Group items tagged

About Media Helping Media PDF Print E-mail Thursday, 19 October 2006 Media Helping Media (MHM) has been set up to provide training resources and a voice for those involved in the media in transition states, post-conflict countries and areas where freedom of expression and media freedom is under threat. Training resources The aim is to bring together a variety of training resources which are available for all to use for the benefit of anyone working in the media in difficult circumstances. All are free-of-charge and can be reproduced, as long as Media Helping Media (or any guest authors) are credited. Contributed articles Some articles will be contributed by registered members of MHM who are active in media freedom and human rights organisations and, as such, these articles may not offer both sides of an issue and may not be balanced. Other articles will be written by journalist or media leaders who claim to be under threat and who make no attempt to offer balance or impartiality in the pieces they submit. MHM doesn't seek to achieve balance on their behalf.

"On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian. Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development-not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media-usually known, when this argument is made, as "gatekeepers" or "the priesthood"-have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. "Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff-and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession," Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths." The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn't use to be. One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey. Another is information originally published in other media-everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods-which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites. Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don't have jobs with news organizations. According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would add

This article was looks at the role of new media in Sri Lanka and mentions other places. It briefly looks at the politics and history of the conflict in SL and the problems (assassinations, kidnapping, threats and deportation by the government and police)  of conventional reporting from SL. Can Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and new media help promote human rights and good governance?\n\nNew media and ICTs can be used by illiberal regimes as well as by civilians, but overall it can be used to strengthen democracy, record violence and holds those responsible up for public scrutiny. Mobile phones are redefining our idea of what a journalist is. online reports and bogs are unstoppable because they are decentralized. there are all ways more bloggers if a few are arrested and there are ways around the system even if some sites are blocked.\n\nSri Lanka has many mobile phones among low income groups. It also has low internet costs. But there need to be understanding of the potential of this media. people need to be motivated to participate in governance and policy beyond just at election time.\n\nInternet is 2 way communication making people feel more connected. everyone has a equal voice. Blogs can be used to show conflict and phones with cameras can add images. New media and citizen journalism is different to e-goverment initiative (where gov will open up info for public and present it online)\n\nNew Media and Citizen journo can play important role in info, relief and conflict management and in providing news pictures from disasters and conflicts. SL citizens found a ways to express concerns when mainstream media was cut off. Currently most material comes from english speakers in urban areas, but has the potential to give voice to all citizens. It is also very useful for collecting ststs such as deaths etc.\n\nRealtime video over highspeed internet offers more possibility of having many TV camera man rather than just 1 film crew.\n\nGroundviews.org

"Corentin Wauters: Gamma is one of the most famous photojournalism agencies. Some even call it legendary. How important has it been for photojournalism? Michiel Munneke: I think Gamma - but also others like Magnum, for instance - played an extremely important role from early years on, especially in documenting crucial news events around the world. It's important to realise that in those days you had magazines like Life and the Picture Post who very generously allocated tens of pages to events like the war in Vietnam, for example. Those publications and photographs made a huge impact on their readerships. I think it's fair to say that the founders of Gamma, like Raymond Depardon - although he moved to Magnum at the end of the '70s - and Gilles Corron, who died in 1970 in Cambodia, can be classified as legendary. They played a very important role in news documenting in those years. Raymond Depardon said that in 1966 you only had to travel far away and take three shots to get published in magazines Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur. How has the profession of photojournalism changed since Gamma was founded? If Depardon was saying that competition for space in publications like Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur is stronger, then he's absolutely right. Competition is far more severe. Circulations are going down, advertising revenues are shrinking, and consequently budgets for journalism and for photography are being cut. image Nowadays its very rare that publications send photographers for assignments overseas. Take a renowned magazine like Time. They still have photographers on staff but they very rarely get assignments to go overseas. It's a sign of the times. Gamma, but also other big photojournalism agencies like Sipa, were founded in Paris. The city had a big name as a centre for photojournalism. To what extent is that true today? I think for those years it was really true. But now, in the era of globalisation and digitisation, it doesnâ

Soren Gordhamer writes and consults on ways we can more creatively and effectively use the technologies of our age, including social media. He is the author of "Wisdom 2.0″ (HarperOne, 2009). You can follow him on Twitter at @SorenG. It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. In recent years social media, likely more than anything else, has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed over the past few years because of tools like Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter) might have been unimaginable for most people at the beginning of this decade. But social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one another and the world around us. Here are the top areas that social media has affected in our daily lives.

Soren Gordhamer writes and consults on ways we can more creatively and effectively use the technologies of our age, including social media. He is the author of "Wisdom 2.0″ (HarperOne, 2009). You can follow him on Twitter at @SorenG. It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. In recent years social media, likely more than anything else, has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed over the past few years because of tools like Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter) might have been unimaginable for most people at the beginning of this decade. But social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one another and the world around us. Here are the top areas that social media has affected in our daily lives.

How to Teach Yourself About Social Media When J-Schools Fail Roland Legrand by Roland Legrand, April 14, 2009 Tagged: communities of practice, connectivism, journalism school, learning, networked learning, social media Journalism is changing rapidly due to social media, and these changes can be bewildering as people wonder how to keep up. I recently gave a social media workshop for journalism students, and I soon realized that many students were still unaware of social media other than Facebook. They were shocked to hear about feed readers, blogs, or micro-blogging and asked how they could learn about all those developments. It seems that we should rethink not only journalism, but also journalism education: Tomorrow's journalists will need to take the initiative to teach themselves about rapidly changing technology. To that end, here are some ways that students can become their own teachers in regards to social media. Bewilderment

This article looks at the role, impact and response to the internet, new media and citizen journalism during the 2007 protests.\n\nIt starts by going over the history of burma and the junta and the events leading up to the 2007 protests. This protest was different than previous burmese protests due to the amount of information coming out. Cyberspace was flooded with grainy pictures and videos taken by burmese citizens,\n\nThe internet allowed people in Burma to send information and pictures out to show what was happening bringing a new type of political activism and global advocacy. The burmese protests were influenced greatly by this new media, but the protests still failed and many were killed.\n\nThe article talks about Yochai Benkler who argues the internet has opened possibilities even for those living under brutal regimes. Cheap cost and decentralisation is the main factors that are good about the internet in this situation.\n\nThe burmese media used to be free when under colonial rule. This free expression may have sparked the independence movement, but was then restricted when the army took over and restricted the media. Old media is easy to control by controling the sources (eg newspapers and TV stations). The internet is the new media model. BurmaNet, funded by the Soros foundation was one of the 1st news sites. Others followed, many based in thailand and with contacts to pro-democracy movements\n\nThe government stepped up its efforts to stop this content and prohibited the ownership of computers without approval. It also made its own propaganda websites. The 2007 protests show that even though the gov attempted to control the media the internet is uncontrollable and info will get out. Web 2.0 was also in full swing with citizen journalists uploading photos, video and blogging. The main news outlets were al using grainy amateur footage.\n\nDuring the protests the gov blocked the internet and cell phones sometimes. \n\nMuch of the blogs were outsite the co

Guidelines for the Evaluation of Ethnographic Visual Media AAA Statement Produced by the Society for Visual Anthropology 2001 Ethnographic visual media (specifically film, video, photography, and digital multimedia) play a significant role in the production and application of anthropological knowledge and form an integral part of the discipline's course offerings. Anthropologists involved in the production of visual works make valuable scholarly contributions to the discipline. In addition, anthropologists increasingly include visual media productions as part of their curricula vitae. Departmental and university Committees for Hiring, Promotion and Tenure are thus charged with judging the scholarly quality of these non-print works. Yet not all anthropologists bring appropriate experience or training to their evaluation of visual media and no standard guidelines exist. Committees tasked with appraising the significance of visual media as academic contributions to the discipline--to teaching, scholarly research, and applied anthropology --can benefit from evaluative criteria. Accordingly, the American Anthropological Association, under the advisement of the Society for Visual Anthropology, offers these guidelines for the evaluation of ethnographic visual media.

View my * My Posts * Twitter 10 Ways Newspapers are Using Social Media to Save the Industry March 11th, 2009 | by Woody LewisComments newspaper imageWoody Lewis is a Social Media Strategist and Web Architect. He authors a blog at woodylewis.com about social media strategy for newspapers. These days, everyone knows that one of the hottest stories any newspaper can cover is that of its own demise. The collapse of print advertising and the downturn in sales, at the news stand and through subscriptions, has led to a frantic search for new ways to monetize content that's often available online for free. Social media gives any business an interactive channel to communicate with its current and future customers. For newspapers, that channel can increase the chances of survival in a market where commoditized information has diminished the value of individual brands. Here are ten ways newspapers are using social media to save the industry.

How social networking is changing journalism A conference in Oxford explores the interaction between the internet and the news industry * Comments (1) * Buzz up! * Digg it The morning of the Oxford Social Media Convention focused on the impact of social media. Especially interesting were the statements on the panel 'Breaking news: the changing relationships between blogs and mainstream media'. Richard Sambrook, the director of the BBC Global News Division, said that the impact of social media was overestimated in the short term and underestimated in long term. Mainstream media are adopting social media especially with blogging and twitter, he admited, but nobody discusses the effects on the long term.

The Research Center Collections are central to the VSW mission to support the "creation, presentation, collection, preservation and education" of media based arts. VSW's focus on the aesthetics, cultural history of media, and social use of images has developed a collections policy which includes both creative work and vernacular images, as well as items that represent the history of media use. The Independent Press Archive has 5000 artist's books -- the largest collection of artists' books in upstate New York. This Archive is complemented by the Illustrated Book Collection, which contains illustrated books published from 1694 to the present day that display all aspects of engraving and photo-engraving practices and all forms of imaging technologies from wood engraving to xerography. These collections are supported by a Research Library of 20,000 books concentrating on the areas of photography, filmmaking, video, bookmaking, media studies, and the cultural practices of image making. The Photograph Collections contain 27,000 original photographic or photo-mechanical prints made by 2,200 known photographers and more than 600,000 examples of vernacular or anonymous images in the form of lantern slides, stereo cards, snapshots, postcards and news agency photographs. These collections hold examples of every type of photographic practice from the family snapshot to the fine art print and include work of every era from the daguerreotypes of the 1840s to digital prints from the present day.

Much has been written about the questionable research, writing, and presentation of indigenous people in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in Jared Diamond's New Yorker article, "Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?"  I would like to place the article and discussion of it in a more general context of media ethics and media coverage of indigenous people. Moreover, I would like to consider it in the context of the important work that indigenous people around the world are doing, to tell more accurate stories - in their own voices - and to create their own media outlets and networks.

Vietnam War - "The Impact of Media" explores in detail the 'media distortions' due to television's misrepresentations during the Vietnam War. It rebuts the view promoted by PBS 's 13-part documentary series, "Vietnam: A Television History". The rebuttal also applies to "The Ten Thousand Day War" series. "The Impact of Media" is a must-see for historians and politicians alike. The late president Ronald Reagan lauded this rebuttal video when he watched it and said that it's "something all Americans should see". Made in 1984.

"Social Media: Don't Be Left Behind Departments, Electronic Market, Fall 2009 - By Richard on October 23, 2009 at 11:19 am Social networking websites are the talk of the town, but how can they help your business? By Rosh Sillars Supporters exalt it as the great advance in communication. Detractors consider it a waste of time. Like it or not, the phenomenon of social media empowers the public at large to capture and disseminate information immediately. But how do all these technological advances affect the photographer? Is the growth of social media killing our business? How do these changes affect the amateur? Are there ways for photographers to use these new tools for their benefit?"

Throughout history, war has affected media, with conflict often creating an information void. In the 21st century, media has begun to affect war more than

"The past decade has seen dramatic changes in the information and communication environment. Parameters as to who has access to information gathering and dissemination have altered rapidly and irreversibly. Civil society actors such as NGOs and advocacy networks are becoming increasingly significant players as the traditional news media model is threatened by shrinking audiences, the availability of free content online, and the declining fortunes of mainstream media. To what extent do NGOs take on functions as information intermediaries, working in cooperation with, or even in the stead of, traditional news organizations? Are we witnessing a general trend, or do NGOs fulfill specific purposes in times of crisis or critical events that focus attention on a specific (international) topic? And what are the consequences of this for the fields of advocacy and journalism? This essay series, organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, in cooperation with the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, seeks to examine these critical questions from a variety of perspectives, and encourage discussion and deliberation on what these changes mean for NGOs, traditional media outlets, news consumers, and society as a whole."

The IFJ Launches Website for Ethical Journalism Campaign Welcome to the Ethical Journalism Initiative website - a new campaign to rekindle old values in media worldwide launched by the International Federation of Journalists. The future of media is the hot topic everywhere, particularly as journalists and others wrestle with the rapid changes in the way journalism works. In troubled times of political tension, social conflict and economic turbulence people yearn for reliable and quality information. Journalism provides the analysis, context and commentary that keep citizens informed and allows them to play their part in the life of society. The role of media in helping to build democracy has never been more important, but how will journalism in future deliver the service people need? [..]

Images shape our perceptions. The manufacture of consent has rarely been more engineered. With everything from wars to presidential campaigns being stage managed and with mainstream news increasingly fed by official sources, reliance on usual sources of news images has become increasingly dangerous. Majority world countries suffer particularly from stereotypical representations, and while the media worldwide is increasingly being dominated by a few players, it becomes particularly important for news sources to be diverse and varied. With Getty and Corbis controlling the stock market, and Reuters, AP, AFP and EPA dominating the wires, communities in the west are looking for new ways to challenge established media, especially through citizen journalism. The majority world has traditionally been represented by white, middle class, western photographers. But having local photographers is not in itself sufficient. While editorial control remains in the North, stories will continue to have a northern slant, and the only way in which this can be challenged is through alternative sources being formed that are independent of western and corporate media. DrikNEWS is designed to fill this void. This agency, an independent body of Drik Picture Library, aims to cover news photography and investigative reporting by disseminating both locally and internationally through the web.

"January 12 marked the anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook Haiti last year, killing more than 230,000 people and leaving several million inhabitants of the small island nation homeless. Though natural disasters are common, the humanitarian response this time was different: New media and communications technologies were used in unprecedented ways to aid the recovery effort. A report recently released by Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities, with support from Internews and funding from the Knight Foundation, takes a critical look at the role of communications in the crisis and recommends ways to improve the effectiveness of utilizing media in future disaster relief efforts. (The Knight Foundation is a major funder for MediaShift and its sister site MediaShift Idea Lab.)"

"Description Vietnam was America's most divisive and unsuccessful foreign war. It was also the first to be televised and the first of the modern era fought without military censorship. From the earliest days of the Kennedy-Johnson escalation right up to the American withdrawal, and even today, the media's role in Vietnam has continued to be intensely controversial. The "Uncensored War" gives a richly detailed account of what Americans read and watched about Vietnam. Hallin draws on the complete body of the New York Times coverage from 1961 to 1965, a sample of hundreds of television reports from 1965-73, including television coverage filmed by the Defense Department in the early years of the war, and interviews with many of the journalists who reported it, to give a powerful critique of the conventional wisdom, both conservative and liberal, about the media and Vietnam. Far from being a consistent adversary of government policy in Vietnam, Hallin shows, the media were closely tied to official perspectives throughout the war, though divisions in the government itself and contradictions in its public relations policies caused every administration, at certain times, to lose its ability to "manage" the news effectively. As for television, it neither showed the "literal horror of war," nor did it play a leading role in the collapse of support: it presented a highly idealized picture of the war in the early years, and shifted toward a more critical view only after public unhappiness and elite divisions over the war were well advanced. The "Uncensored War" is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Vietnam war or the role of the media in contemporary American politics."