused on… more
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DRP beta tests environmental public media for developing countries
Posted by Jasmine Touton on Aug 12, 2008
Newsflash: Swedish-based CleanCook designs a stove that burns on ethanol from molasses instead of gas. Scientists create an enzyme spray to harden a dirt road, eliminating the need for asphalt. Kids can now swing and spin on merry-go-rounds, generating enough power for an entire village. Sound like good news? All of these environmental successes are happening right now. A new project by Developing Radio Partners (DRP) hopes to bring citizens of developing countries this “news-you-can-use” via FM radio in order to improve quality of living and efficiency of resources. DRP is a nonprofit that seeks to better communities by helping… more
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New CSM field report: How well did “Why Democracy?” collaboration work?
Posted by Greg Fitzpatrick on Aug 7, 2008
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… more
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Fair Use Question of the Month: Using Quotations
Posted by Claire Darby on Aug 3, 2008
QUESTION Dear CSM: We are currently putting together our first documentary. We have been very careful to get releases for interviews we have conducted and from people and locations we have filmed at. We have reviewed your website in this process and it has been very useful. We do have a question, however. We would like to make use of some text quotations in the course of the documentary. In most cases these are no more than one sentence. Many have been found on internet quotation sites - some are from sources that were written long ago and others are… more
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Innovation in Focus: PBS Vote 2008
Posted by Claire Darby on Aug 3, 2008
In one of the longest and most highly-anticipated build-ups to a presidential election in years, PBS has launched a website that aggregates and highlights the best public media coverage of the 2008 election. By gathering video, news, and online tools from national programs and local stations, PBS Vote 2008 can bring in-depth election-related content from PBS’ trusted news and public affairs producers to light in a new way. Drawing on a variety of news stories, video, online tools and user comments from public television and public radio sites across the nation, Vote 2008 is a collection of everything election-related that… more
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The “commentocracy” and the public
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jul 25, 2008
Reading an interesting piece on Politico about the struggles and successes that bloggers and online publications are having with their discussion boards. Reporter Daniel Libit writes: Across the Web, political sites (along with those dedicated to other mainstream distractions like music, culture and sports) are accumulating such a mass of reader responses that it is changing the very nature of the online exchange. Unique commenting communities, cultures and hierarchies have formed at various sites, distinguished from one another by the province’s ideology, protocol and professionalism. Web sites ranging from the smallest of blogs straight through to The New York Times… more
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Beyond Broadcast: ripples in the pond
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jul 18, 2008
It’s been a month since Beyond Broadcast, and lots of positive feedback has been filtering in, both from public broadcasters and from cutting-edge makers of media for public knowledge and action. Current, which reports on the pubcasting industry, ran a long and thoughtful feature on the event. As the story notes, keynote speaker Larry Irving made a splash with his remarks on policy, diversity and innovation. We’ve since received requests for copies of Irving’s remarks to distribute within public broadcasting organizations. The research that Diane Mermigas conducted on public media business models for Beyond Broadcast has also made waves; Interim… more
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Political Remixers and Fair Use Best Practices
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jul 10, 2008
I just had an invigorating talk with amazing New York remix artist Jonathan McIntosh, who is rapidly circulating the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video to fellow artists. (He was in Chicago working with high school kids at Mindy Faber’s Fair Use Remix Institute, who were the first–ever group to put the Code to use. I also got to speak with them, via Skype.) Jonathan, who curated a section on political remixes for the DIY conference, believes that political remixers badly need the Code of Best Practices, because they want their work to circulate widely as… more
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Announcing the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
Posted by Alison Hanold on Jul 7, 2008
Remixes, mashups, fan tributes and other creative work burgeoning in online video often use copyrighted material without permission or payment. When is it fair to do so? In many cases, creators can employ fair use, a key feature of copyright law. Today marks the release of the Center’s newest publication, the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Our latest effort in promoting fair use practices among media makers, the code focuses on the still-evolving world of online video, and will help to protect creators from automatic censorship that results from copyright filtering. The Code of Best… more
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Relive Beyond Broadcast with our Multimedia Rapporteur’s Report
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jul 5, 2008
Couldn’t make it to DC on June 17? Not to worry: the Beyond Broadcast ‘08 Rapporteur’s Report offers the high points from the day, plus audio and video of both speakers and multimedia presentations. Don’t miss it! more
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Fair Use Question of the Month: Incidental Use
Posted by Claire Darby on Jul 3, 2008
QUESTION: Dear CSM: I’m editing a documentary about an aspiring young football player. An interview occurs in a hotel room, where he happens to be watching an NFL game on broadcast TV. In referencing the Documentary Filmmaker’s Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use—in particular the section about capturing copyrighted media in the process of filming something else and the section on when the captured content doesn’t constitute the scene’s primary focus of interest—I feel comfortable that when the TV and the game appear in the background, it’s fair use. But when the filmmaker captured close-up material of the copyrighted… more
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Public engagement and documentary at Silverdocs
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jul 2, 2008
Every year, there’s more to learn than you can absorb at Silverdocs, between the conference, which is organized by Diana Ingraham of US Independents, and the superb curating, by Sky Sitney. One of my conference faves was the workshop that Dennis Palmieri from Independent Television Service (ITVS) ran about outreach strategies. He linked goals (start a conversation, see action, change the world) with strategies, tactics and types of partners. If you didn’t make it, his Powerpoint is here. Also, over on the moviegoing side of the festival, my personal favorite won the top prize, the Sterling US Feature award. Scott… more
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Public TV’s Future at Silverdocs
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Jul 1, 2008
Will public TV survive into an era when everyone is a digital native? That was the question of the day at a panel I chaired at the conference the Silverdocs film festival (aka SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival) hosts every year. Answer? Probably, with some work. PBS’s John Boland believes PBS is not only ready but in the forefront of change, with in-place deals for iTunes and other digital distribution for independent work. The Center for Asian American Media’s Steve Gong believes that public broadcasting’s so-called “minority consortia”—representing five federally-designated ethnic categories—are becoming essential interfaces to America’s emerging “majority minority”… more
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Keynote remarks from Beyond Broadcast
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jun 30, 2008
Widely credited with coining the term “the digital divide,” telecommunications consultant Larry Irving formerly served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information under the Clinton administration. In his remarks at the June 17, 2008 Beyond Broadcast conference, he urged public broadcasters and their allies to craft a clear policy agenda for the next administration that reflects both technological and demographic shifts. He suggested that “new media” has now become simply “media,” and that public media makers will need to adjust quickly while maintaining a commitment to serving a diverse array of Americans through high-quality noncommercial productions. Read more… more
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Stephen Colbert makes McCain exciting with fair use
Posted by Alison Hanold on Jun 27, 2008
On June 3, 2008, the day that Barack Obama became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic party, Republican presidential candidate John McCain gave a speech to a small group of followers in front of a green screen. The next day, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert declared this a challenge from McCain to edit the images on that green screen in order to “make him seem interesting.” Practically a national call to expand fair use. Colbert’s challenge sparked a quickly growing and often outstandingly creative meme, known as the “Make McCain Exciting” project. This meme offers a strong argument for fair… more
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Beyond Broadcast: Keynote Address: Larry Irving
Posted by Kate Schuler on Jun 17, 2008
“Move from a mentality of broadcasting, move to a mentality of media,” Larry Irving, President of the Irving Information Group, urged participants at Beyond Broadcast’s closing keynote address. As part of this transition, Irving made a case for public broadcasters to avoid commercial alliances and appeal to a broader demographic. “When I read about [PBS adding content to] Hulu.com, I read it with dread,” he said. “Generally people have an agenda when they give you money. It is a very slippery slope,” Irving said. “If we start letting commercial dictates get in front, we’re going to have a problem as… more
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Beyond Broadcast: Mapping the Money
Posted by Kate Schuler on Jun 17, 2008
As participatory media and user-generated content continues to grow, public media broadcasters need to move rapidly to find ways to monetize content and imagine new business models, panelists said at Beyond Broadcast’s afternoon session “Mapping the Money.” Diane Mermigas, Editor-at-Large, Media Post, said that public broadcasting and commercial media are all faced with the same issues and that public media must begin to take action. This might mean making moves such as putting content up on a major online clearinghouse site as PBS has just done with some of its content on Hulu.com –feeds that are bookended by 30-second commercials.… more
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Beyond Broadcast: Visualizing Public Media Futures
Posted by Kate Schuler on Jun 17, 2008
As the role of traditional news aggregators changes as technology emerges to allow ever-increasing numbers of people and communities to create their own media, Calvin Sims, Program Officer at the Ford Foundation and moderator of this morning’s panel “Visualizing Public Media Futures,” began the discussion by asking “Who will curate this new space?” Dennis Haarsager, Interim CEO at NPR, said that as more people create content, the goals and mission of traditional media outlets are changing. “We’re trying to envision a world in which everyone can be a producer, but thinking about how to visualize this new world can be… more
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Beyond Broadcast: Maps as Public Media
Posted by Kate Schuler on Jun 17, 2008
While traditional maps have often been a tool of colonialism and top-town government, maps are becoming a form of public media and a democratic tool, noted Future of Public Media Project Director Jessica Clark. With the emergence of free and open source tools that make mapping and visualization much easier, maps are a “rising and vibrant form of participatory media,” she said. The panel’s moderator, Jacquie Jones, President and CEO of the National Black Programming Consortium pointed out that maps are being used far beyond their traditional geographic purpose and that map interfaces now encompass social networks, media maps, and… more
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Recut at the NCMR
Posted by Alison Hanold on Jun 13, 2008
I had the great pleasure of presenting at the National Conference for Media Reform this past weekend, on a panel called “Copyright Wars: Will Filtering Censor Free Speech and Kill Net Neutrality?” Joining me on this panel were Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge, Robert Millis of Hudson Street Media, and Elizabeth Stark of the MIT Free Culture Group. We discussed the effects of filtering video for copyright infringements on the evolution of online video, and how net neutrality can protect its future. This culture of online video is explored in Recut, Reframe, Recycle, which demonstrates how new culture grows from… more
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Creating Public Media in Second Life: Virtual Bali
Posted by Kate Schuler on Jun 13, 2008
We’re excited to present the second in a series of field reports produced by the Center for Social Media as part of the Future of Public Media project, funded by the Ford Foundation. These reports examine innovative media projects designed to foster public knowledge and action. Virtual worlds such as Second Life are proliferating online, attracting millions of users and creating new spaces for creative public media experiments. Innovative non-profits have begun to establish a presence in these alternate worlds, hoping to build community and engage visitors in much more personal and visceral ways than websites, blogs, and discussion boards… more
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Community Media Hub: Community and Ethnic Media on the Map
Posted by Ann Williams on Jun 13, 2008
Beyond Broadcast’s stellar line-up of participatory public media demonstrations will include a community media hub – a showcase of community, independent and ethnic media maps, resources and interactive experiments. Many maps of community media are straightforward in that they primarily show where community media stations, makers or organizations are located. Mapping Access, an online directory of over 200 cable access television stations in 28 states, uses a Google map to help users quickly find the location, contact and affiliation information for their local PEG (public, educational, government) station. Prometheus Radio is a non-profit organization that seeks to build a strong… more
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Participatory Public Media: Mapping the Money
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jun 13, 2008
How can public media makers and outlets support themselves in an era of free access and user-generated content? This is the question that Diane Mermigas, editor at large of Mediapost, tackles for us in “Mapping the Money in Public Media.” Mermigas, who will be leading our final conversation at Beyond Broadcast, suggests that public media makers have plenty of opportunities if they can change their mindset. “Public media can build community where commercial media manipulates consumers,” she notes. “As such, digital interactivity can be a catalyst to reshape public broadcasting, create new forms of public media and develop new methods… more
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Mapping Global News: The end of “foreign” bureaus?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jun 12, 2008
One of the signature roles that public media projects can play is to compensate for cuts in international news coverage by commercial journalism outlets. As noted on the Beyond Broadcast site, PRI President and CEO Aliza Miller uses maps to effectively demonstrate the paucity of global coverage in TV news: Distortions in coverage aren’t limited to the U.S., however. Check out these comparative coverage maps, a joint project of the Online Journalism Blog and L’Observatoire des Medias: So, how can readers interested in a more balanced picture of global events overcome such limitations? One answer is to pull together streams… more
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Find your place on the map at Beyond Broadcast 2008
Posted by Bree Bowman on Jun 12, 2008
With less than a week to go before the 2008 Beyond Broadcast conference, we’re looking forward to a fantastic line-up of public media leaders and innovators, offering the chance to learn about the latest emerging practices and technologies in media for public knowledge and action. As platforms becomes increasingly mobile and personalized, how will publics communicate around shared issues? Join us for panels, demos, and conversations with experts and leaders in the field, including: Dennis Haarsager, Interim CEO, NPR Jacquie Jones, President and CEO, National Black Programming Consortium Katrin Verclas, Co-Founder and Editor, MobileActive Paula Le Dieu, Director of Open… more
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CSM at the NCMR
Posted by Jessica Clark on Jun 7, 2008
If you’re in Minneapolis—or following the National Conference for Media Reform online—don’t miss us! This afternoon, CSM Projects Coordinator Alison Hanold will be discussing Recut, Reframe, Recycle as part of a panel called “Copyright Wars: Will Filtering Censor Free Speech and Kill Net Neutrality?” Tomorrow, I’ll be unpacking our FAQ at a panel called “New Directions in Public Media.” It’s impossible to keep up with all of the interesting panels at NCMR, but I’m doing my best! Follow my live tweets from sessions and speeches at http://twitter.com/beyondbroadcast more
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Major Victory for Fair Use!
Posted by Maura Ugarte on Jun 5, 2008
In a recent ruling, judge Sidney Stein stated that the filmmakers of Expelled, a film supporting intelligent design, were likely to win a fair use claim if Yoko Ono persued her suit against them. The filmmakers used a 15 second clip of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” to make a statement on religion in our culture—read the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog entry on the subject: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/06/02/yoko-onos-injunction-request-denied-in-federal-expelled-case/?mod=googlenews_wsj Also, here’s AJ Schnack’s concise summary: http://edendale.typepad.com/weblog/2008/06/expelled-fights.html more
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Innovation in Focus - Public Interactive’s Public Action
Posted by Bree Bowman on Jun 2, 2008
For public broadcasting stations, “[c]ommunity engagement is part of [the] mission statement,” notes Chad Johnson, web producer at Salt Lake City’s KUER. Public Interactive’s new online community engagement tool, Public Action, is “a strong online tool that is helping us to fulfill [that] mission,” making it easier than ever for public broadcasting stations and producers to integrate participatory platforms on their own websites. Stations can use existing content as a basis for forming interactive communities that allow members to contribute their own original content and open dialogue on important issues that can inform future programming. After only one year since… more
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Fair Use Question on Using Clips in Public Radio
Posted by Maura Ugarte on May 30, 2008
QUESTION: Dear CSM, I’m a reporter for public radio. Is it “fair use” to use a short clip from a TV show or film in order to make a point in a given story, even if I’m not commenting directly on the clip? If so, what is the maximum amount of material I am allowed to use of a given TV show or film. My understand is that if 10% or less of the story is devoted to that material, it’s “fair use.” Is that true? Thanks, -Sean ANSWER: There is no “10 per cent rule,” unfortunately. The question always… more
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CSM at ICA: Remapping Public Media Research
Posted by Jessica Clark on May 29, 2008
Each week (or so) for the past few months, I’ve been posting media maps in anticipation of the June 17 Beyond Broadcast conference. These maps have explored influential web sites, international censorship, media consolidation, online impact, new journalistic forms and more. On each map, I’ve tried to locate public media as we define it in our Future of Public Media FAQ. As new forms of media emerge, researchers need fresh theories and approaches to make sense of them. Maps provide one interpretative lens, revealing perspectives, locations, values, networks and stakeholders. Of course, there are are many other ways to examine… more
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Public Media in Brazil: Taxpayer Incentives Work
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on May 29, 2008
At the International Communication Association meeting in Montreal in May, Brazilian communications scholar and activist Luiz Fernando Santoro talked about the challenges of expanding public media in Brazil. The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the cultural ministry of musician Gilberto Gil have vastly expanded the ability of ordinary Brazilians to get and make media for public knowledge and action. One pretty simple resort: “Cultural Hotspots” (Pontos de Cultura). These are smallish grants (c. $100,000 a year) to organizations that propose some kind of cultural activity. A community radio station, a youth center, or a community computing center… more
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Indians with Cameras
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on May 28, 2008
The retrospective this month of the Video in the Villages project at the National Museum of the American Indian was an extraordinary demonstration of the power of grassroots storytelling. The project, founded by Brazilian activist Vincent Carelli and Corrêa, has shared the realities of lowlands Amazonian cultures for more than two decades. In the last few years, partly as a result of Carelli’s partnership with Mari Corrêa, tribal storytellers have made ever more complex, sophisticated work. Corrêa brought into the partnership her experience with the French Ateliers Varan, a grassroots storytelling workshop founded by legendary anthropologist Jean Rouch. One good… more
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Spanish-language news: Doing well, doing good
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on May 28, 2008
Can commercial platforms provide media for public knowledge and action? Take a look, says journalist Joe Mathews, currently a New America Foundation fellow, at Latino broadcast news. He’s been comparing news offered by Univision and Telemundo in California with network affiliates, and Spanish speaking viewers are winning. They get longer, more deeply reported issues on important local issues than ABC, NBC and CBS stations’ local news offers. And the most-watched station (Univision’s KMEX) far outpaces any English-language news program for ratings. Mathews’ observations come as no surprise to those who have been following New American Media, a syndication of U.S.… more
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YouTomb draws attention to YouTube copyright takedowns
Posted by Alison Hanold on May 21, 2008
In an effort to explore the nature of fair use violations on the web, MIT Free Culture, a student organization at MIT, has created YouTomb, a website the regularly scans YouTube and posts information (but not the videos themselves) about clips that are taken down due to “copyright infringement.” MIT Free Culture claims that the website was created to “shed light on YouTube’s practices, to educate the general public on the relevant copyright issues, and to provide helpful resources to users who have had their videos wrongfully taken down.” In addition to the name and a thumbnail of the videos,… more
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Visions of the New News
Posted by Jessica Clark on May 16, 2008
We all know that the news terrain is changing—the question is, how can we imagine its shifts? Below you’ll find a number of different efforts to visualize new relationships between news makers and consumers, reporters and sources, community builders and members, and more. We bring you these sketches as part of our evolving Atlas of Media Maps, which leads up to the June 17 Beyond Broadcast conference. Don’t miss out the chance to challenge your own mental maps; join us! The media world as we knew it: Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine offers a simple diagram of the old news relationship:… more
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Mapping User-Generated Media Part II: Location, Location, Location
Posted by Jessica Clark on May 10, 2008
Here’s the latest in a series of media maps we’re featuring in the run up to the June 17 conference, Beyond Broadcast: Mapping Public Media: Linking to more than 700 sites, this map from the Knight Citizen News Network demonstrates the boom in user-generated online community news. From mtpolitics.net (“Conservative views on the goings-on in Montana”), to Blog San Diego (“Music, art and politics from California”), to MyMaineToday (a network of 470 town blogs that encourages residents to post news, events and photos), the sites mingle the personal and the public in ways that might make traditional newspaper editors wince.… more
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UGC uses Hollywood archetypes to support Obama
Posted by Alison Hanold on May 5, 2008
This election season has seen a surge of commentary from the User Generated Content community, and Obama supporters have taken to comparing him to Hollywood hero archetypes. Below are some great examples of pieces that rely on the principles of fair use for their commentary in the political sphere. Here is a video titled “The Empire Strikes Baracky.” This video likens Obama to Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo, and positions Hillary Clinton as what is often considered to be the most evil character in film history, Darth Vader. The video attempts to draw a comparison in the story lines in… more
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Crowdsourcing censorship
Posted by Jessica Clark on May 3, 2008
Annalee Newitz—tech reporter and editor of a hot new sci-fi blog io9—has an interesting column up on AlterNet titled User-Generated Censorship. She writes: Here’s how it works: let’s say you’re a community activist who has some pretty vehement opinions about your city government. You go to Blogger.com, which is owned by Google, and create a free blog called Why the Municipal Government in Crappy City Sucks. Of course, a bunch of people in Crappy City disagree with you — and maybe even hate you personally. So instead of making mean comments on your blog, they decide to shut it down.… more
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Fair Use Question About Using Book Covers and Newspapers
Posted by Michael T. Miller on May 1, 2008
QUESTION: Dear CSM, my little documentary that I’m producing — which of course I hope will be a big documentary — is using a montage of several book jackets to illustrate the fact that science and spirituality are becoming more related than they have been — books like “The Tao of Physics.” The rigmarole to get clearances from the publishers is daunting and I wonder if it is necessary. There is nothing negative being said about the books, and in the world of logic one would thing that showing the jackets could only benefit sales. Do I still, for the… more
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Innovation in Focus - Digital Election: Link TV’s “Dear American Voter”
Posted by Bree Bowman on May 1, 2008
Link TV’s new “Dear American Voter” project is using digital platforms to give the global community a voice in the upcoming election, an event that will shift the policies and direction of the entire world. Individuals can upload their video “letters” to American citizens about how they would vote in the election and why, how American policies have affected their lives, and what they think the priorities for the new Administration should be. “Dear American Voter” is a vivid example of how participatory digital media can bridge communities on a global level and provide a forum for diverse voices and… more
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Whose Identity Is It, Anyway?: National Film Board as Public Media
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 30, 2008
What difference does it make to have government funding for public media? Look at Canada, where the National Film Board (NFB) for more than 60 years has produced films that engage publics on national and cultural issues. The NFB shone at the HotDocs documentary film festival, which every April in Toronto showcases the latest Canadian work, as well as international production. My personal favorite of all the films I saw at HotDocs was an NFB production: Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer’s Club Native. Tracey Deer lives in a small Mohawk community where group membership is decided by blood kinship. That wasn’t… more
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Mapping User-Generated Media Part I: Red, Blue and Beyond
Posted by Jessica Clark on Apr 30, 2008
This is the latest post in our series featuring maps of the media landscape, which leads up to the June 17 conference, Beyond Broadcast: Mapping Public Media. (Note: Today is the last day to register at the earlybird rate!). One of the trends we’re examining at the conference is the rise of data visualization tools for examining online media content and networked publics. We began this research in conjunction with the Amsterdam-based Govcom.org Foundation, and have continued to explore other visualization and mapping approaches. The Presidential Watch 08 site provides an example of what has become a common impulse: mapping… more
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Filmmaker as Voice of Civil Society: Leo Eaton on America at a Crossroads
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 29, 2008
Our good friend Leo Eaton, a veteran public affairs and public broadcasting producer, writes in his annual letter to the field about how he sees the role of the documentarian. He also talks about the role of public broadcasting, and shares a revealing inside story that shows how embattled the notion of civil discourse on television is: I was series producer for the epic PBS current-affairs series America at a Crossroads that took over an entire week of prime-time programming (12 hours) back in April of last year. In spite of all the political controversy surrounding the gestation of a… more
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Not-So-Profitable Doc and Public Broadcasting
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 29, 2008
Arts Engine executive director Katy Chevigny, a leader in the field of documentary production (and whose timely and watchable film Election Day is part of the stunning summer season on public television series P.O.V., has written a thought-provoking blog entry. She notes that some documentaries are hugely popular (An Inconvenient Truth) and others are highly targeted (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price). But what happens to the “smaller or artier documentary”? Katy observes that: It’s more difficult to raise the funds or to make the argument that an audience will want to see it. Films like the Maysles’ Salesman… more
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Good News on Fair Use and Frame Grabs
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 29, 2008
For the last 15 years, film scholars have been asserting their fair use rights to reproduce stills and frame grabs of films and videos they discuss in their work. They’ve been helped by a clear statement of their rights created by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Now, Kristin Thompson, who as president of SCMS in 1993 guided the creation of that statement, has assessed in her blog what has happened since. The news is all good: Scholars have used their rights, there have been no lawsuits, and related case law (especially the Bill Graham Archives case) has reinforced… more
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HotDocs and Copyright Balancing
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 28, 2008
At HotDocs on April 21, an internatio