media | Science Addiction

November 18, 2008

How the Media Decides What’s News

This morning, I found Natalie Holloway had returned to the front page of CNN. This afternoon, I find a story on NYTimes.com by Brian Stelter about the Independent Film Channel’s new show ‘IFC Media Project‘ which explores, among other things, how certain stories make it to prime time.

“People love to hear stories about tragedies,” Mr. Garrison tells the producers, sitting in his office, a framed copy of a People magazine cover saying “What Happened to Caylee?” on the wall. “It’s like eating a potato chip; you just can’t stop.”

Cable channels presented almost 900 reports about Caylee in the first 12 weeks after she disappeared. “During that time, approximately 100,000 other children were reported missing,” the program observes.

The show hopes to look in to the military “analysts” that show up on the news programs who have clear conflicts of interest and how advertisers influence which stories get covered. The show will be hosted by Gideon Yago, who younglings may remember from MTV News.

Note: The IFC is advertising on the same page as this NYTimes.com article. Ironic?

November 12, 2008

Spot.us: Community Funded Citizen Journalism

Via Dan Gilmor, we hear about the launch of the nonprofit Spot.us, funded by the Knight Foundation. It is a novel idea-

Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. […] It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.

This has real potential. Think about a local government problem that needs investigating- you can get your neighbors together to fund a citizen to work on it. Think about the (many) issues that traditional media chooses to ignore- either due to a perceived lack of audience, corporate interests or political implications. You can fund the stories you believe should be covered, and so can traditional news organizations.

As founder David Cohn notes, “The process of journalism should be participatory – and perhaps one way it can be made participatory is if the public has the opportunity to commission the journalism they want to see.” Go make a pitch or fund a story today.

October 17, 2008

Citizen Journalism Resources for Election Day

in India

This election will be remembered as the first one where traditional media relied heavily on citizen journalism and new media. Take a look at Twitter’s Election 2008 live feed to get a feel for the political zeitgeist. Or how Free Press created “Rate the Debates”:http://www.freepress.net/debates to provide actual input from people before the pundits could formulate their conventional wisdom. Or how C-SPAN and NPR mined twitter for live fact checking, dialtests and general citizen journalism.

Well, election day will be no different. Twitter will probably end up being the place to gain a sense of the situation on the ground, but a lot of other web sites are hoping to provide people with the tools to report voter suppression, other problems and experiences. Here are a few resources:

SourceWatch.org’s Election Protection Wiki

The Election Protection Wiki is a non-partisan, non-profit collaboration of citizens, activists and researchers to build a one-stop-shop for reports of voter suppression and the systemic threats to election integrity. We collect just the straight facts that are fully referenced to external, verifiable sources, and we need your help.

Wired’s Election Problem Reporting Site

Over the next weeks, if you have trouble at the polls, either during early voting or on Election Day, we’d like you to add your issue to our map. Be sure to provide as much detail as possible. You may also include links to video or audio.

YouTube & PBS: Video Your Vote

YouTube’s Video Your Vote, a non-partisan program produced in partnership with PBS, encourages American voters to document their voting experiences.

Whether it’s a video shot at the polls on Election Day, an account of your early voting experience, or you filming yourself filling out an absentee ballot — we want you to upload it here.

The Video Your Vote channel is also a one-stop-shop to view exclusive videos from voter registration experts, election reform activists, and state officials, as well as video footage from the PBS archives for a historical look at voting through the years.

Voter Suppression Wiki

This site is designed to be a hub of information and action around efforts to suppress votes in the 2008 U.S. elections.

Citizen Media Law Project Blog
Has a lot of resources on the legality of documenting your vote and the areas in and around polling places.

The New York Times Polling Place Photo Project

The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this years primaries, caucuses and general election. By documenting local voting experiences, participants can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America.

Twitter Vote Report Project

Anyone with a Twitter.com account can use their cell phones or their computers to send a message and notify voters and election monitors around the country.

I will add more to this page as I discover them.

UPDATE: Some resources to make sure your vote gets counted.

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