[new media literacy: principles]

Dan Gillmor: Principles of a New Media Literacy via Jos Schuurmans

An interesting read but I'm not sure about painting "teenagers and children" as "digital natives." Lots of teens I have met don't "already" know how to create media...they need to learn. Some "digital immigrants" aren't old...I don't think this is an age-thing. Imporantly though, Gillmore highlights some important issues: anonymity and transparency.

"Be skeptical of absolutely everything. This means not taking or granted the trustworthiness of what we read, see or hear from media of all kinds, whether from traditional news organizations, blogs, online videos or any other form.

But don’t be equally skeptical of everything. We all have an internal “trust meter” of sorts, largely based on education and experience. We need to bring to digital media the same kinds of parsing we learned in a less complex time when there were only a few primary sources of information. A news article in New York Times or Wall Street Journal starts out in strongly positive territory on that trust meter. An anonymous comment on a random blog, by contrast, starts with negative credibility. Anonymity is an important thing to preserve, because it protects whistleblowers and others for whom speech can be unfairly dangerous. But when people don’t stand behind their words, a reader should always wonder why and make appropriate adjustments.

Understand and learn media techniques. Teenagers and children already know how to create media; they are digital natives. Older people are learning. But younger and older alike are, for the most part, less clear on how communications are designed to persuade if not manipulate. It’s
fine, if not essential, to know how to snap a photo with a mobile phone. It’s just as important to know — and to teach our children — how media creators push our logical and emotional buttons.
Ask more questions. This goes by many names: research, reporting, homework, etc. The Web has already sparked a revolution in commerce, as potential buyers of products and services discover relatively easy ways to learn more before the sale. We need to recognize the folly of making any major decision about our lives based on something we read, hear or see — and the need to keep reporting, sometimes in major ways but more often in small ones, to ensure that we make good choices.

All of the principles above are part of the toolkit of every responsible journalist. So are a few more, including the ones that every traditional journalist of any honor would embrace, namely thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and independence. They boil down to simple but important
notions: Get as much information as possible. When you say something, be sure your facts are correct. Be fair to people and interests from all angles. And be as independent as possible, especially as an independent thinker who knows how to listen, not just lecture.

In the digital world, even more than the analog one, we need to add transparency to that list, because the thinking behind the media deserves exposure in addition to the work itself. Nowhere will this be more important than with citizen journalists — though the traditional media need to
adopt more transparency as well, for their own sakes. They may be paid, individually, not to have conflicts of interest. But that doesn’t mean they work without bias.

Transparency in the traditional ranks has scarcely existed for most the past century. It’s difficult, in fact, to name a business as opaque as journalism, the practitioners of which insist that others explain their actions but usually refuse to amplify on their own.

Scandal, for the most part, has forced open the doors to a degree. The Jayson Blair debacle at the New York Times led the newspaper to describe in lurid detail what had happened. It also led to the creation of a “public editor” post — also called ombudsman in other cases.

Bloggers, through their own relentless critiques, have made traditional-media transparency more common as well. However unfair bloggers’ criticism may often be, it has also been a valuable addition to the media-criticism sphere.

Bloggers, too, need to adopt more transparency. Some, to be sure, do reveal their biases. That gives readers a way to refract the writers’ world views against the postings, and then make decisions about credibility. But a distinctly unhappy trend in some blog circles is the undisclosed or poorly disclosed conflict of interest. Pay-per-post schemes are high on the list of activities that deserve readers’ condemnation — and, one hopes, less readership."

[blogging and literary analysis]

Via John Timmer at Ars Technica

"The rise of blogging clearly represents a significant social phenomenon, but studying it poses a challenge in part because defining a blog is not a simple thing. There have been a number of attempts to do so at the technical level, where the presence of material organized by time stamp or the existence of RSS feeds have been suggested as defining features. A group at the University of California-Irvine, however, decided to approach the question from the perspective of human-computer interactions, where the humans involved were blog readers. Mixing in a dose of literary theory provided some interesting insights into how readers view and define blogs.

The idea borrowed from HCI studies was a simple one: perform observations of actual users as they are interfacing with their computers. The observations took the forms of usage surveys, overseen reading sessions, individual discussions, and a single group discussion. Unfortunately, given the time-intensive nature of the work, the study population was small (20 subjects), and several of them did not participate in all aspects of the study. Attempts to log browsing habits didn't work out; the survey population was either savvy enough about privacy concerns to not install the logging software, or not savvy enough to manage a functional installation.

Still, the researchers were able to generate information about how readers interact with blog material. They argue that this can be as important as having information about the blogs themselves, citing the development of reader response theory in literary criticism. As applied to blogs, they state, "the reality and meaning of a blog exists neither solely in the blog itself nor solely in the reader, but rather in the reader’s active interpretation of, and interaction with, the blog."

What they found is that reading blogs has become a habit integrated into Internet use for many people, akin to instinctively checking e-mail. Several of the blog readers described it as simply a way to pass the time, using terms like "wasting time" and "doing nothing." One of them described it in terms of addiction: "I don’t really look forward to cigarettes anymore, but it's something that happens through the course of the day that I feel like I might need to do. It just becomes habit, I guess."

Given that attitude, a few of the other findings aren't much of a surprise. For one, the temporal structure of a blog is only important due to the role it plays in where stories appear on screen. People will tend to read the top ones first, and browse deeper only if they have time—if they don't, the deeper stories generally don't get read. A product of this is that few of the blog readers felt their habits contributed to a sense of information overload.

Despite this casual approach to content, blog readers take a number of aspects of the content very seriously. One example of this dichotomy is that a reader that can't be bothered to search for new blogs beyond the ones he currently reads, but still engages in offline activities based on what he's seen in the ones he does read.

One key feature for most users was a sense of community. Even though blogging is an inherently one-to-many activity, most readers felt a personal connection to the author. This could foster the feeling that the reader belonged to the community even in the absence of participation, and led those who did participate via comments to agonize over their content. Only one of the study participants said they enjoyed triggering flame wars; most of the others felt their comments were a form of appreciation for the blog author, and worked hard to make them insightful and cogent.

This produced a distinction between smaller blog communities and popular, news-focused blogs. These didn't produce the same sense of belonging, and readers tended to focus more on their content than their community. That result suggests that the blogging community will always have a long tail, as readers search for smaller places where they can continue to find a sense of connection with the authors.

The study's authors kindly provided Ars with a copy. It was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery's CHI Conference, and is available through their website."

[blog-vertising]

Simpleology has this deal: blog about their multi-media course on blogging and in exchange bloggers get the course for free....it's about:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

You can grab yours while it's free.

hrm...

[cnn fires blogger]

"As far as CNN knew, I was a valued employee, albeit one with almost no say in the day-to-day editorial decisions on American Morning. This held true even as I began contributing columns to the Huffington Post, giving my writing more exposure than ever before.

Then, last Monday afternoon, I got a call from my boss, Ed Litvak.

Ed, seeming to channel Bill Lumburgh from Office Space, informed me of that which I was already very well aware: that my name was "attached to some, uh, 'opinionated' blog posts" circulating around the internet. I casually admitted as much and was then informed of something I didn't know: that I could be fired outright for this offense. 24 hours later, I was. During my final conversation with Ed Litvak and a representative from HR, they hammered home a single line in the CNN employee handbook which states that any writing done for a "non-CNN outlet" must be run through the network's standards and practices department. They asked if I had seen this decree. As a matter of fact I had, but only about a month previously, when I stumbled across a copy of that handbook on someone's desk and thumbed through it. I let them know exactly what I had thought when I read the rule, namely that it was staggeringly vague and couldn't possibly apply to something as innocuous as a blog. (I didn't realize until later that CNN had canned a 29-year-old intern for having the temerity to write about her work experiences -- her positive work experiences -- in a password-protected online journal a year earlier.) I told both my boss and HR representative that a network which prides itself on being so internet savvy -- or promotes itself as such, ad nauseam -- should probably specify blogging and online networking restrictions in its handbook. I said that they can't possibly expect CNN employees, en masse, to not engage in something as popular and timely as blogging if they don't make themselves perfectly clear."

[...]

"When I asked, just out of curiosity, who came across my blog and/or the columns in the Huffington Post, the woman from HR answered, "We have people within the company whose job is specifically to research this kind of thing in regard to employees."

Jesus, we have a Gestapo?

A few minutes later, I was off the phone and out of a job. No severance. No warning (which would've been a much smarter proposition for CNN as it would've put the ball effectively in my court and forced me to decide between my job or the blog). No nothing. Just, go away.

Right before I hung up, I asked for the "official grounds" for my dismissal, figuring the information might be important later. At first they repeated the line about not writing anything outside of CNN without permission, but HR then made a surprising comment: "It's also, you know, the nature of what you've been writing."

And right there I knew that CNN's concern wasn't so much that I had been writing as what I'd been writing."

[web 2.0 resources]

I recently came across this excellent compendium of web 2.0 resources via Dawn Hogue's own useful "Blogs, Wikis, & Web 2.0 in the Classroom" site.

Some of the more interesting ones:

• pimp my news: "scours the web 24/7 for text news and blogs you love and instantly converts them to MP3s that you listen to on your iPod, iPhone or your computer, anytime, anywhere."
  

• trackr: "Use trackr! to let people know where you are and where you have been. All you need is the Internet, a GPS receiver and your mobile phone (or a mobile phone with an internal GPS receiver). Download the application to your mobile phone, create a friendslist and let your friends know where you are."





• arenAsia: "a good way to get ahead in Asia. Professionals use ArenAsia to cultivate business relationships, promote their skills or services, and share insights, opinions and information through discussion groups, event listings, marketplace and knowledge base."






• trutap: "allows you to take your online social life where you go. You can send group messages, SMS and email from your mobile phone for free. You can also chat with your friends on IM (e.g. MSN) and post to blogs, photo-sharing accounts and social networks - all from your mobile phone."






• ecolet: "a web–based company that provides the design community timely, accurate information and news about sustainable materials for product design, architecture, furniture design, graphic design, and more. With headquarters in both Providence and San Francisco, Ecolect LLC aims to be the place for individuals and businesses to learn, connect, share and discover the best in eco–materials."






• guru del vino!!!: "a place for people passionate about wine where they can learn more, share their knowledge and meet with other people who share their passion. It relies on intuitive drag & drop functionality, behaving just like a normal desktop. It is especially easy to use for elderly persons, who form a great part of the wine business target group."






• songza: "allows you to find songs, share them with your friends, and even create playlists."






• wise mapping: "the web mind mapping tool that leverages the power of Mind Maps using new technologies like vectorial languages (SVG and VML)."

[blog comments vs peer review]

"What if scholarly books were peer reviewed by anonymous blog comments rather than by traditional, selected peer reviewers?

That's the question being posed by an unusual experiment that begins today. It involves a scholar studying video games, a popular academic blog with the playful name Grand Text Auto, a nonprofit group designing blog tools for scholars, and MIT Press.

[...]

The blog is read by many of the same scholars he sees at academic conferences, and also attracts readers from the video-game industry and teenagers who are hard-core video-game players. At its peak, the blog has had more than 200,000 visitors per month, he says.

"This is the community whose response I want, not just the small circle of academics," Mr. Wardrip-Fruin says.

So he called up the folks at the Institute for the Future of the Book, who developed CommentPress, a tool for adding digital margin notes to blogs (The Chronicle, September 28, 2007). Would they help out? He wondered if he could post sections of his book on Grand Text Auto and allow readers, using CommentPress, to add critiques right in the margins.

The idea was to tap the wisdom of his crowd. Visitors to the blog might not read the whole manuscript, as traditional reviewers do, but they might weigh in on a section in which they have some expertise.

[...]

Each day he will post a new chunk of his draft to the blog, and readers will be invited to comment. That should open the floodgates of input, possibly generating thousands of responses by the time all 300-plus pages of the book are posted. "My plan is to respond to everything that seems substantial," says the author."

From Blog Comments and Peer Review Go Head to Head to See Which Makes a Book Better
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

[feminism and copyright]

In this month's issue (I believe it is also the first ever issue) of the International Journal of Internet Research Ethics there is a fascinating article by Erin Hvizdak. Her "Creating a Web of Attribution in the Feminist Blogosphere" takes a feminist look at issues of copyright. She begins by suggesting that although legal issues (such as copyright) have been criticised, little in fact has been written about it. Why might this be so? Well, because "women are more likely to participate in collaborate activities, such as quilting, knitting, or cooking, activities that produce domestic "works" not generally protected by Title 17, section 102(a)." (Bartow qtd. in Hvizdak).

Moving from to the very interesting idea of "author" as a singular "'heroic self-presentation of Romantic poets' (Woodmansee & Jaszi, 1994, p. 3)" to collaborative efforts which mean authorship is plural and distributed. Hvizdak (using Bartow) explains that women seeking copyright protection "violate the feminine social norms of caring, sharing, and nurturing, therefore deterring women from seeking this protection" (Bartow, 2007, p. 33). However, usual instantiations of copyright, according to Hvizdak, privilege the singular author over a composite notion of authorship, highlighting binaries as evidence of a certain kind of privileging:

"Feminist theory also deconstructs the binaries present in copyright doctrine, exposing patriarchal power structures. Dan L. Burk cites dualisms such as mind/body and nature/culture, (Burk, 2006) while Craig cites laborer/free-rider, creation/reproduction, and author/user (Craig, 2006). Each of these binaries holds the characteristic of one side being privileged over another, or one side being "inferior and feminized" (Burk, 2006, p.11). For example, the most prevalent binary, author/user, is invoked to determine infringement. The author is the creator, the sole owner of the work, and that who has control; the user, in any attempt to become involved with the piece, such as changing or borrowing from it, becomes an infringer and is punished by law. The user must separate him or herself from the author and his or her work, becoming an outside spectator rather than an active participant. Not only is this binary problematized by the assertion that
culture, and therefore creation, works in a dialogic manner, but also in the fact that it is the public, the audience, or the user that makes a work economically viable or worthy of copyright protection (Zemer, 2007, p. 5-6). In other words, without the user or consumer, the author or creator would have no reason to call him or herself a unique, autonomous, author-genius under copyright protection."

Considering writing in the blogosphere, Hvizdak notes that one might *expect* women bloggers to *not* copyright their work because

"Blogs are highly collaborative efforts, relying on information from external sources (news media, other individuals) to create meaning, and encouraging readers to add to the creation by posting comments. This is in stark contrast to the concept of the autonomous author as sole creator in copyright law, so bloggers might not see their blogs as created by a single person and therefore worthy of or needing protection. Additionally, rejecting copyright protection might align itself with feminist activity, subverting hierarchical patriarchal power by emphasizing and encouraging collaborative creation."

***However, women in the blogosphere do employ copyright.***

"Of 143 blogs surveyed, 55 had some type of copyright statement or a link to it present on the homepage, while 88 did not. These data can be further broken down into women's and feminists' blogs. Women-authored blogs expressed copyright-protected status in 31 out of 72 instances, while feminist blogs expressed it in 24 of 71 instances."

Hvizdak goes on to detail her findings and ends with her conclusion:

"Attribution is a way of bringing these two sides of the copyright binary together - it allows one to retain control over his or her creation and therefore obtain social gains while at the same time emphasizing the collaborative nature of knowledge production and the forging of social relationships. While many of the authors of texts on feminist perspectives of copyright call for a change in the law to embrace traditional 'women's' collaborative works such as quilting or cooking, the feminist focus should instead work to negotiate the author/user binary so that shared knowledge production is encouraged and the rights of authorial ownership and attribution are ensured."

I highly recommend reading the full article.

[blogging is good for students]

I've always thought blogging was a good way to help students develop digital literacy (and *normal* literacy) skills and so agrees Diane Penrod.

Via Karen Levy's blog:

"What kinds of literacies does blogging enhance?

Well, stronger skills in visual literacy [and] media literacy, for starters. Changes in reading and writing—not just the texting phenomenon, but fluency rates, information sorting, and evaluating happen, too.

Are there other benefits of blogging?

Having students learn how to build a blog teaches them necessary design and conceptual abilities that can transfer to art, photography, graphic design, writing, and other contemporary information-manipulation strategies. Blog building also helps students understand how technology works from the ground up.

What differences have you found between boys and girls, and even ethnic groups?

Boys really respond to blogging. It’s a writing [format] that they become excited about because it’s hands-on, and they can see something that has a definite “beyond school” value. Girls tend to like blogging when it’s more journal-based.

The Pew Internet studies I draw upon in the book found that the “digital divide” we were worried about in the late 1990s is not between ethnicities as we first thought. The Pew studies indicate that several racial and ethnic groups sometimes blog more than Caucasian students. The biggest problem still is economic—it’s expensive for many families to have computers and Internet access.

How are blogs being used to promote collaborative learning and critical thinking?

Blogs are really all about collaborative learning. When students post responses or questions, others feel comfortable in responding and offering assistance or ideas.

When instructors or librarians design innovative lessons that encourage students to delve into the material, then post that information on a blog, critical thinking can happen. Students are able to provide links to other sites that the class can examine and evaluate in terms of the quality of information provided, as well as [understand] how they might use such data in their own assignment."

I'm personally not sure about the gendering of blogging though. In my pedagogical experience both female and male students tended (and here I generalise) to like blogging (if they did in fact blog as this was rare) as a way of keeping in touch and up-to-date with what their friends were doing.

[blogging a conference - some tips]

I came across this excellent guide by Bruno Giussani and Ethan Zuckerman through Sue Thomas's google reader shared feedz.

In no particular order:

Speakers
"It’s relatively easy to blog good and great speakers: They follow a narrative path through their talks and speak at a pace the audience can understand.
It’s harder to blog inexperienced speakers(because they may be too technical,
confusing, fast, etc.) and multi-speaker panels (because the discussion can take many different unstructured turns). But you don’t need to transcribe the whole talk, you need to capture the gist of it. A 20-minutes talk can often be summarized in a
20-lines post.

Audience
You’re not blogging for the speaker, you’re blogging for yourself and for the people who may read your blog. So if a talk is too hard, too bad, too uninteresting to blog, don’t be afraid to give up on it. It’s the speaker’s fault if (s)he can’t make the material interesting or intelligible. (This should never, however, be an excuse for laziness.)

Timing
Ideally, you should liveblog, which means that you write the post, and add the links, as the speaker is talking, and publish the post not later than 10 minutes after the speech or panel is over. Not everybody can do this; it takes a certain habit. Think of it this way: If you can publish right away, you will be able to network with the other conference participants during the breaks, rather
than sitting at your laptop rewriting your notes."

[8 ways to grow your blog]

According to Mack Collier at the Marketing Profs site, following these eight easy steps should pretty much ensure you a bigger blog. Although he has in mind corporate blogs, many of his steps apply to personal blogs.

1. Post regularly
2. Develop a comment policy
3. Reply to comments
4. Showcase readers who make special contributions
5. Build your blogroll with your readers' interests in mind
6. Offer unique content aimed at your blog's target audience
7. Make your blog's feed available for RSS subscribers (this is sooo important as many blog readers catch up on their favourite reads only using a feed reader)
8. Offer email subscriptions to your blog's content

"The best way to grow your blog's readership is to shift your focus to satisfying your readers' wants and needs. If you create an environment on your blog that welcomes readers to participate and encourages their feedback, your blog will blossom.
Instead of viewing your blog as a promotional and marketing tool for your company, consider how you can create a community on your blog. Once you shift your blog's focus toward the wants and needs of the readers, you will begin to see your readership grow, as will interaction via comments and links to your blog."

For further details on each step and actionable points see the original blog post here.

[Renewals: Bloglines 101]

This morning Sue and I ran the bloglines workshop which was a great experience. We enjoyed a mix of blog-abilities and have some really good questions about tagging, searching, and how to create certain parameters for those blog searches.

This workshop was the second of the two-part series of tackling transliteracy. Friday's Thursday's panel presentation by Sue Thomas, Kate Pullinger, and myself began by fleshing out the idea of transliteracy and today's workshop put those ideas into practise.

[blogging around the world]

I came across this excellent graphic that puts blogging in geographical perspective:




Interesting but not sure if the stats add up, especially given this recent article suggesting Japan as leading blog readers...

[blogger sued]

I read about this story on Robin Hamman's blog.

From the Ottawa Citizen:

"The president of Steelback Brewery, based in Tiverton, Ont. has filed a $2 million lawsuit against an Ottawa-based blogger he claims repeatedly libelled him on his popular sports website.

Filed late last week in court in Newmarket, Ont., Frank D'Angelo alleges Neate Sager damaged his reputation and his image in comments posted on Sager's blog between August 2006 and January of this year.



In his statement of claim, D'Angelo argues that Sager's comments - which described D'Angelo as a "huckster" and a "two-bit shyster" - are derogatory in that they paint a picture of him as a "peddler," a "con man" and an "irritant."

The claim also says Sager called D'Angelo a "professional nuisance" and described his interest in acquiring the National Hockey League's Pittsburgh Penguins franchise as a "charade."

Sager, who also works as a copy editor at the Ottawa Sun, said he has yet to file a statement of defence and hopes to resolve the matter out of court.

"I am shocked this happened," said Sager, who several weeks ago revised some of the more contentious remarks on his blog, "Out of Left Field," at neatesager.blogspot.com.

"I'm still 100 per cent confident that reasonable people can find a reasonable solution to this and I just hope Mr. D'Angelo can sort of see that it's really kind of silly that it has come to this point."

The statement of claim argues the comments "severely damaged (D'Angelo's) credit, character and reputation" and that he was "brought into public scandal and contempt" as a result.

"The fact is that the conduct of the defendant in failing to remove the offending entries from his website, his failure to issue an apology and his public mockery of the notice letter has aggravated the damages suffered," the claim says.

"The defendant did not provide a balanced view and provided no opportunity to the plaintiff to respond to the aspersions made against him."

None of the allegations have yet been proven in court.

Contrary to the allegation that Sager provided D'Angelo no opportunity to respond, the website has a comment feature that allows readers to publicly share their own views and opinions, Sager said.

"Anyone can leave a comment there."

D'Angelo, an Ontario businessman who also owns a downtown Toronto restaurant as well as a brand of energy drink and a line of apple juice, says in the claim that he issued a notice letter to Sager back in February expressing his concern.

He argues Sager "promptly posted" the letter on his website and mocked its contents.

Sager "refused to remove the offending references" from his site and "revelled in the prospect of being pursued for damages for libel" for the "notoriety" and "attention" it brought him, the claim says.

D'Angelo did not return phone calls Monday."

[women, business & blogging conference]

I can't believe it's over...already! Yesterday was an amazing day and we were very lucky to have stimulating speakers: Meg Pickard (I am so copying her ppt style!), Eileen Brown (good use of cartoons! and she's already blogged about it), and Jory des Jardins (lots of hints and tips and helped a few of us win that buzzword bingo!) - they were all excellent!

I have loads to say (I'm sure conference delegates do too!) but I'm off to catch a flight now. I'll upload some photos to flickr of course and I hope all the delegates, (yes you! I know you're reading!) and anyone else interested, join our google group called "nlabwomen." MEN can join too!!

[blogs are corrupting popular opinion]

So says Andrew Keen. Lastnight on newsnight Gavin Esler was supposed to "interview" Keen but seemed rather to put forth his own prepostorous views (though they were aligned with Keen's more of less).

To me, this discussion seemed just another attempt to subvert the positive potential of blogging or any other collaborative enterprise based on the internet. Esler's introduction highlights discrepancies in Wikipedia and he makes grave assertions that the *poor* public will be misinformed. In fact, he says rather smugly, it was the BBC that created the page on Alistair Darling replete with incorrect information; they cunningly replaced Darling's photo with an image of a badger (innuendo?). Oh goodness me. Esler says that's the problem with web 2.0 - "anyone" can edit and create thus everything online is unreliable (his logic, not mine). Really? He's assuming that "the masses" (as Keen calls us) aren't critically literate and the web just enables us folk to do too much. We know that educators are consistenly teaching students on the merits of certain sites and isn't that what we might call critical literacy? Does that mean everyone believes what they watch on television? I think it's safe to say we *understand* life isn't quite like tv...and guess what, neither is the 'net. It does seem that Esler thinks it should be; he asks viewers who think everything they read online (but wouldn't that apply to offline too?) is true whether they'd be interested in his flying machine (which doesn't fly...).

After his scene-setting intro. Esler turns to Keen and says (now how's this for journalistic objectivity?): "Andrew, I mean, a lot of things on the web are pretty stupid or irritating..." Keen later responds: "If we are all amateurs, there are no experts." And there you go - a nice summary of the ensuing talk. I wonder what sites Esler navigates to lead him to that odd assumption. Charles Leadbeater was there too but sadly wasn't able to get a word in with Keen and Esler raving about the woes of web 2.0. Leadbeater did constantly remind Esler and Keen that the public is knowledgable. The key is to make people participants and that of course would help them develop critical literacy.

I did video it and was planning on uploading it to youtube but probably can't do that for copyright reasons (seeing as I didn't make everything in the video...). At least the bbc have put a link up to the video on their site, here. This is the blurb that goes with the video:

"In the era of what author Andrew Keen calls online amateurism, can we trust everything we read on the internet?"

Interestingly, the bbc's blog post about Keen includes segments of Keen's latest book (oh no, is that distributing unreliable information?!), but more interestingly there are 120 comments. All those people participating but does that mean more unreliable information is being created (as both Keen and Esler claim)? Maybe Esler et al should read Nancy Patterson's helpful guide on how to evaluate web resources. To me, though, it seems so odd in this day and age - after postmodernism, modernism, poststrucuralism, feminism, postcolonialism, and a myriad other "events" - that people like Keen and Esler still seem to believe in a single Truth. Whether in print or online or on tv or on radio - who's *truth* is it really?

If you're interested in what Leadbeater has to say, there's a presentation of his here.

[bloghers act]

The BlogHer group is rounding up all 11,000 (and growing) network members to focus on a "red-hot" issue for one entire year. This will be the BlogHers act.

Elisa Camahort, co-founder of BlogHer explains:

"Have you ever imagined the impact if every member of BlogHer – more than 11,000 bloggers strong and growing every day -- focused our considerable brainpower, ingenuity and influence on one red-hot issue? How about if that one red-hot issue was the focus of an organized, year-long campaign to make a measurable difference that this community cares about?

Yes, some of you have. And you've emailed all three of us (sometimes more than once!) to ask BlogHer to take a leadership position in bringing the BlogHer community of powerful women together to create real change

Today, Lisa, Jory and I are very proud to say "yes." We're introducing BlogHers Act. And just like the BlogHer Conference is the conference the community built, we want BlogHers Act to take on a cause the community develops.


So today the work begins: It's up to all of us to determine, between now and the conference, what project we'll unveil and kick-off an action plan for at BlogHer '07 this July in Chicago.

BlogHers Act is an opportunity for the BlogHer community to have a collective impact on a global scale. We're going to pick a single issue, organize a year-long campaign, and blog the heck out of it.

We're starting today: We have asked the incredible duo of Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann, from the Been There Hurricane Clearinghouse Blog, to lead this effort for us, by helping us work together to identify both:

1. The global issue that the BlogHer community wants to support

2. A voter manifesto identifying the top issues that the community wants addressed during the American presidential election in 2008

Here's how to get involved: Cooper and Emily are taking suggestions for a BlogHer-wide survey of all members, who will vote and pick our red-hot issue. You can suggest anything -- are you already blogging about an issue you want BlogHers to get behind? Great! Suggest it.

You have until June 15 to suggest your burning issues. Then we'll launch a BlogHer-wide survey to vote on which of those issues will be the focus of the first BlogHers Act initiative.

We'll introduce the first BlogHers Act initiative at BlogHer '07 and start work immediately, right there at the conference.

Please help us make the most of this opportunity for a huge exercise in do-ocracy. We women certainly don't all think or vote alike, but we are the majority of voters and the majority of bloggers – and there are certain issues many of us care about, regardless of our ideological stripe.

Working together, we can make a world of difference.

Ready to hear more? Take it away Cooper and Emily…"

[the business of new media]

With less than two weeks to go until the Women, Business & Blogging conference I found this article timely:From Postcards, to Podcasts.

"According to the American Advertising Federation's Media Investment Survey 2007, 73% of nearly 1,000 organizations polled said they are allotting up to 20% of their budgets for 'experimentation and new media options.' Further, 78% of respondents said they are 'always open to new ways of using traditional media.'"

Blogging is important for business:

Have a look at what Lori Reed, Director of Marketing at InsureMe.com has to say about search engine optimization:

Some key points from the article, well worth bearing in mind:

[blogging is good]

Less than two weeks until the Women, Business & Blogging conference! There are a few bursaries left so go ahead and apply.

The aim of the conference, as the title suggests, is to talk about the role blogging can play in business and yup, the focus is on women. As I'm thinking about this I've come across Penelope Trunk's popular post "Blogging Essential for a Good Company." A few interesting bits:

"Employers regularly Google prospective employees to learn more about them. Blogging gives you a way to control what employers see, because Google’s system works in such a way that blogs that are heavily networked with others come up high in Google searches."

"And coming up high is good: “People who are more visible and have a reputation and stand for something do better than people who are invisible,” branding consultant Catherine Kaputa" says.

Here are Penelope's eight reasons on why exactly blogging is good:

1. Blogging creates a network.
A blogger puts himself out in the world as someone who is interesting and engaging — just the type of person everyone wants to meet. “A blog increases your network because a blog is about introducing yourself and sharing information,” says Kaputa.

2. Blogging can get you a job.
Dervala Hanley writes a quirky literary blog that got her a job is at Stone Yamashita Partners, a consulting firm that “tries to bring humanity to business.” Hanley told me that the firm was attracted to her ability to put her business experience into personal terms on the blog.

3. Blogging is great training.
To really get attention for your blog, you’re going to have to have daily entries for a while. At least a few months to get rolling, and then three or four times a week after that. So you will really get to know your topic well.

4. Blogging helps you move up quickly.
To escape the entry-level grind, you can either pay your dues, working up a ladder forever, or you can establish yourself as an expert in the world by launching a blog. High-level jobs are for people who specialize, and hiring managers look for specialists online. “Decision-makers respect Google-karma,” writes Tim Bray, director of Web technologies for Sun Microsystems — on his own blog, of course.

5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.
You can’t make it on your own unless you’re good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.

Curt Rosengren, a career coach, periodically Googles “career passion” — words he thinks are most important to his business — just to make sure his blog, Occupational Adventure, comes up high on the list. He estimates that his blog generates at least half of his coaching business.

6. Blogging provides more opportunities.
Building brands, changing careers, launching a business — these endeavors are much easier once you’ve established yourself online. Rosengren told me, “My blog is a foundation. I’m building an awareness that I can leverage to do other fun things with my future, such as product development, or public speaking.”

A blog gives you a leg up when you meet someone new. Dylan Tweney, a freelance writer, told me his blog, the Tweney Review, gives him instant legitimacy with clients.

7. Blogging could be your big break.
Visually creative types can blog beyond just text. Mark Fearing has a cartoon blog. “Cartooning and illustration are very crowded fields,” he says. “My blog has gotten me more notice than any other publicity tool I’ve used. Plus, the blog gives me a way to have a new conversation with potential clients about other work.”

8. Blogging makes the world a better place.
“Blogging is about giving stuff away to a community,” says Day. “For years, as a junior developer, I would go to the Internet for solutions and I would always take, take, take. Now I am happy to be a contributor and give something back.”

[woo hoo]

Blogger is working again. What a relief! I feel normal again (well, as normal as can be!)

[thinking blog award]

Yay! Angela Thomas has tagged me with the "thinking blog award."



From the thinking blog site: "remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!"

Five blogs that get me thinking:

• Angela Thomas - especially all Angela's research into second life re: pedagogy and her unfaltering enthusiasm (and great presentations!)
• Sue Thomas - (no relation to Angela) although Sue posts on a variety of blogs it is her extensive work at trAce that I found when beginning my ph.d which showed me that there was someone *out there* with a deep interest in new media technologies and storytelling/writing. Of late, I'm a follower of Sue's musings on all things transliterate at the PaRT blog.
• Ruth Page - and her blog aptly named "digital narratives" which just fits so well with my research especially as Ruth is also concerned with where feminist theory comes into play in new media narratives.
• blogher - "where the women bloggers are." This blog, with numerous bloggers, is a space where (go figure) women bloggers can come together and (yup, that's right) blog. In 2005 the blogher co-founders (Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Stone) held their first conference asking "where are the women bloggers" and now link to over 8000 blogs by women. Uplifting.
• Chris Joseph - originally known to me only as babel and as the uber-creative designer of works such as Inanimate Alice. With his current post at IoCT digital writer in residence his blog keeps me up-to-date with digital art side of new media.

So, what five blogs get you thinking?

[women, business & blogging - reminder for bursary applicants]

***APPLY BY 27th APRIL FOR A BURSARY (if you live in the East Midlands)!!!***

*****************************************************

Women Business
and Blogging Conference




Free bursary places are still available for conference delegates living in the East Midlands but the deadline for applications is FRIDAY 27 APRIL




Just tell us in 100 words why you want to come. Full details at http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/blogs/nlabwomen/2007/02/bursaries.html




Come to the Women, Business and Blogging Conference on Friday 8 June 2007 at De Montfort University to find out how blogging by women and for women builds networks, improves customer reach, monetizes creativity and infuses your business with Web 2.0 goodness! Speakers include:

Eileen Brown, Microsoft Technology Evangelist
Jory Des Jardins, Media Consultant & Co-founder of BlogHer
Meg Pickard, Head of Communities and User Experience for Guardian Unlimited

Business is becoming increasingly interested in social media and especially in blogs. In Europe
over the last year several conferences have explored the potential of Web 2.0 networks to increase business opportunities - see LIFT07 (Geneva) and Le Web