Social networking and the media

Well, I missed the first day of CIL thanks to the falling wall at T.F. Green Airport. But I was fortunate enough to get a flight in last night so that I could be here for a full second day of the conference.

The keynote speaker for today is Andy Carvin from National Public Radio who is speaking on "Using Social Media for Community Engagement." His presentation is available at http://andycarvin.com/complibraries.ppt.

Carvin is in charge of Web 2.0 strategy at NPR where he explores ways to better use the Internet to engage the public. He also ran the Digital Divide Network for many years and was a columnist for MultMedia Schools.

He started by talking about traditional media production where you needed to be part of the mainstream media to get a message out or your needed to rely on someone else's media to get the message across.

Things started to change with Web 1.0 in mid-90s, but information was still produced by a certain class of people either those who could afford to pay someone or those who had technical skills. In the late 90s – Web 2.0 came around and anyone can organize and create their own media. In NY it is often called "We Media." He noted that Time Magazine got it wrong when they named "you" as the Person of the Year. He said it's not really you but us.

Senator George Allen's use of the word "macaca" was one example of how Web 2.o has made an impact. The video of his speech was uploaded to YouTube, and its presence on YouTube was able to raise the issue to get the rest of mainstream media interested in it. Social software is having an effect on what's happening in our country.

Who are these people who are producing information in a Web 2.0 environment? A year ago, the thought was it was mostly white male. Last summer, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a study that suggests the demographics are shifting. Race, income, and education level are starting to reflect our population.

His presentation included Tag Cloud of what is included in the Web 2.0 universe, which is a nice visual to check out.

Mainstream media vs. bloggers is often talked about as war. There are mutual feelings of distrust. However, he said these two groups are learning to get along. They are trying to make efforts to collaborate with teach other. He talked about "networked journalism" where the media is not thinking of themselves as separate from the audience. Mainstream media Web sites have become more transparent about how they make news.

He talked about different ways the media is embracing social networking. Examples included:

NPR –is trying something called Open Piloting where they explore the question of "What are benefits to show people how we are developing our shows?" Maybe the public has better ideas than we do. If the public is part of conversation, maybe we can make better programming. Rough Cuts - http://www.npr.org/blogs/roughcuts/ - is a project where pilot episodes are posted online in draft form as a podcast. Listeners give feedback as they are producing the shows.

This project was inspired by Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon – http://www.radioopensource.org - from Public Radio International. It embodies the idea that everyone contributes to an open process. They did a program on Globalization and Hip Hop. The community sent sound clips of hip hop from around the world and helped them develop the show. When it was aired, the community could then post feedback.

OhmyNews (Korea) - http://english.ohmynews.com - is a publication that decided to devote 20% of column inches to stuff submitted by the public. It helped them get news from parts of the world they couldn't afford to cover with correspondents. However, it also got coverage of areas that might fall through the cracks. The site has a map of news hotspots and encourages users who are from areas that are not on the map to send their stories.

Same tools also used to make better informed voters. VoteGuide encouraged citizen journalists to cover candidates in the 11th Congressional District race in California. The idea was to get everything candidates said on the record. They used tools like YouTube and Blip. It could be tagged so that people could use RSS feeds to keep up on what candidates were saying.

Minnesota E-Debate used blogging to host the state's gubernatorial debate. There is discussion to replicate on this on a national scale.

There were many more interesting examples, and I encourage everyone to take a look at the PPT to explore these sites.

He ended with a quote from Dan Gillmore – "My readers have more knowledge than I do. And if we can all take advantage of that, in the best sense of the expression, we will all be better informed." Carvin said "no single entity has a monopoly on knowledge." He stressed the importance of Media literacy so that we can see a continuation of the trend where the production of information is becoming democratized. Until everyone has equal opportunity to participate, the media, politics, etc. will continue to be limited to those who have the money and means to participate.