Later this month we are running another social reporter training programme, building on the work we have done for Birmingham Local Democracy Week and the Black Country Take Part Pathfinder.
This time our work is funded through the support Birmingham City Council gives to Neighbourhood Forums in the city . The details are below and you can download them here. If you want to come contact: Read more
Diane Smith has used the social network Stafford Direct to starts to challenge the way the mainstream media was telling the Story of the enquiry into deaths at the local hospital. Below she explains what she ste out to do – why she felt the mainstream media was getting things so wrong and what keeps here going:
Ian Little of the Tenbury Wells blog said the reason he got into blogging was the town council was not very transparent with closed meetings – local paper would cover the council from one point of view, my stories tended to be from the opposite point of view.
Should stuff be edited or not? Read more
Bloggers mentioned copyright as the main barrier to exposing content in the BBC archives to a wider, and local, audience.
Frustrated when historical archives are copyrighted, preventing you sharing it with your audience. One volunteer wants to share old photos of areas around Birmingham city centre for others to reminisce, share stories or simply for curiousity. Copyrighted BBC content, in the iPlayer for example, prevents content being put in the public space for comment, discussion and consumption.
There is also a wealth of great archive content by the BBC, spanning decades of local media, that isn’t yet online. There’s lots of interest in this.
Video of Nicky Getgood talking with Robin Morley asking Read more
We spent a great morning working with a group of active citizens from the Black Country Take Part Pathfinder programme, coordinated by Dosti.
The aim was to introduce social reporting – quick and simple ways of sharing what’s going on around you with other people, using social media tools. Sharing information; getting a message across.
A social reporter might shoot a simple video about their neighbourhood. She might make notes at a meeting or conference and share notes with other people online while the event is taking place.
This post rounds up discussion and links created on the day.