From Matt Schuster, Chair of the Alliance for Community Media’s Board of Directors:

“With media consolidation, the further commercialization of media and a reduction of public affairs programming and independent voices on commercial television, the role of community media is more valuable today than ever.

Over the past several years, community media has faced many challenges including state franchising bills that, in many instances, have resulted in significant reductions to PEG funding and support. New entrants to the multi-channel video marketplace are attempting to offer PEG channels to their viewers in a substandard format and means of carriage. Local and State Governments are facing economic challenges which may ultimately impact support available for valuable community programming. Without active community media operations, many citizens will loose their connection to the voices in their local community, their connection to educational opportunities, and their connection to their elected officials. We can not allow for people to become disconnected.

To address these issues, the Alliance for Community Media is launching our “Keep Us Connected” Campaign. On behalf of the Alliance for Community Media Board of Directors, I am encouraging all of you to become fully engaged to “Keep Us Connected”.

By keeping us connected, the Alliance for Community Media wants our voices heard on a national level. We want decision-makers to understand the harm being done to community media organizations through poor public policy. We want to showcase your efforts in your communities and the people that you are serving. We want to further raise the profile of PEG channels and community media on the national level. And we want to create a proactive environment on the Hill to further the principles of community media through legislative cures within the first 100 days of the next Congress.”

Read more and donate to support community media.

My co-workers and I had a meeting today to discuss plans for our new website. Two important things caught my attention in thinking about how to frame the work we’re doing through our visual and semantic design.

First, visual design. The thing that sets us (community media centers) apart in a REALLY important way from social network websites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.) is our focus on the physical communities we serve. We need to represent that both in our stories and in our visual images online.

For example, the picture above from the staff page on the DCTV website shows the visitor that there are people involved at DCTV in a physical community. So, if you’re a worker at a community media center with a presence online show pictures of your access center and the people from your community. It not only humanizes the web technology that you’re using, but it also tells the website visitor there is a physical place and people involved that others can come to learn more about, learn from, and participate with.

Second, community media is about empowerment. Therefore, community media on the web is not about getting “users” involved. It’s about empowering people to become producers and owners of their own images, messages and meanings–not the ones told by somebody else.

One way that we can take back the terminology adopted from computer technology is to re-frame “users” as producers of community media on our cable access channels AND online.

For example, if a resident in a community signs up on a community media center’s website to participate in a conversation online (e.g., on a blog), they are producers, not users. If this individual is contributing positively to the public discourse on an access centers’ website, they are producing as a member of a physical community, not just simply using the website for individual needs alone.

By showing pictures of a community media center and the people involved on a participatory website and by re-framing users as producers online, community media centers can not only help to take back the discourse surrounding participatory media online (e.g., “Web 2.0″), we can continue to lead and innovate in an space that may soon become co-opted by a commercial Internet culture.

On my way into work this morning, I noticed an article in the Boston Metro entitled, “Pol eye YouTube for city life.” In it, Greg St. Martin talks about how Boston City Councilor, Rob Consalvo is interested in using YouTube to “broadcast” PSA’s to reach younger audiences. Martin adds,

“Consalvo said the city could use the new Boston Neighborhood News (BNN) studio to film the announcements, which he envisions spanning topics such as education, voting and summer jobs.”

This would be an excellent use of a community media center to provide residents with locally relevant information using web video platforms such as YouTube. The access center could also share the content on its website, while inviting community members to be involved in the production process.

It might also encourage residents to work with the city to create a more democratic communication process through their involvement on such a project. In any case, it’s an interesting model that access centers might consider particularly in working with local non-government and non-commercial organizations.

Read the article online at MetroBostonNews.com

I submitted my thesis to the Department of Graduate Studies at Emerson College this afternoon. It’s entitled “Community Media in Transition: Public Access Television in the Age of YouTube.”

I appreciated the feedback I received from my committee during my defense. They recommended that I spend a bit more time on the paper before making it public. I agreed.

My plan now is to spend the next two months revising the paper. I hope to create a more clear and direct version of my thesis statement with the revision. My hope is that in doing so it will provide a much more detailed road map of policy recommendations that I’ve only begun to layout in the paper thus far. I also hope that a revised version will be more accessible to the general public.

While I’m eager to share the ideas presented in the paper, it’s more important to me that I spend the time making it all it can and should be. That’s the work ahead.

Well, I just dropped off my thesis to the printer. I’m REALLY hoping that it comes back in one piece. I have to submit it to grad studies in the afternoon, following my defense, and after tracking down all the relevant signatures I need.

I will be providing an open access version of my thesis later in the week here on this site. It would be really great if Emerson College had an open access policy on Master’s theses. I’m secretly hoping that Emerson’s libraries, professors, and students as well might lobby for open access to student, and faculty, research in the future. The staff at Boston College libraries seems to take a similar position:

“BC’s dissertations are not yet Open Access (OA). However, it is hoped that this lack of Open Access will change and that BC’s dissertations will in the future be available to anyone with internet access.”

In any case, I look forward to sharing my thesis here on this blog and hearing from folks in access and beyond about the ideas presented in it.

The following message is from a post to the Action Coalition for Media Education e-list from Liza Dichter (Center for International Media Action):

“FROM: Chrissy Harmon: mom, teacher and brand-new community media maker….

Can you take 4 minutes to watch some grassroots media and help me fight for my local community TV center? And please, Pass It On!

I’d never made creative media before. And until now, I’ve never written an email asking folks to ‘take action.’

PLEASE WATCH & RATE: http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=198688
“Reckoner Video by Tired People”– BEFORE APRIL 27!

My name is Chrissy Harmon, I’m a mom of three, a public-schoolteacher, and just 3 months ago, I became a producer and volunteer with Franklin Public Access — and it truly changed my life.

I walked into my public access station because I had to speak out against domination of media and education by corporate institutions and ended up 3 months later, producing an animation that we entered in a national music-video competition for the band Radiohead.

WATCH & RATE: “Reckoner Video by Tired People”
http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=198688

We need your vote! High ratings is how to win the contest. The winner of the contest creates the actual video for Radiohead, and will receive international promotion. Most entries are done by professional production companies and animators. We have the idea that our little homemade piece could gain some attention for Public Access and might help light a fire under the negotiation process happening with Comcast here in our town.

We are asking friends and allies who believe in Public Access to view our video, rate and leave a supportive comment.

While Steve Russo, the only staff here at our Public Access station, was teaching me to make media, and I was discovering a new feeling of empowerment I didn’t expect, I also learned that our Public Access station is endangered. I learned that Public Access and community media everywhere is under threat from big-profit cable and phone companies. I am now committed to help community media resist and thrive.

Please pass on this email– and if you have any advice, tools or support you can offer us, isolated here in our tiny town up against big Comcast, I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you,

Chrissy Harmo
chrissyjane@gmail.com”

3CMedia, the Journal for Community, Citizen’s and Third Sector Media and Communication published an excellent article, entitled “Community Media in a Prosumer Era,” by Community Communication Scholar Ellie Rennie (author of Community Media: A Global Introduction) in their December 2007 issue.

In her article, Rennie discusses the impacts of convergent media on traditional forms of “broadcast-era” media through her research on SYN: Student Youth Network in Australia, “a media organization and community radio licensee based in Melbourne run by and for people under 26″ (25).

She makes important distinctions between “user-generated” content (found on commercial websites, such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube) and community media, such as public access television, community or “grassroots” radio, and other geographically-focused media.

The author adds, “digital divide aside,” what are characteristics that remain unique to community media as more individuals gain “access” to participatory media on the web? (26)

She explains that geographically-based community media enjoy added characteristics - beyond access - that allow individuals to participate in member-driven processes. These include, “open, participative” (25) functions that allow individuals in physical communities to take ownership within the organization and of developments regarding technology implementation and use (31).

Therefore, Rennie writes “a new research agenda for community media might include:

• The role it plays in supporting public information and engagement - in ways that are both similar and different from commercial and public media. (The Griffith University audience study is a useful starting point. See Meadows 2007).

• The contribution of community media training (and what theat means for the creative industries labour market)

• The changing status and role of third sector organizations” (27)

While the author recognizes a number of technological and structural challenges to implementing and sustaining convergence among broadcast-era community media, she writes, “community media provides a structure and method which can take amateur media to the next level” (31).

“Community media sector organisations are socially-responsive and proactive in that they cater for groups who are not otherwise adequately represented and develop technologies to serve identifiable needs rather than market gaps” (31).

In addition, Rennie finds “Convergence is encouraged within community media organizations which are open to people with different skills and interests, yet brings them into a shared culture and social world” (29).

Access the entire article online, available at the 3CMedia website. Thanks to Rob McCausland and Chuck Sherwood for the pointer.

I was looking for Free Press’ State Policy Tracker on their new website to do research for my thesis.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s still one of their campaigns.

The old link still works. But not sure how much longer it will be available.  Maybe, I’m missing something?

I recently revisited the audio from the Alliance for Community Media 2006 conference panel, “PEG in a Shifting Media Landscape,” featuring Felicia Sullivan (moderator), Hans Klein (Georgia Tech), Susie Lindsay (Former Berkman Center for Internet and Society Fellow), Michael Eisenmenger (Manhattan Neighborhood Network) and Fred Johnson (Community Media & Technology Program, UMass Boston).

Listen to the audio (MP3)

The discussion is still quite relevant, particularly for access practitioners interested in moving into the online participatory media world but not sure exactly how to get started.

During the session, Susie Lindsay introduced a really interesting idea that I think is worth restating. She talked about how access centers with the resources to build community online around their work might consider moving into the role of online digital media moderators.

For example, a community media center with resources might designate staff time to find good locally relevant stuff online that may be of interest to others in their physical community. This could do two things:

First, it could highlight online content (Creative Commons or other open access licensed blog posts, audio, video, photos, etc.) from people who may not be involved with the access center - as an outreach tool.

Second, it could help transform a community media center into a trusted source (aggregator) online where individuals in a geographic community (or beyond) could go to find digital media of interest to others in their community.

An alternative might be to open source the model.

Meaning, that members within the community could volunteer their time - particularly younger or other web saavy folks - and submit ideas to a point person (staff) at the community media center. This might also create a scenario where individuals could take ownership of finding stuff online, that might even lead to content that could be aired on the cable channel. In many ways this is very similar to Denver Open Media’s model:

“YOU use the equipment, YOU create the shows, YOU provide feedback as viewers, and YOUR votes determine the broadcast schedule . . . “

The other really valuable point that Susie made was looking to youth to serve as digital media trainers at community media centers. Because youth are quite saavy online (See danah boyd’s “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” PDF and her other work) this would be a great way to create training programs for others in the community, particularly adults, parents and others who may be less experienced in the online world.

There are lots of other great points mentioned by all of the panelists. That is why I definitely recommend that folks take another listen to the audio.

As a side note, it’s really unfortunate that the ACM Boston 2006 conference website is no longer up and running. It was such a wonderful resource. I hope there is a way that the website can find another home somewhere else online.

From Community Television of Santa Cruz:

“a parody of the I’m a Mac/I’m a PC ad depicting the differences between Community Television and corporate media. The actors are Jeff Dinnell and Joe Petersen.”