Markmedia

Twitter-text=democratic deficiency

Twitter shutting down sms services to Canada reminded me of a post I had lying in the depths of my draughts. So here goes.
When Twitter announced the cessation of the sms service back in August most of  my network was annoyed but not devastated. I felt pretty much the same. Twitter themselves made a number of suggestions for solving the problem amongst which was advising users to use one of the following methods.

• m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
• m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
• TwitterMail works on email-enabled phones
• Cellity works on java-enabled phones
• TwitterBerry works on BlackBerry brand phones
• Twitterific works on iPhones

No biggie i thought, I will just use the 3g network and things will continue as per. A bit of a bummer for me because I travel a lot and getting access to the 3g networks in other places is not always easy, but wtf.

I recently finished giving  a very interesting course. The people on my course use twitter (or used twitter) as an organisational and safety too.l  When they were in trouble as democracy or community activists they could tweet and come in contact with a local and international audience who could publicise the issue.  However as most people in the region do not have modern mobiles and no access to data plans, the un-texting of twitter has had a really bad effect on them. 
They have started to use Jaiku, but it does not have the same number of users and therefore is a much less useful tool.

Activists around the globe are using twitter as an increasingly important aspect of the struggle for democratic freedoms. Activists in China, Africa, the Middle-East and many other parts of the globe have both seen and shown the power of networked information services like Twitter.

An Example: Earlier in the year there were a number of strikes in Egypt. Activists organised using a variety of social media tools with Twitter being central. The use of web tools has caused the arrest of some of those activists, but it also helped release the American student James Karl Buck who was arrested while photographing the 6 April demonstration. His Twittered message ‘ARRESTED‘ through his cell phone alerted the world about his arrest.
This is a new front in the battle for democracy and freedom of expression. It is a great loss to the activists when a potent channel for the democratic dissemination and reception of information disappears.

It was only in meeting with people who are doing really important things with Twitter that I once again was reminded that what is trivial for us here can be lifesavingly important somewhere else in a different context. That what is seen as a time-suck and toy by us in the relative safety of our relative democracies can be a powerful tool for change in other places.

There are a lot of foundations out there giving money to good developmental projects. I would love to see a project that built an sms-bridge to social media networks for the developing world. Not exclusively for Twitter, but more like a Ping.fm service that delivered to mobiles as well as posted from them. I think it would be money well spent and give a democratic return on investment that would far outweigh most of the projects supported at the moment.

So, get your grant application pens out and start formulating! I would love to be involved :-)

Digital natives - pffff

Sarah Hartley has posted an interesting piece on the digital native theme.

Her post got me thinking and I posted a comment. Being the lazy sod I am, I repost the comment here as a posting.

I have some issues with the digital native/ digital immigrant meme.
I do not think it is a useful dichotomy as it makes age an arbitrary measurement to digital understanding. It makes it seem that if you are young enough, then you automatically have a digital mindset. I have seen no evidence of this. My j-students are often rigidly locked in to an analogue vision of the industry, see print (or radio or tv, or even a mixture of all three but in an analogue manner) as their future and do not easily understand the principals of conversation contra lecturing that many of us propagate as the (only) future for journalism. [When I say analogue I am talking about mindset, not technology. One can master digital technology and still have an analogue mindset. This is the situation for more and more journalists today.] They have some degree of technical knowledge (though that is often over-estimated) but no great conceptual grasp of the shift from analogue to digital.
(See Andys post  [ http://www.andydickinson.net/2007/01/14/journalism-education-we-lost-em-before-we-got-em/ ]as a starting point into this discussion)

The follow-on from this is that journalism educators develop courses that are tech based and program oriented which play to students strengths but never challenges their underlying “analogueness”.

Another problem with the meme is that it leads employers to believe that by just recruiting young people they will be gathering a base for change. This is leading to young, tech savy people being placed in leadership positions without them having the *journalistic* skills to make good strategic choices. I know of one example where the publisher is 34, has very strong tech skills but no journalism background and is making decisions that will have a long term impact on the publication. This is a danger to the journalistic development of our industry. A danger that the “digital native” argument perpetuates.

Also, looking around me, the people making a difference seem to be over 30. Have a look at your own area and see if that is also the case for you. I am over 50 and believe (possibly wrongly of course) that my grasp of the shift to digital and my immersion in and understanding of the process by far outstrips many (if not most) of the so called natives. This is not to say that there are not many under thirty doing great things in journalism, just that they are not doing them because they are under thirty

Its not an age thing. Its a curiosity thing. Which makes me a bit sad that so few journalists get it. Curiosity should be our stock-in-trade.

Rant on

As someone who loves to rant, vent spleen, disgorge well crafted (hahahah) complaints and just generally be a foul mouthed type, I love the idea of Dial-a-Rant.
The system is simple. You ring (0044) (0121) 288 9321 or skype dial.a.rant. You vent. You verify your rant. It gets published.

Great service, great idea. Give it a go.

voice of the voiceless

How often have you heard newspapers say that they are the voice of the voiceless?
A lot I bet.
What a pile of shite.

When the voiceless get vocal, when the audience gets uppity, the newspapers get frightened, offended and defensive.

A couple of examples. The Max Gogarty saga is one.
Short version: Max gets signed up by the Guardian to write a travel blog. He starts with;

Hello. I'm Max Gogarty. I'm 19 and live on top of a hill in north London.

At the minute, I'm working in a restaurant with a bunch of lovely, funny people; writing a play; writing bits for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.

Trite shite. Comments ensue. Lots of comments. Not positive. It then transpires that Max is the son of some-time Guardian travel writer Paul. Nepotism comments ensue. Many. Some vitriolic. Some even more vitriolic. [read about it on Joanna's or Pete's blog or search]. Blog gets taken down.

What we see here is audience participation. The voiceless speaking, ney shouting, and what they say is: do not like this.
The reaction from the champions of the voiceless?

Caroline Davies of The Observer writes of "Hate mail hell of a gap-year bloggerr". Emily Bell the Guardian's director of digital content says: "As publisher, we have a duty of care to him" and "It gives one a new perspective and empathy with workers in the health, education and retail sectors who have to mop up a fair amount of face-to-face abuse on a daily basis."

One of my favorites is by Rafael Behr

But as the case of Max Gogarty shows, there is no presumption of civility or community spirit online. His fate should be instructive to politicians. He was flamed because he was perceived to be bogus. Self-selecting judges ruled that he had no business writing for the Guardian. The message was transmitted swiftly, sometimes eloquently, sometimes wittily. His travel diary was extinguished. As an expression of mob will, it was very efficient

So. User comment, the vigorous expression of popular dissatisfaction, is now mob rule. Ahhh, it has to be you see because it is aimed at our newspaper! How dare those ungrateful cheeky bastards turn their ire on us when we gave them a voice.

My other example is from Sweden. A journalist at a Swedish newspaper got the job of moderating the  comments section of the site.
Two things happen.
Firstly the journalist Jaikus for help on how to change the rules of moderation. The rules are very restrictive.  The Jaiku community helps with suggestions and support.
The attitude the rules formalize is arrogance. No commenting on evenings or weekends. When she took up a discussion with the powers that be and as an example suggested that they contact a poster who had a post refused, there was absolutely no understanding of why:  "Thats not the way we do things - it is clearly stated that we have the right not to publish". And even worse: "Thats not the way we do things at a NEWSPAPER".

A thread on the comments board about the rules for posting was killed in the following way:

Debate over:
Time to end this debate. Please read the rules for posting and note that we only publish a selection of the posts. 

And there is the problem in a nutshell.

They still don't get it!

We are in the middle of a power shift. It is not that the rules of the game are changing and the media is slow to adapt.
It is a whole different game. Megaphone media are dead. That does not mean they wont be around for a (long) while, nor that they wont be (decreasingly) profitable. But they have no growth future.
They still don't get it!

Media conglomerates have been able to (miss)treat their public pretty much as they wanted  for a long time. And they still do not see the public as equal partners. As co-creators. As collaborators.

This is why I do not believe the talk of community building. Every time I hear it mentioned it is always in a discussion on how to monetize the users. How to "harvest" user generated content. How to get the user to fill the gaps created by under-staffed, under-trained (and mostly under-paid) journalists at the coal-face of 30% profit margining media companies.

Get a clue. The audience is grabbing back its voice. We in the media are going to get pilloried by the voices we say we mirror, represent, reproduce. And about time too.

The voiceless are less so now. Voices that are being used. Raised. Heard.
If we are to survive we need to listen. Talk with not at. Cooperate with our communities. Understand that we are A voice (and an important one) but never again THE voice.

Update: More foolishness

quote of the day

Quote of the day: "Well of course you are interested in blogs, you've been taking management happy pills."

Thanks you know who. Sad that we haven't come further than this.

How to do bad PR (Part 1 - UK)

You are a major telco, you are passionate about partnering, you are if your PR is to be believed -and why shouldn't it PR only tells it like it is- the creme of the crop. You are in fact Vodafone (and no, I will not be linking to them. Linkage is currency on the web and these fuckers do not deserve a digital dinar).

Here are the PR steps to be followed (if my recent experience is anything to go by):

Step 1: Find a major newspaper organization to help. Make sure that these people can seriously damage your reputation.

Step 2: Promise them things they need to facilitate a week long training course for their senior staff

Step 3: Keep them waiting till the last minute before delivering, and only then because one of your "passionate partners" has had to tear strips off some poor shit whose fault it probably wasn't (this has the added bonus of creating two streams of bad-will, one internal, one external).

Step 4: Deliver the kit so late that there is no possibility of them being able to check it before the course starts.

Step 5 Positively no support.

Step 6: Give them less kit than  promised and make sure there will not be enough to go round. This covers you bad-will wise in case any of the kit actually works (see next step).

Step 7: Be absolutely sure the kit does not work. (Bonus points here if each item has a different fault - keeps the freeloading bastards on their toes).

Step 8: Repeat step 5

Step 9: On the off chance that they get lucky and manage to get a support person, make sure they have no idea what the project is about, who authorized it or who the contact person within the company is. Be rude if possible.

Step 10: Wait for that hard earned good publicity to roll in and be offended if and when it does not.

---

Why do they bother? Why not just say no - not interested.
Their global branding manager should look into seppuku, but they would probably  just supply her/him with a blunt sword.

Cnn tube - the shills are out

Mediaweek reports that CNN is all set to launch iReport.com, a kind of CNN-Tube where its all up to the user/poster. CNN has, like most media organizations, vetted its user generated content (ugc) with about ten per cent getting through. In the article Susan Grant, executive vp of CNN News Services is quoted as saying:

“The community will decide what the news is. We are not going to discourage or encourage anything…iReport will be completely unvetted.”  (CNN will, however, monitor the site for objectionable content.)

Later in the article Craig Woerz, managing partner at Media Storm is quoted as saying

“We love it. That’s exactly the kind of things our advertisers are looking for. What we like about citizen journalism is that it’s emotional and real.”

Couple of things here to think about.
If the readers really decide what is news, who will decide what is objectionable?
Will the contributers get paid? My guess is not. [see the boilerplate for the present i-reports at the end of this post]
And thats why the Craig Woerz quote says so much. This is not an exercise in community building. Nor is it a display of the mighty mainstream media finally ceding the power of agenda setting and news evaluation to "the people". Its just one more attempt to milk the lucrative cash cow of ugc.

We need to start to build communities of collaboration. We need tap in to the collective consciousness of the communities we wish to engage with and understand that they are not cattle to milk but collaborators in constructing the new news agenda of the future.

This is what you give CNN:

"By submitting your material, for good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency and receipt of which you hereby acknowledge, you hereby grant to CNN and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit, or any portion thereof, as incorporated in any of their programming or the promotion thereof, in any manner and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without payment to you or any third party."

Well, they do need the money, poor things.

picture this

So, I am about to get in to the taxi when I notice the camera.
Hey, does that take pics of all your passengers? I ask
Yeah, its just a safety thing, nothing for you to worry about man.
Cool, I say, and take out my phone, open the camera and start to take pics of the driver.
What the fuck! he shouts. What you doin!
Its cool, just a safety thing I say. Nothing for you to worry about.
Fuck off man, your not getting in this cab. Go away.

So, no trip in that cab for me.

So all you vloggers, flickristas, street streaming videographers out there. Where does your privacy sphere start and end? Whats ok and not. Can others do onto you as you do onto them? How transparent are you?
Me - Im all in.

Answers on a picture postcard please.

Plasma screen danger

There are plasma screens in a lot of newsrooms now. I see in the Guardian that the NUJ at the Independent

"...are worried that such large visual displays are being sited directly above staff, and the stress they could bring through visual disturbance and heat,"

What a crock. There are a lot of things to be worried about in newsrooms including the quality of the output, but to concentrate effort on criticizing a piece of kit that allows us to see what we are publishing as we publish it is so counter-productive.
It is like saying that we should not have any newspapers lying around as that may lead to stress. And "visual disturbance"? Some of the outfits I see in the newsrooms could definitely be seen as visual disturbance, not to mention some of the people wearing them. But to call the ability for real time monitoring of one of our most important publication channels "a problem" shows a deep and problematic lack of insight in where the industry  is right now.

Anyone hear the word Wapping  echoing?

The Imperative of Proxies

Amongst the many things I learned during my latest stay in Ethiopia was that censorship is a real and present danger. The Ethiopian government has, despite its denials, enforced a draconian web censoring policy. Web sites that provide uncensored news and information, that could in any way be deemed regime critical or defend the "unacceptable" are routinely blocked in a growing number of countries.

Quite a few of these countries (here is one list, see CitizenLab for more, or view the updated list of arrested cyber dissidents from Reporters without Borders) receive aid in different forms. Donor nations and organizations need to apply pressure on these countries to ensure the free flow of information to their citizens.
We know this. They know this. Not a lot happens.
Donor countries say that they are talking to officials in each of these countries. Donor organizations say that they are talking to officials in these countries. The mill of diplomacy grinds slowly. The mill of oppression grinds frighteningly fast and is increasingly effective. When a proxy server ( a server at an unblocked URL that allows access through it to blocked sites: eg anonymouse.org) pops up it does not take a lot of time before it too joins the banned sites list.

There is however something that could be done immediately. By organizations that perceive themselves as standing for freedom of thought, exchange of ideas and unfettered curiosity. Universities.

If every university had a freely available proxy server (particularly universities that have a development or exchange program with countries like China, Vietnam, Syria, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe etc.) it would make it close to impossible to block them all.  Students could not access course material, teaching resources or professors web pages at the partner university. Not blocking the Universities web site could (and should) be a prerequisite for signing a contract.

We know that commercial companies have no morals other than those dictated by the bottom line.
Google, Skype, Murdoch, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cisco Systems- they all have agreements with China to censor their search-engines to filter out websites overcritical of the authorities.

Donor organizations like UNICEF talk the talk but lack the political will/muscle to implement.

But Universities - dependent as they are on their reputation as bastions of free and independent thought as well as excellence in teaching -  could be in the forefront of a global campaign to free speech.

Teacher and student unions - got to it.
Journalists with Universities in your area, ask them why not.
Alumni -put the pressure on. Start campaigns. Do it now.