Designing for Civil Society

Network to explore "civic function of news"

Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, is launching an RSA Journalism Network over on the RSA Networks site.

The public’s declining trust in the news media is a worrying trend. The RSA and the Reuters Institute of Journalism are looking at how we can support the civic function of news. We’re particularly interested in how professional journalists and Fellows relate to the public’s ideas about news and what it is for.

Great topic - and maybe this network could provide an opportunity, among other things,  to explore what the BBC plans are in this field. As I quoted in that post, Stephen has said:

The BBC is dropping/has dropped the Action Network. It plans to do a number of other exciting things along these lines in the coming months. The Action network (previously iCan) was always meant to be an experiment. The BBC is right to learn from experiments and change course if that's what seems right.

As well as his position at Leeds University, Stephen is Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute, which maybe explains the connection.
The timing of the project is right, with growing interest in the shifting role of journalists, as citizens produce content for themselves. Charlie Beckett explored that in Networked Journalism: For the people and with the people. More in posts cited below.
I do, however, hope that Stephen makes a commitment to bring the network out from behind the RSA Networks login, as we did with The Membership Project once it had some initial RSA support and interest from Fellows (members). The RSA is running a terrific series of public lectures, free and open to anyone - why not follow the same approach online? I can't see how it is possible to have a useful discussion about media and citizenship in an old-style walled garden. You can link out - but people outside are then forced to come to "your place" to join in. This seems particularly inappropriate on this topic, where issues are so interesting precisely because the Internet has created a public commons.
I've argued the open approach and the case for distributed communities in the RSA, though I  can also see the case for private spaces for member-to-member discussions. In this instance I think that Stephen Coleman, the RSA and the Reuters Institute will provide more public benefit by sharing the conversation with everyone. Journalists would agree - wouldn't they?
Previously on Stephen Coleman, the BBC, and open-closed:

• BBC leads us behind the scenes on new media, if not news
• BBC plans to sustain citizenship and civil society. Please tell us how.
• TV voting scandals and poor e-democracy both destroy trust
• Do communities need boundaries?

Telegraph bloggers hold open house

Blogging enables journalists to publish more stories, get rapid feedback, and cross the boundaries between old and new media. That's just online. At the Daily Telegraph - the first UK newspaper to go online 10 years ago - the new approach now extends to holding an open house event and inviting readers and other bloggers in for a chat.
Yesterday was London Social Media Club night, so Lloyd Davis led the way in meeting up with Communities Editor Shane Richmond and other Telegraph bloggers for some Q and A, a tour of the newsroom and refreshments afterwards. It reinforced my feeling that one of the greatest benefits of social media is the chance to meet interesting people.
Much of the questioning was about how journalists took to producing stories both for print and online, how comments were handled, who developed the technical platform, and how far journalists actually read other bloggers and linked.
Answers: all 40 bloggers are volunteers ... they like having the opportunity to get more stories published ... they deal with over 1000 comments a day ... Interesource developed the blogging platform ...  linking to other sites is actively encouraged. It was all very open and informative, with the added treat of a guided wander around the amazing open-plan newsroom. This is organised as a hub and spokes, so that reporters can easily talk to each other, and to senior staff at the centre. Editorial conferences are held in the middle, not away in a closed office, and looming over everyone are enormous news screens showing what others are producing. It is an all-media affair, with studio space for video and podcasting.
Afterwards I asked Shane whether blogging changed journalists ... and if it did, whether they were in danger of losing some traditional questioning edge. He thought yes, there was a often change, and it was all for the better in developing a closer relationship with readers. Good relations with other bloggers won't hurt either. As someone said, once you have met someone, you are less likely to snipe at them online. Expect few jokes about the Torygraph in the blogosphere in future; it didn't feel like that at all ... though we did gather that comment moderation is fairly tight, and some of the readership holds to more, ahem, traditional values.
If you have problem with the Quicktime movie above, it's on Google video here, together with a longer version including discussion with new media consultant Simon Dickson and lawyer Mark Boardman.
Here's an earlier report on the Telegraph newsroom by Jeff Jarvis, and Shane with Jeff.

Technorati Tags: blogging, norgs, newspapers, telegraph

The challenge for e-democratisers: deliberation as well as demands

As the BBC was reporting a big response to the No 10 e-petitions system - 500 in the first couple of days according to the team in Downing Street - the Prime Minister's strategy adviser was urging those assembled at yesterday's e-democracy '06 conference to help people be more deliberative and collaborative.
Matthew Taylor was keynote speaker, giving us a wholly engaging (no Powerpoint, no notes) appraisal of the unhealthy elements of the relationship between citizens, media and politicians - and the often shrill discourse that results. The media sells outrage, citizens fail to recognise the tough choices they have to make in their lifestyles, and politicians work hard and mainly honestly to balance priorities in a highly complex world. I summarise outrageously. The BBC has a full report, including:

At a time at which we need a richer relationship between politicians and citizens than we have ever had, to confront the shared challenges we face, arguably we have a more impoverished relationship between politicians and citizens than we have ever had. It seems to me this is something which is worth calling a crisis.

Matthew was appointed to the Labour Party in 1994 to establish Labour's rebuttal operation ... so one might expect some weariness with both Press and petitioners.
However, Matthew's main focus was on the need for us to work through the complexities of political choice for ourselves, and not expect easy fixes from politicians. He cited citizens juries, familiar from his time as director of the think tank IPPR. There people who are not experts in a subject hear evidence, discuss the issues, and try and reach a conclusion. Often people with opposing views find common ground.
We need these deliberative processes not just with others, but with ourselves, because we need to balance our private wants with common goods.
The Internet, said Matthew, had helped people to mobilise. It offers new methods of search and exposure. But does it yet really help people engage with dilemmas and challenges, and work their way through to conclusions? He presented that challenge to developers and advocates of e-democracy tools.
I was official conference video blogger, which felt very important and was great fun, but rather reduced my incentive to take proper notes - so I was pleased Matthew offered a well-crafted recap before he left.
Matthew shortly moves from No 10 to become chief executive of the 250-year-old Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. As I reported recently that organisation is renowned for serious deliberation, and is now thinking about how better to engage its 26,000 Fellows more effectively. Sounds a great testbed for some of the new tools Matthew wants.
More conference video here shortly, and then on a dedicated blog.

Seems the Tories really do get the Net. Isn't that news?

I've just caught up with the speech by shadow chancellor George Osborne on Politics and Media in the Internet Age, nudged by several non-Tories saying this shows the opposition have got the Net. Webcameron was the popular front, this is the serious back end. Open University professor and Internet observer John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, agrees in Comment is free:

A shadow chancellor embracing the internet revolution? Whatever next? In his Olsen Lecture last night, delivered in St Bride's, Fleet Street, to an audience of journalists, bankers, lawyers and other low-life types, George Osborne extolled the virtues of modern communication technologies - which represent, he says, a profound cultural shift that politicians (not to mention journalists, bankers and lawyers) ignore at their peril. He also managed to slip in an assertion or two to the effect that the Cameroonies have got the message and the Blair-Brownites haven't.
It would be churlish to infer that Mr Osborne may not be quite as familiar with this stuff as his text implied. Not many teenagers would use Limewire for video and BitTorrent for tunes, for example, but we will let that pass. As Dr Johnson (a celebrated denizen of Fleet Street in his day) might have said, the wonder is not that the speech was done well but that it was done at all. The shadow chancellor has dined with the CEO of Google and met Tom Anderson, the first "friend" every MySpace user acquires. He knows that there are 57 million blogs and that an exabyte is a one followed by 18 zeros. He knows about Linux and Wikipedia. He's heard of Bebo and Friendster and may, for all we know, be a secret YouTube addict. At any rate he knows that "every minute, 15 new user-generated videos are uploaded" to that intriguing site. And he knows that all this Means Something.
Like what? Well, everything must be more "transparent" because nothing is hidden from Google's all-searching eye. So HMG should have a website which enables taxpayers to Google the government's squandering of their hard-earned cash. And official services should all be available online - because if they're not, citizens might use their new social-networking skills to organise nasty demonstrations and bring down the government. And so on and so forth.

I can only join my friends in urging you to read the speech, and maybe pass it on ... not for party political purposes, but because it is so extraordinary to find someone in a traditional political role explaining the importance of search, personalisation, social networking, and collective intelligence. Googling the speech didn't show up coverage in the traditional media, but then, should we be surprised?

Shock! Horror! Journalists should forget news.

It used to be so easy. Police chased criminals, journalists chased police, ambulances and other surprises, and PR people chased journalists dressing marketing up as something with a deadline. Now policing is entwined with citizen-focussed service delivery, PRs should be offering social media press releases, and journalists need to forget news. Oliver Luft reports:

Newspapers need to forget news if they are going to prosper in the digital age, an industry conference was told today.
Opening the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna, Robert Cauthorn, CEO of CityTools, said that newspapers had lost the ability to tell communities the stories they are interested in.
Newspapers are guilty of talking only to decision makers, he said, and people were now shifting to form their own online communities around stories that interested them.
"All the wonderful reasons for being a journalist are rushing back and, ironically, it's because of the audience," he said.
"We need to forget news, we have got to get away from the idea of news and get back to stories.
"Our readers think of stories; news is an alien concept, stories are interesting. News is a terrible fate for a story to fall into."

A quick search shows Robert Cauthorn has an award for online journalism, and writes  provocatively in Rebuilding Media at Corante about the death of conventional news print. In his conference speech he cited the extent to which people were uploading video content, and rating content they find.

"People are exhausted of being asked to sit back and listen while the leaders talk; they want to get involved."
He told the conference that to remain relevant, newspapers needed to let readers write original material on their sites, not just to comment on existing stories, to engage them in a dialogue.
He also urged newspapers to put their archived content onto wiki software and allow readers to do the 'heavy lifting' of tagging stories along thematic and geographical lines so that they were easily accessible.

Trawling the comments at Corante I found a great one from Sean

What if newspapers were mentors?
What if newspapers were facilitators, not mouthpieces?
What if newspapers empowered authentic voices?
What if newspapers gave up a little power to get it back?An interesting experiment in community journalism partnered with a local newspaper:http://www.voicesinc.org

We could add the work that the BBC is doing in Manchester, working with local bloggers. Feels as if the social reporter is on the right track.
Update: Milverton Wallace celebrates the role of the amateur in networked communications.

Move beyond blogging - start buzzing

Steve Bridger has definitely topped my rather prosaic social reporter role with the proposal that nonprofits need a "buzz director", who takes a creative rather than technical approach to social media. This would give whoever lands the role some influence. As well as encouraging colleagues to blog and use other tools, they should:

• Talk to everybody. Listen. Make it easy for colleagues to find you, or manufacture the conditions by which serendipity is more likely to occur.
• If you see the never-ending strategic review dragging your new colleagues down, remind them of the reasons they joined your organisation in the first place. Get them passionate (and close) to your cause once again. Share their passion. Be energetic. Be useful.
• Your role is to create a buzz around your cause (and secondarily, your not-for-profit ‘brand’). But resist any desire (or pressure) to “own” the cause. Far better to identify the communities where your supporters and activists are already and join in the conversation.
  

As well as a host of other ideas about using social media, Steve counsels:

• Don’t get too big for your boots and call all this a ‘project’ because it will run into the rails. Don’t call it a pilot as no one will take it seriously enough.
• Do prepare a monthly report of activity and ensure it is distributed widely within the organisation.
• Not-for-profits unwilling to consider some or all of the above, risk becoming irrelevant. How will your organisation be different in three years time?

Nick Booth, over at Podnosh, definitely sees a major role, not least because organisations need a reflective process to understand properly what makes them special. That has to be interactive.

For me Steve’s description of a ‘buzz director’ reads a little like the qualities you may wish for in a leader.
Any individual devoting so much effort to understanding the cause, relating to actual and potential supporters and talking to the team should also play a pivotal role in refining the point of the organisation, defining what it is that could make you great.

However, I take comfort in the reporter role from Jeff Jarvis - appropriately at BuzzMachine - citing Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger:

He predicted that reporters will become converged newsgathers. All reporters will work in at least five media and networked journalism would see professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, but he left open the question of who would edit it. “I think you have to prepared to be surprised and you have to experiment like mad.”

That's easy then. Everyone will have to be able to do everything ... whatever they are called.

Social reporter as moderator, enabler, educator

Jeff Jarvis in Criticism is free offers an analysis of how mainstream journalism may change of in the networked environment ... giving me further encouragement towards being a social reporter as discussed here and here.

Jeff is writing about the The Guardian's Comment is Free model which brings columnists, opinions leaders and readers together in the same online space.

Many months ago, I sat in the office of Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger as we talked about the extension of the CiF model and he drew a diagram showing the new relationship of the journalist — columnist and critic but also, I believe, reporter and editor — to his or her public. He drew a funnel with talk flowing in and out and I can’t recreate that now. So I’ll give you a very mixed metaphor: Journalists should no longer act as choke-points in that funnel but instead as pumps and filters, keeping the flow of opinions and information going in, around, and through — and contributing to and improving that flow along the way.

And that is the important thing to watch here: What is the role of the journalist in this new, networked world? Moderator. Enabler. Even educator. I think the Comment is Free model works beyond merely opinion and conversation as journalists’ roles change.

First, there is the informational role. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the journalists saw questions, curiosities, or misinformation swirling around the conversation and then went and fixed that with reporting: ‘Since you asked . . .’ ‘Here are the facts. . . .’ That is their first contribution. Of course, this is what jounalists do already: They report. I’d like to see the reporting and the conversation around it come closer together in the CiF model. And then, of course, the reporters aren’t the only ones reporting. This becomes an example for anyone; it empowers us all to go get facts, to improve the conversation, to make the crowd wiser.

Second, I think the journalist-as-moderator needs to be more of a magnet, to both attract and actively go out and find the really interesting voices and the knowledgeable experts and bring them into the conversation. Again, this is what reporters do already when they find the right people to quote. But now they can do more than quote those people; they can invite them to the party. And the party only gets better.

Third, editors should see themselves more broadly. I hesitate to say that they should edit and educate the crowd, for I can hear the crowd shouting back at me, ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ editing!’ But at CiF, when comments started to go wild, I suggested that instead of concentrating on the bad guys, they concentrate on the good guys and they found and highlighted some great new voices. That is one role of an editor: finding and cultivating talent. I also think an editor’s contribution to a conversation — as to an article — can and should be to push to make it better, to ask the right questions, to focus the narrative, to push for more reporting. That is how editors will operate in NewAssignment.net. Yes, in this sense, we are all editors. Except I think what’s missing is for the paid editors to bring those skills to the conversation. And the conversation will be better for it.

I think that the CiF model is an important step on the way to networked journalism, for it brings together the pros and the ams to do new things together.

These days you don't have to work for The Guardian to practice the art of social reporting, aka blogging. And if, like Tim Berners-Lee, you feel you have been mid-reported, you can publish your own correction, and assert Blogging is great.

Reality check on social reporting: people

In Social Reporting and Rich Records Lloyd Davis picks up my post about the role of Social Reporter, and offers some wise words drawn from his own experience (which is rather more than mine, I should say):

I'm taking a softly, softly, catchee monkey approach. I think (and my order book shows) that we have agreement that it's a "good thing" or at least a "nice thing" to have a richer record of a days proceedings and that blogs and wikis are a good way of producing that. What I agree we haven't done yet is get to the point where we're able to weave everything together to make it useful enough to participants that they want to do more than view the record.

But maybe that's not our responsibility...yet. I see a risk that we're pushing people too fast along a learning curve that we've taken a while to go along ourselves. I found last week that It is enough novelty for the average conference participant to deal with the fact that we've taken pictures, done some vox-pops with people and live blogged a keynote and they are up on the internet at the end of day 1! Maybe we should just let this aspect sink in for a little bit - if they want to interact as well, then that's fantastic and we should be ready for it when it happens, but in the meantime, perhaps we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment.

This accords with the professional digital divide observations of Dave Pollard (maybe 2 percent are power users of collaboration tools), and those of my Portugal-based colleague Bev Trayner in Reality check - the new renaissance:

I have been taken aback with (fico suprendida com) how unfamiliar many people are with these new tools and technologies. Yet again I find myself living in two different mindsets.

On the one hand there is a world where online and offline connections blend, complement, compete and synergise. Time is not synchronous. Technologies are ubiquitous and "everyone uses RSS feeds". This world is not dominated by technologists, but by social entrepreneurs who see the potential of new technologies.

In another world intentions like "e-learning platform" or "knowledge portal" are heralded as badges of innovation and state-of-the-art accomplishments. In this world you still hear people insist that face-to-face is more complete than online, as if the two were in opposition. The frames of same-time same-place are unquestionable. People who know about technologies must be engineers, technologists or freaks.

Adding:

It has been a salutory lesson. And it reminds me of an ongoing design question I have (and that was stimulated by Nancy): how do you stimulate people's imagination to try out technologies? And also - how come some people see it and others don't?

If the ethos of the social reporter is to promote collaboration by standing on the side of the user/reader/viewer and helping them to contribute, we have to take this very seriously. Evangelising - come on in, it's wonderful - doesn't work any better than warnings - you'll be left behind if you don't.

Part of the answer is being clear about the purpose ... what real benefit will tech-supported collaboration bring - and aware of the prevailing culture which may not be receptive. I think it is also about respecting people's preferences. That's partly about personality, and partly about offering a choice of audio, video, text and so on.

All that means that social reporting, to be successful, requires a pretty full set of skills and tools. As Lloyd says, instead of pushing too hard we could be honing our reporting skills in this new environment. If we can't get the gigs, maybe we need some simulated rehearsing ... a sort of emerging social reporting conference, where we all practise on some willing non-tech participants. Any sponsors up for that?

Social media, social web, social networking ... time for the social reporter

Online forums need hosts and moderators, workshops need facilitators, networks require some weaving to develop links. But how, for example, do you do that fast around an event, capture content, and follow through afterwards? I'm pondering the possible role of the social reporter.
I'm interested from two angles. The first is the practicality of setting up and supporting multi-use blogs sites like this for people attending events, and so mix face-to-face and online. The ideal is to help people register, post their profiles, contribute through blogging and commenting, while at the same time being offered links to wider networks and good briefing material. Contributions at the event will be reported through blog items, audio and video. Afterwards there may be further contributions to other sites, maybe some joint work on a wiki.
Except ... it doesn't just happen. Unless the event is about social media few people will be comfortable with the tools. There isn't time to build a community gradually, nor the critical mass of users to get a lot of spontaneous contributions. Just seeding the space isn't enough ... more intensive gardening is required.
Of course, you may say none of this is worth the effort, and face-to-face events don't benefit from before and afters online, but for now let's say it is worth experimenting in different ways. If that's the case, then someone has to find external resources, spot stories of interest to participants, look for common interests in profiles and make introductions, post items an help others to so, shoot video ... and so on. I think it's a mix of facilitation and journalism.
My second interest is the journalism angle ... something I used to do in print. When someone asks these days what I do, I end up stumbling around ... "I use social media for social benefit ... help people collaborate in workshops and online .... you know, blogs and wikis and that sort of thing". It used to be much easier to say I was a reporter.
It occurs to me that I should try calling myself a social reporter; it feels more comfortable for this purpose than knowledge activist or technology steward.
For me it has the advantage of confirming some fraternal links with people like Nick Booth of Podnosh, who blogs and podcasts in his local community in Birmingham, while reflecting on what's needed to shift from the news values of traditional journalism to something more socially beneficial. We need to move from conflict, celebrity and criticism to collaboration, celebration, creativity.
It seems to me that the role of social reporter could be important as we see a shift from "all in one place" online communities to the sort of blog communities described by Nancy White. It chimes in with the work I'm doing with Bev Trayner in developing sites that may support communities of practice (and learning a lot from Bev along with way on CoPs). 'Social reporter" also reminds me I have a lot to learn from Beth Kanter on how to use the wealth of web and personal media tools now available. It ties in with work to explore what social networking may mean for nonprofits, over at the mediablends site. Maybe I'll end up with something useful to contribute to the exciting work on conversations and storytelling generously put into the public domain by the guys at Anecdote. They really seem to know how to mix face-to-face and online.
There are many other great examples of people doing really innovative work using social media for social benefit ... so much so it can be a bit intimidating. Hence the need - for me anyway - to find a way of describing the work that is a bit personal, a bit general. Social reporter may be it. As part of my rather cursory research I tried Wikipedia ... nothing there. I Googled the term and found a certain amount about people who audit the environmental and social impact of business. Hmmm. But then I found reference to others who seemed to get invited to a lot of parties. Phew, that's alright then. Don't want to lose all the traditional benefits.

Tories (and Google) embrace DIY TV

Another example of the Tories embracing new media: after Webcameron we have "politics for adults" in a mix of streaming video and blogging, as Slugger O'Toole reports in Doughty Street Goes Live!.

Long trailed by Iain Dale, and subject of a comprehensive blog on Comment is Free, you can get the Doughty Street TV station now online. It’s being billed as Tory TV, and it is true that that is where the money is coming from and where the mainstays hail from. But Tim Montgomery sketches out its wider identity as anti establishment on Channel Four. I will even be putting in an occasional report on matters Irish.

That other high-ranking political blogger Guido Fawkes observes that the Tories are much-taken with Google.

Staff flow from Google to CCHQ and from CCHQ to Google. Google's boss Eric Schmidt spoke at the Tory conference (giving the most intellectually stimulating speech).

Over at The Progreessive, home for Labour bloggers, Dan Fox bemoans The Amazing Missed Opportunity of Mrs Pitchard, a TV drama in which a supermarket manager played by Jane Horrocks, angry at the state of politics, stands as an independent and ends up as Prime Minister. Dan offers a critique of political dramas over the past decade.

In many ways, those responsible for drama are simply reflecting the culture of their colleagues in news and current affairs, where the path of least resistance in representing politics is not so much naturally taken as actively sought with a GPS system and master atlas. Stories over substance. Personalities over issues. Entertainment over information.

The Tories have decided on the value the DIY approach ... something Google have put money on with their $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube. That broadcast-yourself  site didn't exist a couple of years ago. Robert Paterson explains the importance for business and participation here and here.

So for all those analysts who miss it - value today has two dimensions - the transaction revenue as per always and now more importantly the participation factor that does away with all the normal expansion and brand protection costs. To get the right kind of participation the enterprise has to create an ecosystem in which the participant can do things that help expand his or her identity. Where the action expands and deepens their relationships to others.

At one time political parties offered people an eco-system of goodwill, some shared values, debate, stimulation. Now we look elsewhere. I think the Tories have understood that.

Shifting news values to what really matters

Nick Booth - former BBC producer turned community podcaster and blogger - adds some insider insights to the implication of BBC support for Manchester bloggers.
He writes:

For me a core part of the future of the BBC will revolve around encouraging others to find their voice and shape news. In some ways it is an extension of the American concept of Open Newsroom  where the public is invited to join in editorial decision making.

From my experience of BBC editorial meetings this would require a culture shift. The discussion has traditionally been rather cynical – based on traditional journalistic instinct about what makes a good story. This will often require conflict, criticism and celebrity (or prominence) as a core part of the story. News is made or broken by whether those things exist or can be readily conjured up. (If you look at my post on David Cameron and Netiquette you’ll see how I still find myself exercising these muscles.)

With an open newsroom the public is potentially there to re-educate the reporter and editor about what is really interesting, rather than what hacks think the public wants.

This culture shift will also need to come as part of the BBC experiment. If the local bloggers are throwing up innovative fare while the BBC journalists who decide which story to follow and which to kill harbour traditional values, it will fail.

Of course a good story is always a good story and experienced journalists have considerable expertise in spotting and telling stories. But in essence the BBC needs to find a way to short circuit in-house editorial values whilst preserving the best of in-house editorial ethics. Perhaps they need a combination of the open newsroom, local bloggers and the way in which Digg equips real people to decide what is and isn’t interesting.

At one time I was a print journalist, and still sometimes find it difficult to substitute values of collaboration and co-creation for those of conflict, criticism and celebrity highlighted by Nick. It's fun to stir things up. Other journalists pick up the story, so you get quick positive feedback. Political bloggers like Guido Fawkes continue the tradition - which is fine, provided it isn't the only culture around. Interesting to see Guido giving a general welcome to webcameron where the Tory leader is running an open blog if not an open newsroom. Interesting stuff usually happens when new tradition/culture meets old, so Manchester is one to watch.

It's been the year of the digital citizen, says BBC

Jo Twist argues that 2005 was the year of the digital citizen - when citizens shaped the news, media and the world with their digital technology. In an article for BBC online Jo cites citizen journalists sending digital photos to news media, video bloggers producing content for politicians, and community activists podcasting.

The UK has long worried about the relationship between government, media and the public. The erosion of trust and democracy is feared above all.
The question is what happens to social cohesion in this quickly evolving landscape and how can the government negotiate consumer-led media.
Some might argue that the remaining ties binding government, media and the public will be eroded further by the decentralisation of media.
Greater choice of what to watch, what news means and who produces it, as well as the shift from broadcast to on-demand media, could increase people's ability to opt out of public and democratic debates if they want to.
Alternatively, the changing nature of news offers a diversity of voices, sources, and choice to enhance democratic potentials and lets anyone join in global and local conversations.

Jo completed a PhD on virtual communities before spending several years with the BBC, and is now a Senior Research Fellow leading the Digital Society and Media team at the think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Front page lies - and that's just the free offer

Time was that shock-horror news was what sold tabloids, but these days - at weekends anyway - it is the merchandising deals. But can you trust the promotions any more than the headlines? Today's Sun offers two episodes of The Office "no tokens, no fuss"... taking most of the front page to back up its TV ads. Worth 50p, I thought, with the background excuse (if needed) that these days the series is used in management training. Except the DVD isn't there. Turn to the small print on page 41. "This DVD is polybagged inside The Sun in Carlton and Meridian (TV) areas only. Elsewhere it is instantly redeemable at Blockbuster stores." There isn't one of those round the corner, so I'm not sure I'll bother. Tomorrow, says the Sun, its sister paper the News of the Word is offering "Sex and the CD Vol. 2". I think I'll pass.

Email feedback proves a mixed blessing for journalists

In today's Guardian "The Readers' editor' Ian Mayes reports on Email anxiety that is afflicting journalists who put their email address at the end of their pieces. While most journalists he spoke to welcome the direct contact this offered with readers, quite a few were anxious that they were overwhelmed and couldn't respond. One said: "Worst of all worlds is printing an address, suggesting the possibility of an exchange, then ignoring the mail."
However, the advantage, noted by many, "was the flow of information, ideas and contacts they gained from their "real" correspondence, as opposed to the lobbies, the abuse and the spam.
"A freelance journalist who wrote recently on the comment pages emailed the commissioning editor to say she had been delighted with the feedback - about 25 emails, bringing more information, some new contacts, three offers to write for other newspapers, and a note from an old schoolfriend with whom she had long lost touch."
It seems to me that direct reader feedback is one challenge to the temptation for journalists to write for other journalists, and take their reward from the extent others follow their story - rather than the response of readers they (should) aim to serve. It could also provide them with something to take to editors to show what interests people.... well, those that are avid emailers anyway.
On a positive note, I did once email the BBC's political editor Andrew Marr about a piece he did interviewing himself that didn't - I felt - come off well. He came back immediately with a charming and self-depracatory response, which convinced me he was in fact as honest as he (usually) looked on screen.
Perhaps we'll see journalists - or their papers - setting up blogs or wikis with collections of articles and and comment facilities, thereby reducing the email load. Of course, that would provide readers with an open and more interactive forum than the traditional letters page, and great scope for blogging readers to set up links and extend the discourse. Where would it end? I can see why some journalists might be anxious about that. Definitely a challenge to the elite.
More here on What is participatory journalism? in the Online Journalism Review.

Why hacks, bloggers - and columnists - need each other

John Naughton writing in The Observer today takes an insightful look at why bloggers and mainstream journalists complement each other. He uses as a peg for his column a new Harvard study of the 2002 episode of US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's remarks at the 100th party of Strom Thurmond, longest-serving senator. Lott applauded Thurmond's 1948 'Dixiecrat' segregationist stance and ended up losing his post because (in part) of bloggers. It's an interesting story - but what I found behind John's column interested me just as much. First the Lott-Thurmond story.