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News from the Future of Public Media
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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 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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“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 international panel showcased the importance of exercising the balancing features of copyright, even in countries where fair use does not exist. Canadian filmmaker Brett Gaylor, who’s making a film called Basement Tapes: The Making of a Pirate Movie, explained how he’s encouraging others to contribute material to his “Open Source Cinema” project. Gaylor argues that copyright understanding constricts creativity. His film in progress exposes the enormous creativity unleashed in mashups, remixes, and sampling. It uses the balancing features of Canadian copyright law, called fair dealing, to display such work legally within the film, which… more
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Mapping the primaries, public media style
Posted by Jessica Clark on Apr 17, 2008
This is the latest in a series of media maps I’m examining between now and our June 17 Beyond Broadcast conference. With the last of the intra-Democratic debates now over, all eyes are on the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania. Public broadcasting outlets have banded together to share news and information about the primaries through this nifty interactive map: The map provides primary-related news feeds from both national and local public broadcasting sources. It ticks off the number of delegates at stake, and includes a tracker to keep tabs on those pesky superdelegates. County-by-county results are available (the data is… more
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Political videos utilizing fair use
Posted by Alison Hanold on Apr 14, 2008
The usage of viral videos as a form of public media has grown rapidly in recent years, and political videos are no exception. During this evolution, political videos have begun quoting each other, very often utilizing fair use principles in order to provide commentary about other political commentators. Take for example “Hillary 2.0.” This video by Hugh Atkin adopts the format of videos by the group Anonymous (another fascinating internet emergence – read this post from Henry Jenkins’ blog to learn more about it). It suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is a machine that, prompted by the success of videos… more
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This week’s map: 25 years of media mergers
Posted by Jessica Clark on Apr 11, 2008
This week’s entry in our ongoing Atlas of Media Maps series comes to us from Mother Jones magazine. Titled “And then there were eight: 25 years of media mergers, from GE-NBC to Google-YouTube,” it’s now more than a year old. But it effectively tells the story of a perpetual trend: the ever-increasing consolidation of media ownership. This map builds on previous media consolidation mapping efforts, like The Nation’s 2006 map of the National Entertainment State. Such visualizations of the communications landscape have served as tools in the media reform movement, championed by advocates such as the Consumers Union, and have… more
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Netizenship: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 9, 2008
Are we headed backwards, to a media world that looks more like cable than the Internet? For Jonathan Zittrain, the iPhone is the enemy, Wikipedia is our friend, and our laptops are battle zones in a new war. By the time you’re done reading The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It (Yale University Press), you’ll be looking at that iPhone with suspicion as well. Zittrain argues that the key to the astounding creativity in the high-tech digital environment in the last two decades is the relatively open nature of the PC, combined with the relatively open nature of… more
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Fair Use Goes International: Israel
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Apr 9, 2008
The highlight of my trip to the high-energy, high-touch DocAviv Documentary Film Festival was an open workshop on copyright and documentary, attended by about 35 filmmakers and a few lawyers. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but Israeli documentary filmmakers are just as frustrated and confused as U.S. makers used to be about what copyrighted material they must license and what they can just use. They’re just as eager to figure it out, and they’ve suddenly become poster children for fair use outside the U.S. Israeli law was just changed to incorporate U.S.-style fair use. “We don’t yet know how courts… more
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Avian Flu watch on Flickr
Posted by Alison Hanold on Apr 4, 2008
A new watch pool on Flickr allows the public to follow the Avian Flu pandemic and to share information and news through images. The project is an example of the growing role that new web 2.0 tools hold in informing the public on important news from around the globe. Our research and focus on public media here at the Center for Social Media is important in understanding how society is evolving in its usage of media for public knowledge and action. You can read more about this in our Public Media FAQ. You can view the pool at http://flickr.com/groups/influenza/pool/ more
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ICA Preconference: Remapping Public Media—registration still open until May 3
Posted by guest on Apr 4, 2008
On May 22, the Center for Social Media will be sponsoring a preconference as part of the International Communication Associations yearly conference. It will build upon the Center for Social Media’s Mapping Public Media project, directed by Jessica Clark. Clark heads up CSM’s Future of Public Media project, funded by the Ford Foundation. The preconference will showcase cross-disciplinary perspectives and conclude with discussion of a research agenda on public media (click here to read our public media FAQ) in a participatory digital era of communication. Please join us for this exciting event! International Communication Association Preconference: Remapping Public Media Thursday,… more
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Success in Alternative Distribution
Posted by guest on Apr 2, 2008
By Laurie Moy, Graduate Student, American University, School of Communication, International Media Program For most directors, going from Hollywood to YouTube would be a demotion. But for Robert Greenwald the move from the silver screen to the computer screen was part of a “personal transformation.” Speaking at the Center for American Progress’s Internet Advocacy Roundtable, Greenwald explained how he has come to embrace “alternative distribution.” And it has embraced him. His films had had over 43 million views, and it is estimated that one of his online films is seen every 2 seconds. So what’s the secret to his success?… more
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Fair Use Question About Non-Profits Using Music
Posted by Michael T. Miller on Apr 1, 2008
QUESTION: Dear CSM, I am interested in streaming audio on my organization’s website. More specifically, we want to stream a song on each of our issue pages. We want to find songs that reflect our positions on issues. What kind of music can we stream? We are a tax exempt 527 organization. Thanks, - “Green Change” ANSWER: The Supreme Court generally considers three things when deciding whether a use of someone else’s copyrighted material is fair or not. These include whether the use is transformative, i.e. whether the use changed the context of the original material or not, whether the… more
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Innovation in Focus: ITVS’s Fatworld
Posted by Bree Bowman on Apr 1, 2008
Using video games to educate the public on diet, nutrition and making informed decisions. As American youth reach unprecedented levels of obesity, ITVS Interactive and PBS’s Emmy-award–winning weekly series Independent Lens are using a new kind of media to help find a solution to this complex problem. FATWORLD is an experimental, online video game that explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition and socioeconomics in the United States. Launched in January 2008, and downloaded 53,000 times in the two weeks after its release, the project demonstrates how public media can open a dialogue on deeply rooted social and economic problems, as… more
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WAM! showcases new directions in feminist and activist media
Posted by Alison Hanold on Apr 1, 2008
This weekend I had the great pleasure to attend the Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) Conference on the campus of MIT. While there, I met an impressive array of young activists and experienced professionals who use media (magazines, blogs, comics, radio, documentaries) to draw attention to their causes. align=”right”>The conference featured Keynote Speakers Helen Thomas, the first woman officer of the National Press Club and the first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and Haifa Zangana, a novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime. The conference featured sessions focused on making high impact… more
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This week’s maps: Social Starfish and the Map of Me
Posted by Jessica Clark on Mar 31, 2008
This week’s media map post is a twofer, since I was distracted last week by the stimulating Media Re:public conference, all about how the rise of participatory media is intersecting with the news and information environment. In honor of that theme I present the Social Media Starfish: Created in November by online marketer Darren Barefoot in response to a video by Web 2.0 guru Robert Scoble, the starfish is useful for public media makers thinking about different distribution, publicity and engagement platforms for involving publics with their content. It serves as a bit of a checklist in the round: create… more
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Digital Storytelling – A Movement in the Making
Posted by Bree Bowman on Mar 31, 2008
The Center for Social Media welcomed Stefani Sese, of the Center for Digital Storytelling, who led a discussion on the growing role that digital storytelling has in advocacy campaigns. She initiated the discussion by defining digital storytelling as “something between slideshow a PowerPoint presentation, and a documentary.” The Center for Digital Storytelling provides training to individuals to produce three-minute digital shorts that focus not so much on the technology or production technique, but on a good, powerful story driven by narrative and personal life experience, an approach that is rooted in theater and storytelling traditions. The projects are made possible… more
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Turnitin, Fair Use Hero
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Mar 26, 2008
There’s an irony in the recent court victory of the anti-plagiarism site Turnitin. I believe that Turnitin protects the jobs of the laziest group of teachers across the nation—people who assign the same general assignment year after year. Worse, Turnitin depends on a romantic and wrong idea of creativity (individual originality as the highest value), and it forms part of the copyright mis-education of American students by associating all copying and collaborating with cheating. But when it got sued, it turned to fair use—the right under copyright to use other copyrighted work under certain circumstances. (More on fair use here)… more
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At SXSW, Digital Change at the Podium
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Mar 26, 2008
How are digital tools transforming the production of media? Anyone concerned with the future of public media needs ways and places to assess the rate and nature of change. South by Southwest (SXSW, aka South By), the combined tech-film-music festival in Austin in March, is one such place. Independent filmmakers and distributors flooded to panels discussing how the digital tools and social networking have changed both production and distribution. What last year was gee-whiz, look what we can do, this year was all about technique and strategy. Younger, no-budget filmmakers like Aaron Katz (Dance Party USA) discussed how to make… more
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Telling the Story to Further the Cause – CSM welcomes Visiting Filmmaker Liz Miller
Posted by Bree Bowman on Mar 24, 2008
You’ve just seen a documentary film that told a powerful story, represented an important cause, raised awareness of an issue critical to people’s lives, or offered solutions to make the world better. Now what? The Center for Social Media welcomed environmental filmmaker Liz Miller for a discussion of her new documentary, The Water Front, and on how to strategically use documentary film to extend its story beyond the screen as a powerful advocacy vehicle for complex social issues. The Water Front tells the stories of the residents of Highland Park, MI, a post-industrial town in an economic crisis just outside… more
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Public Media: What, Why and Where?
Posted by Jessica Clark on Mar 23, 2008
I was planning a post about the media activism community for this weekly series on media maps that leads up to the Beyond Broadcast conference, but then I came across this useful visualization of content flow on Dennis Haarsager’s blog, Technology 360. Haarsager, who was just named the interim CEO of NPR, writes: In a meeting with the NPR staff on Friday, I talked about there being three layers that we need to consider. At the top is why we’re here at all as a non-profit. There are surely better formulations, but we make people smarter, better citizens, more culturally… more
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This week’s map: of cats and censorship
Posted by Jessica Clark on Mar 13, 2008
Each week between now and our Beyond Broadcast conference, I’m examining an online media map, searching for the role that public media plays within it. This week’s map is a project of Global Voices. Called Access Denied, it tracks online censorship and anti-censorship efforts of Web 2.0 content around the world. Like many of the new participatory maps, it uses Google maps as a platform. What does this map tell us about public media? Well, if you believe as we do here at CSM that publics are central to creating and sharing public media, this map demonstrates the crucial role… more
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New Media after the Storm - Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster
Posted by Bree Bowman on Mar 13, 2008
It’s been almost 3 years since Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans and parts of the Gulf coast. How has the region recovered? The Open Society Institute’s Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster uses new media tools to document life in post-Katrina New Orleans and the surrounding region. Most importantly, the project demonstrates how new media can serve as a stepping stone to deeper analysis and discussion of issues like poverty, crisis management and the effectiveness of public policy in our country. Nearly three dozen journalists, photographers and youth media groups received fellowships from the Open Society Institute to collaborate on… more
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Crafting Public Radio
Posted by Jessica Clark on Mar 7, 2008
Etsy—the innovative online marketplace for artists and crafters—is hosting a series of articles on podcasting as a form of DIY creativity, featuring interviews with and tips from independent and public radio producers, ruminations on the overlap between crafting and independent media making, and suggestions for the best podcasts from the Etsy community. Etsy itself has been a case study in how independent producers can succesfully band together to offer their products to a larger audience. In the process, crafters have organized around environmental and consumer issues, creating a recycling project for swapping supplies, and campaigns urging shoppers to buy handmade… more
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Beyond Broadcast: Maps as Public Media/Mapping Public Media
Posted by Jessica Clark on Mar 3, 2008
For the past year, I’ve been tracking the evolution of participatory maps as a new form of public media, a trend I outline in an In These Times story titled “The New Cartographers.” Maps are everywhere these days. The ubiquity of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile directional devices, interactive mapping tools and social networks is feeding a mapping boom. Amateur geographers are assigning coordinates to everything they can get their hands on—and many things they can’t. “Locative artists” are attaching virtual installations to specific locales, generating imaginary landscapes brought vividly to life in William Gibson’s latest novel, Spook Country.… more
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Public Media—Read All About It
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Mar 3, 2008
The first book chapter to emerge from the Future of Public Media research done at the Center is now in circulation. Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation, edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) includes several essays on the challenges of developing public media in the digital, participatory era. For instance, Nick Couldry talks about how media and political representation are tightly joined. Mark Deuze discusses commercialization of the digital environment, and Josh Lauer cautions us to see current practices in data-mining as new ways to turn consumers into cash cows. Katja… more
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Fair Use on Trial, and Knowledge Wins
Posted by Patricia Aufderheide on Mar 3, 2008
Chicago filmmaker Floyd Webb wanted to make a movie about a colorful martial arts figure, who called himself Counte Dante (http://johnkeehan.blogspot.com/). The grandmaster of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, William V. Aguiar III, tried to stop him by blocking his access to images of Counte Dante and material from his training video. But Webb had attended an Independent Feature Project panel discussion of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. (IFP was a signatory and co-author of the document, which was facilitated by the Center and the Washington College of Law.) Webb knew he had fair use… more
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The Alliance for Justice – Changing the Face of Social Justice Advocacy
Posted by Bree Bowman on Mar 3, 2008
For almost 15 years, the Alliance for Justice has been using cutting-edge new media strategies to engage the public to advance the cause of social justice, civil rights and public empowerment – long before these tools became a part of our daily lives. Last week, the Center for Social Media welcomed Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, and filmmaker Glen Pearcy for a public lecture to discuss his newest film, Supreme Injustices and related digital outreach strategies. The film tells the stories behind two recent controversial Supreme Court cases addressing the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education,… more
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Innovation in Focus: The National Black Programming Consortium’s New Media Institute
Posted by Bree Bowman on Feb 29, 2008
The NBPC’s New Media Institute, which held its second training workshop in November, is a vivid example of how public broadcasters can shape the future of public media. NBPC is training professionals in state-of-the-art digital and web tools, to tell powerful stories in new ways. This season’s workshop—held in Jackson, Mississippi, in partnership with Mississippi Public Broadcasting—focused on the culture of the Mississippi Delta region and the impact of American jazz. NBPC formed teams of filmmakers, new media professionals and web designers based on the participants’ interests and experience to work together to create games, podcasts (like ‘Sojuke,’, which integrates… more
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CSM Welcomes Pegie Stark of Eyetrack07
Posted by Alison Hanold on Feb 25, 2008
The CSM was thrilled to welcome Pegie Stark this past Friday and Saturday to speak to American University students about her latest project, Eyetrack07, which explored the viewing habits of readers, and made some surprising discoveries about how people are absorbing information, both print and online. Dr. Stark’s appearance was the second installment of the Center’s Innovator’s Forum Speaker Series. The objective of the project, as the Eyetrack website points out, “…was to focus on differences and similarities in print and online reading. How do print and online readers navigate through the paper or Web site? Do people behave differently… more
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The BigThink Tank
Posted by Bree Bowman on Feb 20, 2008
A new project called BigThink is making it easier for the public to find reliable, credible information on the Internet, as well as allowing individuals to make their expertise heard on important issues. The digital age offers the public an abundance of information, empowering individuals to make informed decisions on important issues, but the sheer volume of content makes it difficult to discern what’s reliable and what’s not. BigThink provides users with “direct, unfiltered interviews” with thought leaders and experts on a variety of ethical, political and cultural topics and offers the public a multi-media platform to respond to what… more
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Center for Social Media to Host Beyond Broadcast 2008
Posted by Jessica Clark on Feb 19, 2008
June 17—save the date Building on the momentum of this year’s very successful Making Your Media Matter gathering, we’re thrilled to announce that the Center will be organizing the 2008 Beyond Broadcast conference. Over the past few years, Beyond Broadcast has become a can’t-miss destination for innovative media-makers, scholars and policy experts seeking to understand the evolution of public media in a digital, participatory era. The theme of this year’s gathering is “Remapping Public Media,” and we’ll be using mapping and visualization tools to examine shifting forms, functions and fiscal strategies for public media projects. We’ll also be featuring demonstrations… more