Drupal content management system (CMS) is an open-source tool that is being used by community media workers to build their access center’s websites (see MNN, Medfield.tv, CCTV and others). Drupal gives users the ability to upload audio, video and images in an interactive environment that extends the physical space of community media to online spaces. Drupal also provides its site’s users with the ability to create blogs and groups that enable physical community media members to participate online in-between face-to-face meetings.  Community member participation is then archived and searchable through tags and other metadata.

I’m interested in the use of Drupal in PEG TV, not necessarily because of the tool itself, but because of how people are sharing information around it. Behind the scenes, community media workers are sharing information about modules and Drupal extensions both online and off. This information sharing, while mainly technical, connects community media workers through the technology. Online, community-generated support forums, such as those found on PEGSpace, offer other community media workers with guides for incorporating Drupal into their own communities’ communication platforms.

This type of information exchange is not unique to the open source community. But within the PEG TV community it plays a significant role worth further examination. My interest for this project is to understand how community media workers use and share information using the web to enable their own physical communities, through these participatory platforms.

Again, what is interesting to me is how Drupal, as a tool, is bringing people together through knowledge sharing across distant community media centers. In doing so, collaboration around Drupal development and implementation (1) connects distant community media workers through online forums, (2) creates opportunities for knowledge sharing and support, and (3) provides spaces for individuals in physical communities to not only communicate, but to become more literate and saavy in networked environments.

Over at the The University of Michigan School of Information’s CIC blog (via Clippings for PEG Access Television), there’s an idea posted about how to revitalize school media centers that have been shut down in “communities that lack the funding.”

“Our goal would not be to replace school media centers or existing community centers. However, our goal would be to bring people back to their school media centers and community centers through the possibilities created by the school media center bus. In other words, we want to get people excitied about existing media/community centers and think about those places in a fundamentally new, exciting way.”

More information on the bus, action, and goals for the project are included in the post. In a side note, the website is a really nice example of how to use Drupal to get groups involved and working together online.

In the Spring/Summer 2006 Issue of CMR, George Stoney writes:

“Last year, when FCC Commissioner Michael Powell and his staff visited Manhattan Neighborhood Network, some suggested that with so many user-friendly tools now in the hands of the public, our practice of giving them access to free studios and equipment was no longer necessary. Maybe, with internet allowing people to have their own blogs, chat rooms and such, the whole idea of public access to cable had seen its day. If all we are doing is serving individual producers they might have a point.

Today, thriving public access centers are also community centers, places where one can have eye contact with people who may share the same community and concerns but have very different ideas about how things can be changed. Creating an atmosphere where this can happen is still a challenge, and a daunting one.”

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