Publications
Newsletter
Subscribe to our free mailing list for event announcements, CSM news and our latest reports.
Feeds
Subscribe to News RSS feed
Subscribe to iCalendar
News from the Future of Public Media
At the Personal Democracy Forum conference, We.gov meets Public Media 2.0
email discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Jul 6, 2009 at 1:32 PM
It took me the whole long weekend to recover from the rush of friends, tweets, and innovative civic playtoys at last week’s Personal Democracy Forum. As our research fellow Nina Keim noted, Twitter was definitely the belle of the ball. But there were a number of other standout tools that demonstrate the potential for what PDF organizers are calling “we.gov”.
Obama’s new chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, unveiled a new version of USAspending.gov, a site that tracks federal spending, offering up revealing charts and graphs, plus an IT Dashboard that allow both agencies and members of the public to analyze federal investments in information technology. NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg also made an appearance (albeit via Skype) to tout the city’s forays into open, transparent communication, announcing an upcoming “Big Apps” competition that challenges developers to find interesting uses for municipal data sets. Commercial representatives from Facebook and Ning were also on hand, touting how their services had been used for public purposes, from debating energy policies to passing along updates on violence after Iran’s recent elections. New media guru Jeff Jarvis went so far as to live crowdsource answers to the question of what we might want from a “Googly government”; audience suggestions included a button that says “I feel useful” that would serve up volunteer opportunties, and a 20% rule that allows government workers to innovate on taxpayers’ dime. “If anyone’s going to build it, you’re the ones goddammit, so get busy!” urged Jarvis.
By themselves, such tools and data streams don’t constitute public media 2.0, but provide important building blocks for creators. A number of PDF speakers tackled important questions about how such tools can and should be used for public knowledge and action. David Weinberger of the Berkman Center noted that he’s “irrationally exuberant” about the emerging government transparency tools, because they mark a societal shift in how we arrive at accepted truths. Facts, he says, are no longer the final word. Instead, network-driven analysis can move us from simply crunching data to analyzing nuanced information that arrives from multiple, transparent sources. This changes the basis of expertise: from paper-based credentials to debate bolstered by links. “We are in the process of the great un-nailing,” he said, and he couldn’t be more thrilled.
But who is doing the debating? Social media researcher danah boyd cautioned that elitism is still alive and well on seemingly democratic Web 2.0 platforms, noting the class and race devisions between users of two popular social networking platforms: MySpace and Facebook. Through interviews with users, she revealed that Facebook users tend to be more white, educated and professional than MySpace users, although both services boast similar numbers of subscribers. “What we’re seeing is an online version of white flight,” said boyd, and it should “scare the hell out of us.” She dismissed the idea of a “universal public” online, noting that our social networks help to shape our media consumption habits and technology adoption patterns. “The war isn’t over…we need to keep fighting it,” she said. “We can’t afford second class citizenship online.” (Want more? Here are the notes from her talk.)
Not only do social media platforms change our perception of what constitutes news, according to anthropologist Michael Wesch, they change our very sense of ourselves as empowered social actors. Wesch’s presentation—which included a cultural history of the term “whatever” and a number of affecting YouTube montages—moved the jaded PDF crowd to a standing ovation. His talk conveyed a numinous sense of possibility, connection and agency that is at the core of our public media 2.0 concept. I haven’t found a high-quality video of his talk online yet, but you can check out his presentation slides below, and watch a number of related videos here.
Discussion
Great point that not only do social media platforms change our perception of what constitutes news, they change our very sense of ourselves as empowered social actors.