It’s a new year and my last semester, and another chapter (not quite literally . . . yet) begins for this project.

Lots has changed since my initial explorations began in earnest last semester. Most notably, I began to shift my thinking from broadcast cable access television and Internet video distribution to the role of the community media center in Public Access Television (found here and here, for example) and the people involved. While video distribution and related web technologies are still a major consideration in this study, I’ve also shifted my thinking towards a more integrated approach involving the role of and relationship between community technology (or community informatics) and PEG Access TV.

My conversation with Felicia on the topic played a large role in this transition. Her terrific article, “Community Technology and Public Discourse” (PDF download) also got me thinking more along these lines. But I also know I’m running a slight risk of misrepresenting this intersection of computers, networked technology and PEG Access TV. It’s certainly not a universal trend, particularly at a time when many access centers are just struggling to keep their doors open as a result of state legislation and other oppositional forces. But it is really interesting to me, particularly in thinking about current trends and potential future directions in community media as the Internet collides with cable access TV (that is to say, where it is taking place).

The other problem with this study is there is little to no scholarship on this intersection. These are issues taking place right now. To do it justice would be to apply for a grant to study what’s happening in access over a much longer period of time. Unfortunately, I will not be able to do that. A draft of my thesis needs to be completed in just a few months. But, what I hope to do is study what has been written on these topics and contribute my observations to this much larger discussion.

In addition, I hope my new role as Community Media Coordinator at Cambridge Community Television (a new job I’m starting this week) will also help to shape the content of this paper based on my direct experience as a community media worker. I’ll be spending my time in the computer lab at CCTV and on a number of exciting community media and technology initiatives with the purpose of connecting more Cambridge residents to the technology tools, skills, and knowledge that I take for granted everyday.

The most immediate next steps for this project is a literature review and a thesis outline - both due asap. Before the semester starts up again later this month, I’ll be plugging away on both and continuing to share my process here along the way.

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.

“CMT Mind Map” via Flickr (CC license)

Drawing from community informatics literature, I found Slack and Williams, “The dialectics of place and space: On community in the “Information Age’” (2000) of particular interest because of its focus on the role of physical place within online networks. The article highlights a study of The Craigmillar Community Information Service, which the McDonald and Denning describe at the Digital Divide Network as

“A project funded by the European Union and Scottish Executive, was the first mainland U.K. project to sign up with the U.S. Community Centers Network (CTCNet) as an affiliated member in 1994. Founded in November 1993, when over 80% of those living in the area were on some type of welfare benefit and the popular Internet was in its infancy, CCIS became a community-based Internet service and training provider, a port of quality digital applications and services focused on employment, education, arts, youth, social welfare and the environment.”

In its background section, Slack and Williams’ article describes their work in relation to previous theoretical frameworks of ICTs (information and communications technologies) in urban contexts (315). Referencing Manuel Castells, the authors explain

Castells points to the shaping of the ’space of places’ by the ’space of flows’, arguing that place is a site of experience and experience is separated from power thus impacting on the types of knowledge one can have as well as the meanings that can be accorded to things in the world. (316)

What I most interested in exploring in this section is what the authors describe in the following

Significantly, for our purposes, the danger is that the two spaces will become isolated and unable to interact, leaving those in the space of places outside the shaping of knowledge taking place in the space of flows. (316)

This passage directly addresses my concern about how virtual and physical spaces in public access television are being regarded as separate and unequal (as I’ve described here and here), thus rendering public access television unnecessary in the digital age. Quite the contrary, as the authors describe

The local is obdurate and serves in part to ‘hold down’ the space of flows. We will show how the space (or, perhaps more accurately, the placeholder) ‘community’ serves as a critical resource upon which community members can draw in any putative move towards the space of flows a la Castells. (317)

Furthermore, I am interested to learn how public access media practitioners understand “community” through their involvement in both cable television and the Internet, while staying connected to the community media center and its role in holding down the “space of flows.”