I’ve never been so disappointed. I am going to miss Joseph Gordon-Levitt talk at USC about hitRECord - which I noted in my very first blog post is an inspiration for my study of civic media tools.
The worst part is, though, I’m not just missing him speak – I’m missing the chance to ask him a question. I’ve always been one of those anonymous members of the crowd at various talks. I go, I listen, I sometimes think of questions, but I never actually ask them (probably in part because I tend to mentally ridicule the people who ask dumb questions and I fear others doing the same to me. In thinking about it, I should probably stop doing that). This time, however, I actually have a question before even going that I know I want to ask and have thought about so much I even developed crazy pipe dreams about how he might respond that involve getting coffee or exchanging e-mail addresses.
Before diving into that question, however, I feel like I should probably briefly explain hitRECord. But since JGL explains it far better than I do in a form that actually typifies his project, you should really just watch this video.
I’ve always thought it seemed like one of the coolest things any actor has done to leverage his or her influential position to actually make something amazing related to filmmaking. I see lots of actors and musicians playing benefits concerts, but to me those are really just philanthropic and fundraising ventures that graph connections between causes and the celebrity’s occupation. Bono’s music only has anything to do with AIDS in Africa because he plays a concert or writes a song, not because of connections between the music industry and AIDS in Africa. I’m not saying that’s bad at all – I’m glad people leverage their position in support of meaningful causes and Bono has done some amazing things – it’s just that I’m way more interested in how people use their position granted by an industry to actually break away from the form of dialogue that industry perpetuates.
But I digress.
In my study of civic media tools, I’ve come to the conclusion that a model like hitRECord could be leveraged to create an amazing community media device that goes beyond most other forms of citizen journalism. Right now, it seems like the primary way for ordinary people to get involved with news outlets is through two main options. Certainly there’s a lot of text based stuff that runs the gamut between these things, but I’m focusing on video and audio work (similar to hitRECord).
1. Community media outlets – people can actually produce content or help other produce content. This may be through networks like Paper Tiger Television.
2. Participate in traditional media outlets – this may be through things like CNN’s iReport or responding to questions on the Public Insight Network.
I have a serious preference for the first, but I think there’s a lot of room between the two ideas for some really nifty stuff. That’s where my idea comes from. It synthesizes a number of existing tools to make something that I don’t think has been done before – a citizen-based, distributed reporting system.
The basis is this: on something like iReport, CNN is really just soliciting raw video footage that they can integrate into their reporting. But what if instead of giving that over to CNN, you passed that footage into a network of people who together could create their own news stories? So that you upload a video, make note of location/place/time/etc, and that opens up a “case” where registered users could form a task force with a variety of rolls (I’m thinking background research, causal explanation, fact checking, script writing voice recording, and editing – this aspect is inspired by the book Wiki Government and the website Help Me Investigate) that would ultimately wind up creating a short news story that could be tagged onto a map so that the stories could be searched based on a variety of different criteria – time/location of event, type of incident, who contributed, etc.
I think it could really push people to grab on to the media they produce and may actually help people reconsider how they relate to dominant outlets. Granted, there are issues with motivation and questions of why people would actually do this, but I figure there are probably enough journalists being fired/retiring, enough people wanting to develop skills in one of those areas, and so on to develop a decent core group, and if a rewards system could be set up, I definitely think the project could take off. It may not be revolutionary, but I think it has the potential to get more people involved than are doing anything to create news stories now.
Thus, my question for JGL that I don’t get to ask is this: Have you ever considered creating a version of hitRECord that focuses on community media rather than narrative film? Encouraging people to make short featurettes about issues they wish had been covered in the news or think should have been covered differently? Too bad since I won’t be there my dreams of starting this project over a cup of coffee seem to be more or less dashed…
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Social Bookmarking Is Actually Amazing
Despite having been a compulsive blog reader and RSS addict for years, I only recently came to appreciate the power of social bookmarking. I understood that such sites let me access my bookmarks from any computer, but since I’ve always been a laptop user and most of my bookmarks are tracked in my Google Reader, I never really saw the need.
Discovering Howard Rheingold’s public library on Diigo changed that.
I mean, Google Reader’s suggestions are nice and stumbleupon has been a good friend for boredom-alleviation since I entered college, but neither one offers me the ability to dive through tags that only bring up articles other people have found interesting. I wouldn’t go so far as to deem Howard my social bookmarking soulmate, but he’s definitely going to become a source me to find out what’s happening in new media – more of a teacher than compatriot (but maybe I’m biased by his profile picture).
His bookmarks seem to almost exclusively relate to new applications of media technology (granted that’s not a very exclusive category given the breadth of the internet). His most common topics, though, seem to relate to educational uses of media and cooperation and to smartmobs and Twitter in particular. This is fascinating to me because not only does it suggest a focus on the possibility for learning that comes with new technology, but also how it can be applied to create change. His frequency of using a “smartmobs” tag in particular suggests this– though he uses the tag very liberally, largely in place of a the general tag, “activism” (and probably because he literally wrote the book on smartmobs and wants to increase the circulation of said term). Though generally his tagging is pretty descriptive, involving one or two themes (such as education), tactics (such as smartmobs), and platforms (Twitter, mobile_devices, etc).
Even though he rarely comments on the posts he tags, his description is almost always useful because it tends to be the most salient aspect of the article, which not only hints that he actually read what he’s bookmarking, but it also makes his library useful in itself because I can really easily tell if I want to read the article based on both style and substance in a way that may actually be more useful than any description he could write (and given that he tends to bookmark multiple pages a day, this practice also seems intelligent as a form of time management – he’s bookmarked 7334 pages since February 19, 2009, meaning he’s bookmarked an average of more than 11 pages per day, which is damn impressive).
Given how much he bookmarks and how much his tags overlap with my own, it’s really anything but shocking that I found Howard’s Diigo profile. In particular, though, my recent thoughts about mapping led me to find his profile. After all, hundreds of people tag things with “media” or “activism,” but how many people are going to have a bunch of tags for “mapping”? And that tag led me to something I doubt I would have found otherwise: Mapnik.
Mapnik was recently profiled on MediaShift Idea Lab as “The Coolest Mapping Software You’ve Never Heard Of,” which immediately caught my attention amongst Howard’s bookmarks. As you can see in my most recent post, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about mapping and alternative ways to map areas, so seeing a tool that “provides the framework for styling map data and then rendering new maps based on those styles” is incredible – especially since the article talks about how another program, TileMill, is making it easier to use. It’s such a nifty little mapping tool set that I’m even putting it onto one of my coveted sticky notes on my desktop to check up on from time to time and to explore more fully out once I have free time to flex my creative tools again – so I think Howard may have not done this tool service in his tagging given it only got one for “mapping.”
Diving into Howard’s library after my initial contact with his profile, I found a wealth of other gems that I may never have noticed otherwise. Despite my love for keeping up with developments in mobile media, for example, I had never heard of a website called textually.org – which is “all about texting, SMS and MMS.” But seeing an article about cellphone usage revealing disease outbreaks tagged not only intrigued me and led me to the site. Even if the article itself is ultimately a bit expected (Well obviously “Students who came down with a fever or full-blown flu tended to move around less and make fewer calls late at night and early in the morning” – though a daily check identifying victims correctly 90% of the time is impressive), the site itself has a wealth of fascinating articles and has since been added to my RSS feed.
One thing I found that was far more hidden in Howard’s library is Truthy, which is a system launched by Indiana University to “analyze and visualize the diffusion of information on Twitter” – meaning meme tracking, astroturf detection, and general misinformation monitoring. Even though the site is a bit on the weak side in terms of accessibility and organization, a lot of digging on the site yields some interesting information. If I were to start exploring again, I’d go to the About page, then the Gallery to familiarize yourself with the meme visualization techniques they use, and then consider exploring the Memes section. Even though the applications of such a tool are somewhat limited, it’s definitely something to think about.
As I’ve said in probably every post so far, I love reading. And so for anyone reading this (which must mean you love reading, since this blog is pretty well hidden and only contains fairly lengthy posts that almost entirely lack truly novel content), Howard’s bookmarks are a wealth of information. He seems to keep his fingers on the pulse of a view strains of new media uses, many of which involve media for creating better civic engagement – whether that means for education, organizing, analysis, or any number of other things. I’ll certainly be keeping up with what he posts, and I’d advise anyone interested in new media to do the same since he draws from such a wealth of sources and tags so consistently (though in reflection I am less sure he actually does all of his own posting or if some of it is done by people who write for the blog the smartmops blog).
Update: Diigo frustrates me because when I get to a webpage via someone else’s bookmark it becomes difficult to actually find the link to give other people to show them the page. Poor functionality, Diigo. Poor functionality.
Discovering Howard Rheingold’s public library on Diigo changed that.
I mean, Google Reader’s suggestions are nice and stumbleupon has been a good friend for boredom-alleviation since I entered college, but neither one offers me the ability to dive through tags that only bring up articles other people have found interesting. I wouldn’t go so far as to deem Howard my social bookmarking soulmate, but he’s definitely going to become a source me to find out what’s happening in new media – more of a teacher than compatriot (but maybe I’m biased by his profile picture).
His bookmarks seem to almost exclusively relate to new applications of media technology (granted that’s not a very exclusive category given the breadth of the internet). His most common topics, though, seem to relate to educational uses of media and cooperation and to smartmobs and Twitter in particular. This is fascinating to me because not only does it suggest a focus on the possibility for learning that comes with new technology, but also how it can be applied to create change. His frequency of using a “smartmobs” tag in particular suggests this– though he uses the tag very liberally, largely in place of a the general tag, “activism” (and probably because he literally wrote the book on smartmobs and wants to increase the circulation of said term). Though generally his tagging is pretty descriptive, involving one or two themes (such as education), tactics (such as smartmobs), and platforms (Twitter, mobile_devices, etc).
Even though he rarely comments on the posts he tags, his description is almost always useful because it tends to be the most salient aspect of the article, which not only hints that he actually read what he’s bookmarking, but it also makes his library useful in itself because I can really easily tell if I want to read the article based on both style and substance in a way that may actually be more useful than any description he could write (and given that he tends to bookmark multiple pages a day, this practice also seems intelligent as a form of time management – he’s bookmarked 7334 pages since February 19, 2009, meaning he’s bookmarked an average of more than 11 pages per day, which is damn impressive).
Given how much he bookmarks and how much his tags overlap with my own, it’s really anything but shocking that I found Howard’s Diigo profile. In particular, though, my recent thoughts about mapping led me to find his profile. After all, hundreds of people tag things with “media” or “activism,” but how many people are going to have a bunch of tags for “mapping”? And that tag led me to something I doubt I would have found otherwise: Mapnik.
Mapnik was recently profiled on MediaShift Idea Lab as “The Coolest Mapping Software You’ve Never Heard Of,” which immediately caught my attention amongst Howard’s bookmarks. As you can see in my most recent post, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about mapping and alternative ways to map areas, so seeing a tool that “provides the framework for styling map data and then rendering new maps based on those styles” is incredible – especially since the article talks about how another program, TileMill, is making it easier to use. It’s such a nifty little mapping tool set that I’m even putting it onto one of my coveted sticky notes on my desktop to check up on from time to time and to explore more fully out once I have free time to flex my creative tools again – so I think Howard may have not done this tool service in his tagging given it only got one for “mapping.”
Diving into Howard’s library after my initial contact with his profile, I found a wealth of other gems that I may never have noticed otherwise. Despite my love for keeping up with developments in mobile media, for example, I had never heard of a website called textually.org – which is “all about texting, SMS and MMS.” But seeing an article about cellphone usage revealing disease outbreaks tagged not only intrigued me and led me to the site. Even if the article itself is ultimately a bit expected (Well obviously “Students who came down with a fever or full-blown flu tended to move around less and make fewer calls late at night and early in the morning” – though a daily check identifying victims correctly 90% of the time is impressive), the site itself has a wealth of fascinating articles and has since been added to my RSS feed.
One thing I found that was far more hidden in Howard’s library is Truthy, which is a system launched by Indiana University to “analyze and visualize the diffusion of information on Twitter” – meaning meme tracking, astroturf detection, and general misinformation monitoring. Even though the site is a bit on the weak side in terms of accessibility and organization, a lot of digging on the site yields some interesting information. If I were to start exploring again, I’d go to the About page, then the Gallery to familiarize yourself with the meme visualization techniques they use, and then consider exploring the Memes section. Even though the applications of such a tool are somewhat limited, it’s definitely something to think about.
As I’ve said in probably every post so far, I love reading. And so for anyone reading this (which must mean you love reading, since this blog is pretty well hidden and only contains fairly lengthy posts that almost entirely lack truly novel content), Howard’s bookmarks are a wealth of information. He seems to keep his fingers on the pulse of a view strains of new media uses, many of which involve media for creating better civic engagement – whether that means for education, organizing, analysis, or any number of other things. I’ll certainly be keeping up with what he posts, and I’d advise anyone interested in new media to do the same since he draws from such a wealth of sources and tags so consistently (though in reflection I am less sure he actually does all of his own posting or if some of it is done by people who write for the blog the smartmops blog).
Update: Diigo frustrates me because when I get to a webpage via someone else’s bookmark it becomes difficult to actually find the link to give other people to show them the page. Poor functionality, Diigo. Poor functionality.
Waves of Change
In talking to one of my former classmates a few weeks ago, I was introduced to a project that Deep Dish TV launched a few years back called Waves of Change. The idea, according to Deep Dish co-founder DeeDee Halleck, was “to showcase some of the [community media] projects I thought were really good, so people could share the knowledge and the experiences that they had, but also to highlight some of the problems that seem kind of endemic to community media.”
Originally, Waves of Change was going to be a video series on Deep Dish, but, “There was so much good work that we didn’t want to wait for getting enough money to do a really big, produced series. We decided that we should do something now, that there was information we had to share with people, and we weren’t quite ready to do the series.” Since that original idea, Waves of Change has expanded to include a map – which is the segment I find most interesting.
Generally, maps have worked to constitute the things they visualize. In the context of the state, this meant providing rigid boundaries that previously didn’t exist, creating a sort of shape-as-logo that is now emblematic of many states. More, by linking states to a pre-existing territory, the historical contingency of borders are effaced, giving way to the notion of sacrosanct borders that merit defense, reinforcing that there is a mappable shape that deserves mapping while erasing that the map originally defined said shape. Thus, any map contains at least a dual articulation. The positional idea that “x is there: always contains a primary ontological notion nestled inside it that “x is” at all.
This ontological proposition is particularly essential for community media, as they are often overlooked and marginalized, if not somewhat ephemeral given their frequently underground status, since, according to Halleck, “in many countries the danger that independent producers and anyone who’s trying to get different kinds of information out in societies that are repressive can be a very dangerous occupation.”
Thus, by locating a particular story on the map, Waves of Change articulates not only that said story occurred but also that a specific source relayed it – proving not only the event’s existence, but the media outlet’s as well. More, by highlighting a particular outlet, it also means that its absence would become all the more visible, providing some level of accountability and awareness to the plight of community media in oppressive situations.
At the same time, locating particular places and things on the map points to a third proposition: defining not only what is, but what is important and worth mapping. Certainly nation maps do this by subtly positing that the state is worth seeing, but Waves of Change is in many ways more akin to a guide map that lists landmarks and other points of interest. Such maps not only lay out territories, but mark what within those spaces is worth doing (or, as Mark Monmonier points out in No Dig, No Fly, No Go, what cannot be done).
This idea is part and parcel to Deep Dish TV’s and Paper Tiger Television’s critique of traditional media, which posits community as an “alternative source of news that is more based on what’s important to people, what’s missing from mainstream news, and what voices are silenced by dominant media” (Hummel 1). Waves of Change visually represents this by mapping community media and their stories, thus arguing that these outlets are the “landmarks” that are worth seeing.
This purpose is doubly served as the map not only shows where such media is, but also where it is not. This highlights the gaps where such media either a. does not exist or b. is not yet mapped but may exist as a hitherto fore untapped resource for news and tactical discussion – in a form far easier to notice than a master list of outlets where geographical absence is harder to detect (especially when there are hundreds of entries, as on Waves of Changes’ blog).
Thankfully, Waves of Change is moving off of Google Maps. The push-pin aesthetic doesn’t do the idea justice and really constrains what they can do. Only a few things can actually be mapped (200 tops), and the descriptions weren’t designed to hold the rich amount of information that Waves of Change has.
Beyond making it more useable – co-producer Nicole Hummel argues that one of the most central of these ideas is adding filters to the map so that it is “searchable and viewable by different subtopics and subthemes, with some sort of index that’s tagged so you could look up media about ecology and the environment or gender issues or media literacy, or by outlet, like performance, theatre, TV, or radio.” – I really hope they also move towards more radical cartographies, which is, according to Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat, “the practice of mapmaking that subverts conventional notions in order to actively promote social change.”
Right off the bat, I can think of a few really cool directions they could take:
1. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine Waves of Change adding a functionality that flips the map in a variety of directions, subtly adding a criticism of the current “global” perspective to the project’s questioning of mass media’s focus on particular stories that do not represent the interests of many people around the world. Similarly, they could map the points to multiple projections of the world – including both the Mercator and Peters projections (pretty well explained by the West Wing).
2. To underline the critique of mass media’s skew, Waves of Change could include maps of criticism that visually prove the need for alternative media sources. One such possibility is a cartogram – a map that rescales territories according to particular features rather than attempting to reflect the physical existence of the world. This has often been used in the United States to show the population skews between various areas.
Applied to media representation, such a mapping would reveal the overabundance of representation in some areas and virtual non-existence of others, articulating a dual need for community media: one to aid in the amount of news produced within certain areas and another to emphasize the geo-centrism of many mass media outlets.
3. More abstractly, Waves of Change could use flow chart-esque maps to show the ideological factors for over- and non-representation. Ashley Hunt’s “A World Map: In Which We See…” that charts the flow of global capitalism provides an insightful model that articulates the complex, multimodal functionality of modern capitalism as a system of repression. (You can view download the whole map here, and I’d really recommend exploring the map at length. Since Blogger won't display any more text after it, a small version is at the bottom of the post)
Using such an alternative strategy could not only further discussion about how and why corporate control leads to certain stories being left out of the mainstream but also encourage a dialogue about what aspects of the current system could be played with to get more representation of alternative perspectives.
Of course, even if they don’t move beyond plotting media outlets, Waves of Change is definitely something to watch because it is already such a rich resource for information about different ways that media is being used worldwide. But it’d be really effective and interesting if they buttressed their implicit critique that operates through highlighting what is absent with an explicit presentation of what is shown and how that is determined.
Originally, Waves of Change was going to be a video series on Deep Dish, but, “There was so much good work that we didn’t want to wait for getting enough money to do a really big, produced series. We decided that we should do something now, that there was information we had to share with people, and we weren’t quite ready to do the series.” Since that original idea, Waves of Change has expanded to include a map – which is the segment I find most interesting.
Generally, maps have worked to constitute the things they visualize. In the context of the state, this meant providing rigid boundaries that previously didn’t exist, creating a sort of shape-as-logo that is now emblematic of many states. More, by linking states to a pre-existing territory, the historical contingency of borders are effaced, giving way to the notion of sacrosanct borders that merit defense, reinforcing that there is a mappable shape that deserves mapping while erasing that the map originally defined said shape. Thus, any map contains at least a dual articulation. The positional idea that “x is there: always contains a primary ontological notion nestled inside it that “x is” at all.
This ontological proposition is particularly essential for community media, as they are often overlooked and marginalized, if not somewhat ephemeral given their frequently underground status, since, according to Halleck, “in many countries the danger that independent producers and anyone who’s trying to get different kinds of information out in societies that are repressive can be a very dangerous occupation.”
Thus, by locating a particular story on the map, Waves of Change articulates not only that said story occurred but also that a specific source relayed it – proving not only the event’s existence, but the media outlet’s as well. More, by highlighting a particular outlet, it also means that its absence would become all the more visible, providing some level of accountability and awareness to the plight of community media in oppressive situations.
At the same time, locating particular places and things on the map points to a third proposition: defining not only what is, but what is important and worth mapping. Certainly nation maps do this by subtly positing that the state is worth seeing, but Waves of Change is in many ways more akin to a guide map that lists landmarks and other points of interest. Such maps not only lay out territories, but mark what within those spaces is worth doing (or, as Mark Monmonier points out in No Dig, No Fly, No Go, what cannot be done).
This idea is part and parcel to Deep Dish TV’s and Paper Tiger Television’s critique of traditional media, which posits community as an “alternative source of news that is more based on what’s important to people, what’s missing from mainstream news, and what voices are silenced by dominant media” (Hummel 1). Waves of Change visually represents this by mapping community media and their stories, thus arguing that these outlets are the “landmarks” that are worth seeing.
This purpose is doubly served as the map not only shows where such media is, but also where it is not. This highlights the gaps where such media either a. does not exist or b. is not yet mapped but may exist as a hitherto fore untapped resource for news and tactical discussion – in a form far easier to notice than a master list of outlets where geographical absence is harder to detect (especially when there are hundreds of entries, as on Waves of Changes’ blog).
Thankfully, Waves of Change is moving off of Google Maps. The push-pin aesthetic doesn’t do the idea justice and really constrains what they can do. Only a few things can actually be mapped (200 tops), and the descriptions weren’t designed to hold the rich amount of information that Waves of Change has.
Beyond making it more useable – co-producer Nicole Hummel argues that one of the most central of these ideas is adding filters to the map so that it is “searchable and viewable by different subtopics and subthemes, with some sort of index that’s tagged so you could look up media about ecology and the environment or gender issues or media literacy, or by outlet, like performance, theatre, TV, or radio.” – I really hope they also move towards more radical cartographies, which is, according to Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat, “the practice of mapmaking that subverts conventional notions in order to actively promote social change.”
Right off the bat, I can think of a few really cool directions they could take:
1. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine Waves of Change adding a functionality that flips the map in a variety of directions, subtly adding a criticism of the current “global” perspective to the project’s questioning of mass media’s focus on particular stories that do not represent the interests of many people around the world. Similarly, they could map the points to multiple projections of the world – including both the Mercator and Peters projections (pretty well explained by the West Wing).
2. To underline the critique of mass media’s skew, Waves of Change could include maps of criticism that visually prove the need for alternative media sources. One such possibility is a cartogram – a map that rescales territories according to particular features rather than attempting to reflect the physical existence of the world. This has often been used in the United States to show the population skews between various areas.
Applied to media representation, such a mapping would reveal the overabundance of representation in some areas and virtual non-existence of others, articulating a dual need for community media: one to aid in the amount of news produced within certain areas and another to emphasize the geo-centrism of many mass media outlets.
3. More abstractly, Waves of Change could use flow chart-esque maps to show the ideological factors for over- and non-representation. Ashley Hunt’s “A World Map: In Which We See…” that charts the flow of global capitalism provides an insightful model that articulates the complex, multimodal functionality of modern capitalism as a system of repression. (You can view download the whole map here, and I’d really recommend exploring the map at length. Since Blogger won't display any more text after it, a small version is at the bottom of the post)
Using such an alternative strategy could not only further discussion about how and why corporate control leads to certain stories being left out of the mainstream but also encourage a dialogue about what aspects of the current system could be played with to get more representation of alternative perspectives.
Of course, even if they don’t move beyond plotting media outlets, Waves of Change is definitely something to watch because it is already such a rich resource for information about different ways that media is being used worldwide. But it’d be really effective and interesting if they buttressed their implicit critique that operates through highlighting what is absent with an explicit presentation of what is shown and how that is determined.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)