CIMA: Research on International Funding of Media Development

The Center for International Media Assistance hosted a presentation of research by Anne Nelson and Mary Myers on international media development funding this past Monday. Given my never ending quest to absorb all things international media development, I had wanted to be there, but couldn’t due to lags in scientific development into teleportation technology. However, CIMA was kind enough to give us the next best thing: a streamable video recording of their event at U.S. Private and Non-U.S. Funding of Media Development.

Anne Nelson offered an overview of her recently-published CIMA report Experimentation and Evolution in Private U.S. Funding of Media Development, while Mary Myers presented findings from her forthcoming CIMA report Funding for Media Development by Major Donors Outside the United States.

Why Spammers and Virus Programmers Are Worse Than They Might Think

New media, in case you haven’t noticed, have made it wonderfully and horrifically easier to send information to people you know and don’t know. The upside here is that it has been a boon to staying in touch with people, and communicating information to people who might well be interested, but might not yet be aware of you. The downside, of course, is the ever-increasing threat of spam and computer viruses.

I get that it is inevitable people will abuse the system. Some people will be able to sleep at night after a day of pummeling people’s inboxes, Twitter accounts, etc. with unwanted junk that unfortunately enough people will opt into to sustain the viability of this tactic. And, some people will have some kind of bone to pick with, say, Microsoft, that they will be able to sleep at night knowing that they stuck it to some adversary, outweighing the tremendous inconvenience it causes to otherwise innocent people just trying to get on with their lives in the digital world.

LiveTweet at Going Mobile: How Nonprofits are Using Mobile

I went to the event Going Mobile: How Nonprofits are Using Mobile yesterday, and of course, tweeted about it. This was a two-hour panel discussion moderated by Personal Democracy Forum founder, Andrew Rasiej. Panelists included:  Jed Alpert (Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Mobile Commons), Emma Daly (Communications Director, Human Rights Watch), Enrique Piracés (Senior Online Strategist, Human Rights Watch), and Katrin Verclas (Co-founder and Editor of MobileActive.org).

Below is a friendfeed of the first then tweets during the event, which offer a glimpse into what was a truly fascinating event. You can see all of my tweets on the event aggregated here. Also, they filmed the event, and said it would be on YouTube soon. I’ll add it to this post when it becomes available.

Author’s Note:  I know I keep calling them “LiveTweets”, when tweeting is always live. “LiveBlog” just doesn’t sound right, given that I am tweeting, not blogging.

LiveTweet at the Cool Twitter Conference in Philadelphia

I went to the Cool Twitter Conference in Philadelphia yesterday, and of course, tweeted about it. Here is a feed of my tweets during the conference, but just the first ten. At the bottom, below the friendfeed, you can click links to see more of my tweets. (Or, you can see everyone’s tweets aggregated here). I tried to focus my tweets around useful details and links the presenters provided. We covered topics like personal branding, health care uses, tweetchats, customer service, law enforcement, and more.

I wanted to set up a CoveritLive window in my blog, which would have been best for livetweeting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with WordPress.com (making me think about switching to Blogger, or something else–>more on this in another post). But, @philbaumann (thank you, Phil!), the presenter on health care uses of Twitter, helped me come up with this alternative using friendfeed. Not my first choice, but an acceptable backup.

A big thank you to the presenters at the conference (in reverse order, more or less):

@lawscomm – Lauri Stevens on Twitter for law enforcement
@sistertoldja – Jamilah Lemieux on Twitter to build and brand your blog
@philbaumann – Health care and Twitter
@cathywebsavvypr – Cathy Larkin on chats, like #smallbizchat & #journchat
@Lifes_Dash – Michele Mattia on becoming a part of the conversation
@chefmarksmith – Mark Smith on Twitter for your restaurant business
@gloobspot – Jeff Lopez on building your brand and generating profits on
@IQMZ – Owen Stone on Twitter as a gateway drug to other social media
@whiskycast – Mark Gillespie on driving consumers to your platform
@comcastcares – Frank Eliason on Twitter as a customer service tool

The Associated Press: “Free Riders” and A Question of Leadership

A friend of mine forwarded me a link to a post written by Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press, and Curley’s attempt to monetize the AP’s online content, and just as importantly, prevent others from monetizing it without his having a cut. I have to ask, “Am I missing something here?“

It seems the basic problem he is citing is that:

We content creators have been too slow to react to the exploitation of news content by third parties without input or permission. Random distribution of traffic by aggregators such as search engines directs audiences and revenues away from those who invest in original news reports. And randomness assures the aggregators and their ad networks a stream of revenue based on the aggregation and indexing of published news content.

Wait, but isn’t the AP a news wire service? As in, don’t they sell their news to news media, so other news media can publish it? As in, the AP researches news stories, writes them up, and bundles them for sale to news media, not for their own direct reporting to public audiences? Once their news hits the public, hasn’t it already been paid for?

WaPo’s Social Media Guidelines: Bad News for International Media Development

I understand why The Washington Post would want to come up with the social media guidelines they recently set for their journalists that greatly constrain their use of social media. At least, I think I do.

They want to remain a reputable source of objective news (if objective news is even possible). And, they’d like to discourage the potential for their journalists to go “rogue” with their opinions and personal lives such that it could digitally be traced back to WaPo, and damage that reputation. Understandable. Social media are still kind of in their “Wild West” phase, and the technology makes it MUCH easier to publish online than to consider the implications of publishing online. Definitely a recipe for potential disaster in an industry in which reputation can be everything.

However, there are implications of instituting the guidelines they chose that could dramatically impact the future of media in a very negative way.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Iran

This is another installment in my series of posts on examples of ways new media are being used to challenge authority in the Middle East. This post will focus on Iran.

Internet access in Iran has seen a particular explosion, growing faster than any other Middle Eastern country, according to Reporters Without Borders.  ”From 2000 to 2007,” reported Sepideh Parsa, “the number of users grew from 250,000 to 18 million, which accounts for 53.7% of users in the region”.

Within this explosion has been the rise of blogging in Iran, with the blogosphere becoming such a phenomenon as to warrant its current nickname, “Weblogistan”.  This rise in blogging is having political ramifications for the Iranian State.  “Blogs have become an essential medium for dissidence against the autocratic regime and its state-controlled media”, said Parsa.  “Iran has one of the strictest censorship policies in the Middle East. Thus, blogs offer Iranians the only platform to peacefully exchange their political thought, emotions, and opinions while overcoming the boundaries that have been imposed by the government”.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Egypt

New media, especially social media, are playing a significant role in challenging authority and states in the Middle East. This is the first post in a series I will publish on examples of how new media are being used toward this end. Egypt will start off this series.

Egyptians have begun using online social-networking tools like blogs, Facebook, and YouTube as tools of dissent against the existing authority.  This is significant given that the reigning president, Hosni Mubarak, is seen as a dictator—in fact, one of the world’s ten worst dictators—and his reign has been marked by human rights abuses and acts against freedom of expression that have warranted calling him one.

New Media: Not As Old As You Might Think

Not too long ago, I came across some social media marketing blogger (I can’t remember which) who said in his blog that he doesn’t like to call new media “new media” anymore, because new media are no longer “new”.

At first, I thought maybe he was right, and that maybe it was time I stop saying “new media” when referring to these technologies that really have been called new for quite some time now. Sure, it might make sense to call them that, since people usually know what you mean when you say those words. But, maybe it IS time, I thought.

Trying to find that blog post, I came across this digital marketing blogger who was saying as far as back as 2006, that “…new media are no longer new—everybody who is anybody is doing it”.

Right. So, I filed it into the back of my mind like everything else and went on about my “new” media work.

Until this past week. I realized something in that time. New media ARE still new. Here is my case (or at least some of it).

Time to Put LiveJournal Out of Its Misery (A Note to International Media Trainers)

Normally, I focus more on promoting things done well rather than rail against things done poorly. But, I gotta say, there’s room for exception in some cases. Enter:  LiveJournal. I’m sorry, but I kinda think the world would be a better place without LiveJournal, given the available alternatives.

Sure, it would leave a huge number of people who use it to blog, express themselves, connect with others, create networks, social network, and whatever else they do, out in the cold. Particularly in eastern Europe, in places like Russia and Ukraine, where LiveJournal has a commanding lead in the blogging platform market. But, while my party line tends to be “try NOT to make things any harder in developing and transitioning countries, because they are hard enough already”, with LiveJournal I have to take a longview, pragmatic, and perhaps short-run heartless stance and say, “Cut the cord. You’ll thank me for it”.

Because, to everyone still on LiveJournal, I have to say:  in the end, all this platform’s doing is holding you back. It really is subtraction by addition. And besides, there are so many other options that are much, MUCH better.

Okay, here are my bones to pick with LiveJournal (and trust me, running through this is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you, LiveJournal devotees):