In our news workshops, we talk a lot with our students about how the news is made. One thing we discuss is why some stories get lots of coverage, and others get none at all–essentially, what is traditionally considered news and what is not. The lesson that “if it bleeds, it leads” is not an easy one, especially when there are so many other important stories out there which also deserve the level of urgent reporting that is afforded to a story about a car crash. So, on Blog Action Day, when we’re asked to consider poverty, think about it: How often does poverty make the news?
With this in mind, I started doing some research and found that the answer is, for the most part, not very often. Poverty is an ageless problem, and like AIDS or cancer, it’s hard to imagine it being eradicated. There have always been poor people in the world, and we know that, even if we don’t all have to think about it every day. Generally, we’re not interested in the news media telling us something we already know, and so the challenge becomes making an old issue newsworthy right now.
We have seen that this is no minor feat. Before he confessed to the media about cheating on his wife, John Edwards was one the most prominent Americans especially devoted to the issue of poverty in our country. In May, he announced the Half in Ten campaign to cut poverty in half ten years from now, and embarked on a three-day tour of some of America’s most impoverished communities. As reported by journalist Peter Dreier, only one major newspaper covered the event in Philadelphia where the campaign was unveiled, perhaps because it was drowned out by news of Edwards’ pending endorsement of Barack Obama. The 2007 poverty tour got more coverage, happening as it was during the North Carolina senator’s campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. In both cases, we have to wonder if John Edwards or poverty was the real story. If John Edwards runs a 2009 poverty tour, will the coverage be about the issue, or will it be about a fallen politician trying to restore his career? (Let’s also not miss the irony that coverage was minimal when Edwards was trying for change that actually affects our lives, but coverage on his private life was top priority.)
As I continued to look at poverty in the media, I realized that perhaps an even greater issue may be the way that poverty is represented. Impoverished individuals and nations are often portrayed as “the other,” making it hard for us to relate to them or otherwise be inspired to help. There also exists the pervasive stereotype that poor people are a class of uneducated, unemployed, lazy addicts who may even be abusing the federal welfare system paid for by our tax dollars. When statistics about poverty are presented, it’s easy to feel that the problem is so overwhelming that it is totally out of our hands. Giving up is simpler. Move on to something more manageable.
And, unfortunately, this is true. The problem of poverty is not something one of us can fix on our own, and it isn’t manageable if only one person is addressing it. But when we all work together, the fight against poverty is one we can win, and one that must be won. If you think you’re not affected by the fact that, as of 2007, 37.3 million Americans are at or below the line of poverty, then think again. When massive amounts of a population cannot afford permanent housing, basic healthcare or food for their families, we are all at risk. Microloans, like those given out by the Grameen Bank, have proven effective–58% of Grameen Bank borrowers have been lifted from poverty. Poverty is a huge problem, but you do have the power to make a difference. Visit the Blog Action Day website for organizations to which you can make a donation, or, if you can’t spare the money, take time out to volunteer. Work at a soup kitchen or food pantry, donate clothes and blankets to the homeless, build houses, help out at a free clinic–the possibilities are endless, and they won’t cost you a dime. I like volunteermatch.org and idealist.org for volunteer opportunities, but there are several websites that can help. Perhaps years from now, poverty will be a thing of the past.
Resource guides offer real-world ideas for cyber-world issues
Brooklyn, New York: The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) launched the first volume in its LAMPlit series of multimedia resource guides, entitled “LAMPlit: A Beginner’s Guide to Going Online.”All of the guides in the LAMPlit series will be available for free download from the LAMP’s website at www.thelampnyc.org/lamplit.The guides are written and disseminated by the LAMP without corporate sponsorship.
The first guide focuses on helping adults and young people have a safe and positive experience online, and is released in coincidence with National Cyber Safety Awareness Month.During Symantec’s Norton Online Living Report in 2007, 1 in 5 children reported doing things online that their parents would disapprove of, while only 50% of parents have spoken to their kids about practicing safe online habits.One reason parents may be hesitant to get involved is because parents tend to hear more about the bad things that can happen online, says LAMP Executive Director D.C. Vito.
“The stories about online predators and cyberbullying tend to be the ones that get the most coverage,” says Mr. Vito.“It creates a culture of fear around the Internet and new media, and we’ve seen a lot of emphasis on the negative.We wanted to create a guide that is balanced and fair, that does not deny any of the bad things that potentially can happen online, but that also hits on the ways that the Internet is really a great thing.People just have to know what they’re doing.”
In addition to addressing privacy concerns, LAMPlit also aims to support parents who might avoid getting involved in their children’s online activities because new media can be overwhelming.
“It can be difficult for parents to start a conversation with their kids about what they’re doing online, but it’s absolutely imperative,” says Katherine Fry, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Media Studies at Brooklyn College and Education Director for the LAMP.“Too often, adults are intimidated by new technology, so they just ignore it.They miss using media as a chance to bring their family closer together instead of farther apart.”
All of the guides in the LAMPlit series will be available for free download from the LAMP’s website at www.thelampnyc.org/lamplit.Future LAMPlit guides will target gaming, social networking, Internet ethics, news, advertising and more.
About The LAMP:
The Learning About Multimedia Project (The LAMP) is a non-profit organization which strives to provide critical media literacy skills to the inter-related groups of youths, their parents and educators throughout New York City.Free media education workshops and events offered by the LAMP demystify the constant flow of media these three groups encounter, bridge the digital divide, and provide workforce development skills for future generations.
One of the things we at The LAMP stress when it comes to a healthy and enriching experience on the Internet is the permanence of things we say and do online. If you say on your blog in 2001(the last year the Avs won the Stanley Cup) that you can’t stand the Colorado Avalanche, it’s likely that someone in 2008 could find this even though you’ve come to your senses by declaring your allegiance to the BEST HOCKEY TEAM IN THE WORLD on your blog.
To illustrate this point, I’d like to point you over to Google’s 10th birthday celebration. By typing in “Colorado Avalanche”, the first entry that comes up is the hockey team’s official website. What Google is allowing you to do is see what it looked like back in 2001 (the farthest their most complete index of the Internet goes). By clicking on the View old version on the Internet Archive, it takes you to the webpage as it looked in 2001 at this time of year. And look! The Avalanche are the Stanley Cup Champions again, just like that!
In all seriousness, what this means is that there are hundreds and thousands of copies made of the Internet (aka indexes) by Google and many other organizations and people. So the next time you think to speak poorly online about the finest run hockey club around, you should remember, it’s nearly impossible to take it back.
Here at the LAMP, we love when we learn about ways that teachers are integrating multimedia into their classrooms. We’re strong believers in teachers, students (and parents) exploring the unlimited possibilities presented with new media and media education, so it was with great pleasure that saw a post in the New York Times’ Lesson Plans blog by an Alaskan schoolteacher, Doug Noon. Mr. Noon is a middle school teacher, and for the last three years his students have been sharing their writings on a blog called Tell the Raven. The posts are about a wide range of topics–sometimes students write about something that happened in class one day (like dissecting a moose heart) or something a little more personal (like their cat). The blog also has its own wiki, photo gallery, and sections with bookmarks to different subjects being covered in class.
As Mr. Noon notes in his post on the New York Times blog, Tell the Raven is still a work in progress. He hoped that the blog would help connect his students with other schools in Alaska, but so far that hasn’t happened–although they have been connecting with students in Australia. I admire that the students are encouraged to write and share their thoughts, and that they have an adult mentor like Mr. Noon to review their posts and help them consider how they want to present themselves to their classmates and to the world. The students get to learn about everything the Web has to offer, and have a guide to show them how to have a positive experience online. For Mr. Noon, he gets to learn more about what his students are doing and what interests them in class, and of course parents get learn more about their children. Everybody wins.
If you’re a teacher using multimedia in the classroom, tell us about it and share your ideas!
Finally was able to make our own Wordle. I took our rss feed and created this interesting tag cloud of our most commonly used terms. This is what we got.
I think it’s pretty cool because it grabs my imagination. (I have to confess that it has the word “media” so prominently in the middle is somewhat validating)
With the various advances made in new media over the past few years, media consumers are now able to bypass a key part of what makes media possible: advertisements. We can skip through ads on Tivo or just rent the DVD. A study by Sharpe Partners found that of 865 active online video viewers (”Super Sharers”), 75% of them are finding a way around ads. All of this might be convenient for us, but it’s not so great for the people who create the media we watch. When people stop watching commercials, not only does the airtime become less valuable and effective, but media producers have to work harder to make ends meet. Spot ads on television have been falling in 2008, and are not expected to improve for 2009.
As a result, the time-honored practice of product placement is on the rise. In an ideal world for advertisers, product placement is done so seamlessly that viewers don’t even realize that someone is trying to sell them something. To even the playing field, films and television shows are required by the FCC to state that a sponsor has paid for their product to be used. Usually this is done at the very end of a show or movie, after the credits. Now, the FCC wants to further regulate media and make product placement more explicit by expanding the visibility of sponsorship notices.
As much as I might not like being persuaded to buy something when all I’m trying to do is relax with a story, I do recognize product placement as a necessary evil. On the one hand, a product placement alert might help people better understand media, and I’m all for that. On the other hand, it could spin way out of control, as the technique becomes more refined, and I also think that such close policing doesn’t really solve any problems. I’d rather actively learn about product placement, and really understand it, rather than be passively told when it’s happening (by a government agency, no less).
Like banning athletes from social networking, this seems like a coverup for the real issue. The buying of stuff and the selling of stuff is fundamental to any economy, and we all need to have an understanding of the many complex meanings behind media messages. However, this can be done without sucking the enjoyment out of media, and it can be done in a way that makes people more independent thinkers. If the FCC is truly concerned with educating and informing the American people about media, they might start with, well–media education.
Our take on media literacy is that the more people become media literate - understanding media, critiquing media, creating media - the more engaged they become in their environment and the more active they become in their communities. Media literacy opens up the democratic process to more and more people by giving them the ability to critically think about the messages the media delivers and provides them with a voice to participate in the dialogue of how their society should operate. Taking the power to send messages to the masses out of the hands of the few corporate conglomerates who monopolize it and spreading it amongst those who are now media literate will bring new viewpoints and an increased heterogeneity.
On our YouTube channel, we subscribe to another organization’s channel by the name of Common Craft (leelefever). They are an organization that makes videos that breakdown seemingly complex matters - social media sites, twitter, rss feeds, zombies - in fun and approachable videos. In a way, they are expanding the audiences for the different tools and ideas, bringing more and more people into a dialogue that has usually been reserved for those with time and relevant experience to stay informed. The good folks over at Common Craft have actually posted a very timely video entitled “Electing a US President in Plain English”
It does an excellent job of streamlining a very complex and sadly misunderstood elective system, and what with all the talk from both candidates about making this election about you, the voter, and changing a complex system in Washington D.C., you’d think that they would find this video and the larger issue of media literacy quite in-line with their campaigns’ goals. Well, we at the LAMP are patiently waiting.
You are cordially invited to celebrate OneWebDay this weekend in NYC.
*The goal of OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy), focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet. So, think of OneWebDay as an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem. It’s a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet’s future.
We celebrate OneWebDay every September 22nd in locations all over the world. This year, in New York City, festivities kick off on Saturday the 20th and culminate in the main event on Monday the 22nd.
**9/20 - 2-4pm - Educational Workshops* *
*
*Eight workshops to help you make the most of the web. Located at NYU’s Courant Institute at 251 Mercer St., corner of W. 4th St.*
**How Wikipedia Works:* Mike Verilli will cover the basics of how and why Wikipedia <http://www.wikipedia.org/> is so successful, and how you can edit an article.
*The Open Video Project: *The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. Dean Jansen will walk you through the theory and practice behind this user-powered project.
*Creative Commons Licenses: *Fred Benenson will walk you through the Creative Commons <http://www.creativecommons.org/> licensing scheme and teach you how to share your work and protect it at the same time.
*
**Media Literacy — Breaking Ads with Digital Media - The LAMP: *We’re way past the age of only receiving one-way, top-down, corporate media messages. Today digital media and the Internet allow us talk back, interrogate, and re-create corporate-produced persuasive messages. In this session you’ll see commercials broken down to their persuasive essence, then re-created to reveal the truths left out. How are digital media and the web used to do it? Why would we want to do it? Is it legal? Find out here.**
*Citizen Journalism: *Mike Meyers of NowPublic.com will teach you how to get started as a citizen journalist.
*An Introduction to the Grassroots.org Web Builder: *Representatives from Grassroots.org <http://www.grassroots.org/> will show you how to build an effective web presence for your nonprofit in a single afternoon.
*SEO and Google Grants: *Kevin Lee will cover how and why search engine marketing is a critical tool for non-profits including some tips for both organic SEO best practices and how to maximize the return from your Google grant, as well as how to apply for a Google grant if you don’t have one.
*Understanding CRM for nonprofits and activists: *Develop an understanding of how/why online databases and organizing tools are game changers when it comes to lobbying, fundraising and communications. Presented by Charles Lenchner of Democracy in Action <http://www.democracyinaction.org/>.
**9/20 - 7-9pm - Tech Demos - The Latest Tools for Online Participation in Democracy**
Grassroots Web <http://web.meetup.com/27> and OneWebDay have teamed up to provide our own version of the New York Tech Meetup. We’ll be hosting 6 demos, all in tune with this year’s theme of online participation in
democracy. Here they are:
Contact: Anne Singer, 202-271-4679 or Susan Crawford, 202-669-0430
*OneWebDay Brings Internet Visionaries to New York City*
*Workshops for the Public, a Teach-in for Seniors and a Rally Starring Hon.
Gale Brewer, Sree Sreenivasan, Craig Newmark, John Perry Barlow, Tim
Westergren, Lawrence Lessig *
*and Others*
New York, NY – On the third annual “Earth Day for the Internet”, communities
across the country are holding events to learn about and advocate for that
marvel of modern infrastructure, the Internet. It happens in the United
States and around the world on OneWebDay, Monday, September 22, 2008, with
New York City, where it launched three years ago, the epicenter of this
year’s celebration.
“Earth Day was the model when I founded OneWebDay in 2006,” says Susan
Crawford, a professor of law specializing in Internet issues at the
University of Michigan. ”In 1969, one man asked the people to do what their
elected representatives would not: take the future of the environment into
their own hands.” According to Crawford, “people’s lives now are as
dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy
supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted, and we
must advocate for the Internet politically, and support its vitality
personally.”
The theme of this year’s OneWebDay is online participation in democracy,
coinciding with the U.S. elections, and that will be the central focus of
events in Washington, DC.
The online hub for OneWebDay 2008 is www.onewebday.org, but New York hosts
the biggest real world events on September 20 and 22, including a cyber-star
studded rally where audience members will text questions to the moderator.
All events are free and open to the public.
*New York City Events*
* *
*(1) WHAT*: Rally for the Internet Main Event
*WHEN*: Monday, September 22, 11:45 A.M. – 2 P.M.
*WHERE:* Washington Square Park Teen Plaza, W. 4th St. @ University Pl.
*WHO*: Susan Crawford, Founder of OneWebDay;
Hon. Gale A. Brewer, New York City Council;
Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Journalism and WNBC-TV;
Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora free Internet radio;
Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law and author of “Code V.2″;
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist;
Dharma Dailey, Research Director at Ethos Wireless consulting;
John Perry Barlow, founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation;
Andrew Baron, producer at Rocketboom video news blog;
Samuel J. Klein, Director of Community Content at One Laptop Per Child;
others TBA.
*(3) WHAT*: Workshops on E-activism, E-journalism, E-citizenship
*WHEN*: Saturday, September 20, 2-4 P.M.
*WHERE*: NYU’s Courant Institute, 251 Mercer @ West 4th St., Rooms TBA
*WHO*: Katherine Fry, The LAMP, NYC - media literacy; Charles Lenchner,
DemocracyInAction - tools for nonprofits; Grassroots.org - easy website
building for nonprofits; NYC Wireless - build your own router, etc.; Fred
Benenson, Creative Commons; Dean Jansen, Open Video; Mike Verrilli -
Wikipedia; Mike Meyers - citizen journalism; Kevin Lee - SEO/Google Grants.
OneWebDay, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization. It has a Board made up of
online luminaries (Doc Searls, David Weinberger, David Isenberg, Mary
Hodder), business people (Kaarli Tasso, Allison Fine, David Johnson, Rick
Whitt), a NYC PR person (Renee Edelman, Edelman), and a former state AG (Jim
Tierney, Maine). Its president is Susan Crawford, a professor at the
University of Michigan Law School. She is committed to working on this
holiday for the next seven years.
This past Monday, I heard about a nifty little browser plug-in called Spinspotter, which bills itself as “a website and software tool that exposes news spin and bias, misuse of sources, and suspect factual support.” Sounds great, but…really? I had to find out for myself. I went to the website, downloaded their toolbar (free), and got started.Initially I thought that perhaps Spinspotter had a group of people who spend their days trolling the web and highlighting instances of irresponsible reporting, which would then become known to me when I visited the site or the article. As it turns out, though, Spinspotter intends that I’m one of those people. When I come across a news article or a piece of article that I think should be flagged for spin, I highlight the passage or the article in full view, and right-click (yeah, I’m a PC person). Spinspotter appears on the menu that pops up, and from there I choose “Create Marker” from the list of options. Then, I have to select the “Rule of Spin” which is being used. Among my choices are Lack of Balance, Passive Voice and Selective Disclosure. Once I’ve chosen the rule, then I have 250 characters to describe how the rule is being broken. I click the submit button, Spinspotter rates the level of spin on a low-to-high scale of 1 to 5, and voila! I am a proactive, critical consumer of news. When I refresh the page, the Spinspotter logo on my toolbar changes colors, and a little menu bar appears which tells me that this article has been flagged for spin. I can read my explanation for why it was flagged, and my Spinspotter user name is attached to it as a byline.
One can see how there are lots of pros and cons to Spinspotter. First, in true Web 2.0 fashion, its effectiveness is entirely dependent upon its users. I read a good amount of news about a variety of topics, and so far my Spinspotter tool hasn’t lit up once in three days. If Spinspotter doesn’t catch on, and nobody else is creating markers, it is almost entirely useless to me. One thing I do like is that encourages me to think critically about the news I’m reading, and provides an outlet for me to share my findings, all while demanding some level of responsibility on my part. I can’t flag just anything; I have to be able to name specifically what about it is spin, and since I can’t create a marker as an anonymous Spinspotter user, I am being held accoutable to a degree for my opinion. On the other hand, my marker appears almost immediately, which suggests to me that it’s not being reviewed by anyone for accuracy or appropriateness. So in theory, I could actually be using Spinspotter to create more spin–suppose I marked an article about the pro-life movement. I could choose any rule of spin I wanted to, and then use my explanation space to air my personal opinions on abortion. Should another Spinspotter user find the article, they would then be subjected to my invectives which may or not be have anything to do with the quality of journalism.
I’m all for anything that encourages a real understanding of media, and I think Spinspotter was designed with the intention that people ask questions about the news they read, and share their ideas with others. This is crucial to being an active and responsible citizen and human being, and I applaud the people at Spinspotter for their efforts. I hope that it won’t be too long for teachers and students to couple tools like Spinspotter with other multimedia classroom activities. Such critical analysis is needed more than ever; perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the tool has debuted just after the Democratic and Republican conventions, when candidates and their supporters are working overtime to make their cases for should be elected President in two months. It has always been too easy for those in the media to spin reality–we are, after all, imperfect humans with our own opinions and needs. Journalism itself is a great example of how anything that can be used for good can also be abused for ill purposes, and the possibility that Spinspotter could be used the “wrong” way is not a good enough reason not to use it. They have an incredibly talented journalism advisory board, and after all, it’s only in its beta stage. I have a lot of hope for Spinspotter and its potential to transform the Internet, making media literacy a part of our every day lives.
In our news workshops, we talk a lot with our students about how the news is made. One thing we discuss is why some stories get lots of coverage, and others get none at all–essentially, what is traditionally considered news and what is not. The lesson that “if it bleeds, it leads” is not an easy one, especially when there are so many other important stories out there which also deserve the level of urgent reporting that is afforded to a story about a car crash. So, on Blog Action Day, when we’re asked to consider poverty, think about it: How often does poverty make the news?
This past Monday, I heard about a nifty little browser plug-in called 
