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Publications
Public Media 2.0 Field Report: New Muslim Cool: Engaging Stakeholders in the Filmmaking Process
Nina Keim, Research Fellow
Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Fair Use for Media Studies Publishing
Members of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies—film and media studies professors—defined how fair use applies to their research practices. This document concerns fair use in quotation for illustration or proof of argument or to stimulate discussion, whether in text, multimedia, or as media bundled with text. More information is available at the SCMS website
Society for Cinema and Media Studies Statement on Fair Use for Teaching Film and Media Educators
Members of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies—film and media studies professors—defined how fair use applies to their teaching practices. This document concerns fair use in classroom situations, in broadcast, repurposing within new works, and in online distance education. More information is available at the SCMS website
.Impact Outside of the Box: Assessing How Digital Video Can Engage and Influence Publics
January 2010
Pull Focus: Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis
Pull Focus: Jennifer Maytorena Taylor
Claire Darby
Pull Focus: Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein
Patricia Aufderheide
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare
BY A COMMITTEE OF PRACTITIONERS OF OPENCOURSEWARE IN THE UNITED STATES, INCLUDING:
Terri Bays, formerly director of Notre Dame OpenCourseWare
Daniel Carchidi, publication director, MIT OpenCourseWare
Sheree Carter-Galvan, associate general counsel, Office of General Counsel, Yale University
Pamela Chambers, attorney, Office of General Counsel, Yale University
Garin Fons, open education specialist, University of Michigan Open.Michigan
Ira Gooding, project coordinator, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare
Joseph Hardin, clinical assistant professor of information, School of Information, University of Michigan
Pieter Kleymeer, open education specialist, University of Michigan Open.Michigan
Robbin Smith, OCW editor/curricular content specialist, Tufts OpenCourseWare
Lindsey Weeramuni, Intellectual Property Supervisor, MIT OpenCourseWare
IN CONSULTATION WITH
Lila Bailey, counsel for ccLearn
This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law.
Pull Focus: Laura Waters Hinson
Claire Darby
Scan and Analysis of Best Practices in Digital Journalism In and Outside U.S. Public Broadcasting
Principal Investigator: Pat Aufderheide
Investigators: Jessica Clark, Matthew C. Nisbet, Carin Dessauer
Research Associate: Katie Donnelly
In this report, researchers at American University’s Center for Social Media identify a set of best practices in digital new media journalism intended to guide planning and initiatives in this area specifically for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and more broadly for the Public Service Media community in the US. We offer an overview of the current journalism and public broadcasting environments, derived from a scan of recent reports and interviews with relevant experts, along with a set of identified best practices, bolstered with analysis of specific examples that could be replicated by public media producers.
Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work
Patricia Aufderheide
Peter Jaszi
Mridu Chandra
This study provides a map of perceived ethical challenges that documentary filmmakers—directors and producer-directors—in the United States identify in the practice of their craft. It summarizes the results of 45 long-form interviews in which filmmakers were asked simply to describe recent ethical challenges that surfaced in their work. This baseline research is necessary to begin any inquiry into ethical standards because the field has not yet articulated ethical standards specific to documentary. These interviews demonstrate, indeed, a need for a more public and focused conversation about ethics before any standards emerging from shared experience and values can be articulated.
Documentary filmmakers identified themselves as creative artists for whom ethical behavior is at the core of their projects. At a time when there is unprecedented financial pressure on makers to lower costs and increase productivity, filmmakers reported that they routinely found themselves in situations where they needed to balance ethical responsibilities against practical considerations. Their comments can be grouped into three conflicting sets of responsibilities: to their subjects, their viewers, and their own artistic vision and production exigencies.
Filmmakers resolved these conflicts on an ad-hoc basis and argued routinely for situational, case-by-case ethical decisions. At the same time, they shared unarticulated general principles and limitations. They commonly shared such principles as, in relation to subjects, “Do no harm” and “Protect the vulnerable,” and, in relation to viewers, “Honor the viewer’s trust.”
Filmmakers observed these principles with widely shared limitations. In relation to subjects, they often did not feel obliged to protect subjects who they believed had themselves done harm or who had independent access to media, such as celebrities or corporate executives with their own public relations arms. In relation to viewers, they often justified the manipulation of individual facts, sequences, and meanings of images, if it meant telling a story more effectively and helped viewers grasp the main, and overall truthful, themes of a story.
Finally, filmmakers generally expressed frustration in two areas. They daily felt the lack of clarity and standards in ethical practice. They also lacked support for ethical deliberation under typical work pressures.
This survey demonstrated that filmmakers generally are acutely aware of moral dimensions of their craft, and of the economic and social pressures that affect them. This study demonstrates the need to have a more public and ongoing conversation about ethical problems in documentary filmmaking. Filmmakers need to develop a more broadly shared understanding of the nature of their problems and to evolve a common understanding of fair ways to balance their various obligations.
Best Practices in Fair Use of Dance-related Materials
This Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use of Dance-related Materials, produced by the Dance Heritage Coalition, clarifies what librarians, archivists, curators, and others working with dance-related materials currently regard as a reasonable application of the Copyright Act’s fair use doctrine, where the use of copyrighted materials is essential to significant cultural missions and institutional goals.
Public Media 2.0 Field Report: Building Social Media Infrastructure to Engage Publics
Nina Keim, Research Fellow Jessica Clark, Research Director
Public Media 2.0 Field Report:
Building Social Media Infrastructure to Engage Publics:
Twitter Vote Report and Inauguration Report ’09
Since early 2008, American University’s Center for Social Media has been producing a series of field reports that profile innovative media for public knowledge and action. Published as part of the Center’s Ford Foundation-supported Future of Public Media project (www.futureofpublicmedia.net), these case studies are designed to explore how publics form around participatory and multiplatform media projects. In this report, Nina Keim and Jessica Clark examine two linked projects related to the 2008 presidential election: Twitter Vote Report (TVR) and Inauguration Report ’09 (IR09).
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
A Future of Public Media Project, funded by the Ford Foundation
This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances.
This is a guide to current acceptable practices, drawing on the actual activities of creators, as discussed among other places in the study Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and backed by the judgment of a national panel of experts. It also draws, by way of analogy, upon the professional judgment and experience of documentary filmmakers, whose own code of best practices has been recognized throughout the film and television businesses.
Making Your Media Matter 2009 Rapporteur’s Report
Kafi Kareem
On February 12-13 2009, the Center for Social Media (CSM) hosted its 5th annual MAKING YOUR MEDIA MATTER conference. Read this Rapporteur’s Report to learn about the topics discussed and watch videos from the conference. The videos within this report are just part 1 of each panel. If you want to continue on, you can click on the links below the video.
Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics
by Jessica Clark
Director, Future of Public Media Project
Pat Aufderheide
Director, Center for Social Media
Public broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, and network newscasts have all played a
central role in our democracy, informing citizens and guiding public conversation. But
the top-down dissemination technologies that supported them are being supplanted by
an open, many-to-many networked media environment. What platforms, standards,
and practices will replace or transform legacy public media?
This white paper lays out an expanded vision for “public media 2.0” that places engaged
publics at its core, showcasing innovative experiments from its “first two minutes,”
and revealing related trends, stakeholders, and policies. Public media 2.0 may look and
function differently, but it will share the same goals as the projects that preceded it:
educating, informing, and mobilizing its users.
Multiplatform, participatory, and digital, public media 2.0 will be an essential feature
of truly democratic public life from here on in. And it’ll be media both for and by the
public. The grassroots mobilization around the 2008 electoral campaign is just one
signal of how digital tools for making and sharing media open up new opportunities
for civic engagement.
But public media 2.0 won’t happen by accident, or for free. The same bottom-line logic
that runs media today will run tomorrow’s media as well. If we’re going to have media
for vibrant democratic culture, we have to plan for it, try it out, show people that it
matters, and build new constituencies to invest in it.
The first and crucial step is to embrace the participatory—the feature that has also been
most disruptive of current media models. We also need standards and metrics to define
truly meaningful participation in media for public life. And we need policies, initiatives,
and sustainable financial models that can turn today’s assets and experiments into
tomorrow’s tried-and-true public media.
Public media stakeholders, especially such trusted institutions as public broadcasting,
need to take leadership in creating a true public investment in public media 2.0.
Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking
The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education
This document is a code of best practices that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question—as it does for certain narrowly defined classroom activities.
This guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials, wherever and however it occurs: in K–12 education, in higher education, in nonprofit organizations that offer programs for children and youth, and in adult education.
Fair Use in Media Literacy Education FAQ
Media Education Lab at Temple University
Educators need to make better use of their fair use rights under copyright law. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education helps clear away the copyright confusion and, in the process, encourage the use of mass media, popular culture and digital media as a means to build students’ critical thinking and communication skills. Here, the Media Education Lab answers some common questions about the Code.
Beyond Broadcast 2008 Rapporteur’s Report
by Kate Schuler and Jessica Clark
The 3rd annual Beyond Broadcast Conference, titled "Mapping Public Media," was held June 17th, 2008 at American University. Roundtable discussions, demos and exhibits examined the explosion of digital, participatory maps as public media, and as tools for visualizing the radical shifts in our media terrain. This rapporteur’s report offers highlights of the day’s events, and includes audio and video of speakers and multimedia presentations.
Beyond Broadcast 2008 Videos, Podcasts and Downloads
Downloads of the Beyond Broadcast podcasts, videos and other materials, for those who just can’t get enough of the 2008 Beyond Broadcast conference!
Frequently Asked Questions: Public Media
Pat Aufderheide & Jessica Clark
In this moment of shifting technologies and emerging platforms, how can we identify public media? Here at the Center for Social Media, we define them as any media expressions or platforms that promote public knowledge and action—that is, the formation of publics that can act together to address common problems.
Making Your Media Matter 2008 Rapporteur’s Report
by Kate Schuler
Making Your Media Matter ‘08 Podcast and Discussion Forum
Audio podcasts and takeaways from the 2008 Making Your Media Matter conference are now available!
We welcome your comments and thoughts about the conference in our discussion forum at the bottom of the page.
Recut, Reframe, Recycle
Online videos frequently quote copyrighted material without permission, in ways that could be entirely legal through fair use. But these works are threatened by anti-piracy measures that do not distinguish adequately between legal and illegal uses.
Mapping Public Media: Inside and Out
By Jessica Clark
This analysis by Center for Social Media Research Director Jessica Clark contrasts the findings revealed by CSM case studies to Govcom.org’s maps of the same media projects, below.
Fair Use Frequently Asked Questions
By Pat Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi, Maura Ugarte and Michael Miller
Since the release of The Statement of Best Practices we have received many inquires about fair use. Here are some of our more commonly asked items.
The View from the Top: P.O.V. Leaders on the Struggle to Create Truly Public Media
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking PBS documentary series P.O.V., the Center for Social Media interviewed several of those who have led the project through its last two decades on the goals, challenges, and the vision for one of television’s most productive sites for imagining and innovating the future of public media.
Research Protocol
Richard Rogers and the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam
This Govcom.org research protocol explains the methods used to produce the maps featured below.
Issue Mapping Contextual Essay
By Richard Rogers
This conceptual essay by Govcom.org’s director Richard Rogers provides additional information about the Issue Crawler toolset.
Making Your Media Matter 2008
“Making Your Media Matter” is a conference for established and aspiring filmmakers, non-profit communications leaders, funders and students looking to learn and share cutting-edge practices for creating media that matters.
The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy
Renee Hobbs, Peter Jaszi & Pat Aufderheide
The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, based on scores of longform interviews with teachers, shows that the fundamental goals of media literacy education—to cultivate critical thinking and expression about media and its social role—are compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions. As a result of poor guidance, counterproductive guidelines, and fear, teachers use less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit erroneous copyright information, fail to share innovative instructional approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms. This is not only unfortunate but unnecessary, since copyright law permits a wide range of uses of copyrighted material without permission or payment. However, educators today have no consensus around what constitutes acceptable fair use practices. The report concludes with a call for educators to develop a consensus around their interpretation of their most valuable copyright tool: fair use.
Public Radio’s Social Media Experiments: Risk, Opportunity, Challenge
This report analyzes the results of a survey of public radio stations and highlights the successes
and challenges of integrating new social media tools into the mission of public radio.
Filmanthropy Rapporteur’s Report Now Online!
Kate Schuler, AU School of Communication
On June 16, 2007, more than 70 filmmakers, nonprofit communication managers and public engagement practitioners and strategists met during SILVERDOCS to discuss partnerships on social action, advocacy and public information campaigns. Read on!
New Deal 1.5
The New Deal Version 1.5: Monetizing and Mission is the Center’s annual report on the nuts and bolts of digital distribution deal- making. Curious about who’s making these deals? Average percentages for independent filmmakers? Average license periods? All of this and more in this highly-anticipated new publication.
Unauthorized: The Copyright Conundrum in Participatory Video
Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi
Suppose you’re running an online video platform, and people start uploading video that uses other people’s work. How should unauthorized use of other people’s work be treated in this new environment?
The Good, The Bad and the Confusing: User-Generated Video Creators on Copyright
Principal Investigators: Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi; Research Coordinator: Elizabeth Nolan Brown
How do creators of content on the plethora of sites that accept online video understand their rights and responsibilities regarding intellectual property? Addressing this question is challenging, since the pool of creators is not only diffuse but constantly changing. In this study, undergraduate and graduate college students who upload online video were asked to describe their practices and attitudes on using copyrighted material to make new work and on the value to them of their own copyright. Includes links to press coverage of report.
Public Media in the Arab World: Exploring the Gap between Reality and Ideals
by Marwan Kraidy, Director, Arab Media and Public Life (AMPLE) project, with assistance from Courtney Radsch
The Center for Social Media collaborated with the Arab Media and Public Life (AMPLE) project at American University for a year-long conference series on public media in the Arab world and focused on changes in the media environment, the role of the state, and what "public media" means in the Arab world. The Center’s latest report highlights the proceedings of the project.
Making Your Documentary Matter 2007: Rapporteur’s Report
By Kate Schuler
Making Your Documentary Matter: Public Engagement Strategies that Work January 31 – February 1, 2007
Making Your Documentary Matter 2007 Podcast & Discussion Forum
Audio podcasts and power points from the 2007 Making Your Documentary Matter conference are now available!
We welcome your comments and thoughts about the conference in our discussion forum at the bottom of the page. And please let us know what you think about our new adventure in podcasting! We especially want to know how this page can be as easy as possible for you to use!
Big Dreams, Small Screens: Online Video for Public Knowledge and Action
Learn how popular commercial online digital video platforms, such as YouTube, GoogleVideo and MySpace, are being used to create, exchange, and comment upon information for public knowledge and action—and what their limitations are!
Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits Are Making Movies for Public Engagement
Read about how the Sierra Club, The American Civil Liberties Union and local environmental groups use documentaries for high-impact and action
2007 Making Your Documentary Matter Conference Participant Biographies
Read the bios of our list of participants in the 2007 Making Your Documentary Matter Conference.
Making Your Documentary Matter 2006: Report
Barbara Abrash reports from the 2006 Making Your Documentary Matter conference- see clips highlighting the powerful points made by guest speakers and panelists.
Making Your Documentary Matter 2006: Report
21st Century News: Challenges and Opportunities for Public-Minded Media in the New-Media Age
By Jane Hall
This fall, a remarkable group of key decision-makers and innovators in news and information came together at American University in Washington, D.C. Read how leaders in the field are working to ensure the future of serious, credible news and information and public-minded media in the 21st Century media and journalism landscape.
Mimi Pickering Participatory Media Speech
Our good friend Mimi Pickering from Appalshop sent us a recent speech that shows how the participatory media movement has deep roots.
Nurturing Tomorrow’s Doc Storytellers
Leaders of documentary teaching and training programs across the U.S. came together in September to share their stories.
Center Releases New Publication on Digital Distribution in Television: The New Deal
Read the Center for Social Media’s new Report, entitled The New Deal: How Digital Platforms Change Negotiations between Public Media and Independent Producers. The report, which is being released at the 2006 SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, reveals current business practices around new digital distribution in television.
Repurposing and Rights: A Non-Profit Summit
A Report by Patricia Aufderheide
The Center hosted on May 22 at American University a convening, “Repurposing and Rights: A Non-Profit Summit,” composed of public broadcasters, librarians, archivists, scholars, lawyers and new media experts.
Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture Rapporteur Report 2006
Barbara Abrash
Read the 2006 Rapporteur Report from Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture, an event co-organized by the Center on the future of public media in an open digital environment.
UFVA Fair Use Contest 2.0
MYDM Related Links
Want to learn more about making your media matter? Here are some additional resources from our partners in the field. Click here!
Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
Documentary filmmakers have created, through their professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use. Download this useful handbook, written by veteran filmmakers to help other filmmakers understand some instances where using copyrighted material without clearance is considered fair use. Click here for the full report & here for a list of authors and endorsers of the Statement.
Success of the Statement of Best Practices
The Statement has provoked dramatic change in the industry since it was released in November 2005. PBS and ITVS have used the Statement to release programs, and so have cablecasters including IFC. All four of the national errors and omissions insurers now issue fair use coverage routinely, as a result of the Statement.
Expanding User Rights For Documentary Filmmakers
by NICK LEWIS
Funded By: Rockefeller Foundation and Grantmakers In Film And Electronic Media
Free Culture, Phase 2
By Kathryn Montgomery
Kathryn Montgomery, professor in the School of Communication and director of the youth media and democracy project at the Center, last May brought together an eclectic brain trust of 50 young “digital leaders” under 30 years of age who want to create democratic access to art, expression, and governance in a digital age.
Youth as E-Citizens: Engaging the Digital Generation
What do youth do online besides chat and play video games? Well, they register to vote, find opportunities to volunteer in their communities, work as journalists, and coordinate political demonstrations, for starters. “Youth as E-Citizens” analyzes and showcases this new online civic phenomenon with a print report and an online “tour.” Primary funding by Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).
What Keeps Social Documentaries from Audiences—and How to Fix It
By Patricia Aufderheide
Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
What happens to U.S. social documentaries after they are first seen at a film festival or on television? Far too little—in spite of evidence of rising interest in the genre. Read the results of research and an expert convening on the topic and find out not only about the problems, but suggested solutions. Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Digital Futures: A Need-to-Know Policy Guide for Independent Filmmakers
Funded by the Ford Foundation
Digital technology is transforming filmmaking. And policymakers are scrambling to catch up with the changes. What policies are good for independent filmmakers? What are the hot issues, and what are the positions that best support the creativity and diversity that independent filmmakers represent? Digital Futures: A Need-to-Know Policy Guide for Independent Filmmakers answers those questions with to-the-point answers.
In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.
By Pat Aufderheide
What difference can a documentary make? This fact-filled report by Center co-director Pat Aufderheide, with many case studies of successful strategic use of social documentaries, answers that question. Funded by the Ford Foundation.
War Beyond the Box
The Center for Social Media scanned the internet to look at some of the media strategies being used during the war in Iraq. The war spurred many types of communication; they are categorized and links to examples are provided.
Media as a Social Tool: Conference Report
The final report of the Center for Social Media’s June 2002 conference on central issues for research on media as a social tool.
TeenSites.com: A Field Guide to the New Digital Landscape
TeenSites.com examines the burgeoning interactive communications environment, and explores how teens are shaping and being shaped by digital culture. This report, created under the auspices of the Center for Media Education headed by Kathryn Montgomery previous to her arrival at American University, provided the platform on which Prof. Montgomery and former CSM research director Barbara Gottlieb-Robles continued their research on youth and digital media in “Youth as E-Citizens.”
Public Media Frequently Asked Questions
The Center’s new “Frequently Asked Questions: Public Media” publication, by Center Director Pat Aufderheide and Research Director Jessica Clark, helps to clarify exactly what public media is, how it’s used, and why it’s so important to a democratic society.