Tag: Citizen Journalism

Davos – a few links.

As you probably know a theme of this week’s meeting will be web 2.0 and how it contributes to shifting power relationships. Keep tabs in a number of places including:

BBC: Richard Sambrook and others.

WE Forum Homepage

Davos Conversation

Commondreams usually as an alternative take

Speakers will include Bill Gates, Tony Blair, King Abdullah of Jordan, Angela Merkel, Joe Biden, Rupert Murdoch, Eric Schmidt, Hua Jianmin, John McCain, Mohammed El Baradei, Sergy Brin, Gordon Brown. Apparently Bono will also be there!

The Huffington Post is helping produce Davos conversations and is inviting us all to post our video questions to youtube using the tag davos07.

In the meantime anyone want to step up and have a stab at running their country?

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A civil spat – the Youtube way.

I have masses of blogging to catch up on, but thought I would start with one of our local councillors here in Birmingham who is using youtube to tackle graffiti. In the process Martin Mullaney appears to have sparked an intergenerational brushfire.

On January 5th 2007 this Liberal Democrat Councillor for Moseley and Kings Heath popped up a video in which he talks about specific tags and taggers and tells us that many of these young people are from ‘good homes’ and good schools. 10 days later it has provoked more than 170 (often vociferous) comments, essentially a conversation between the taggers concerned and the councillor.

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As Pete Ashton points out the councillor is clearly determined to confront the taggers. On his own blog we also find out that this particular politician gave police evidence which he says led to the arrest of 3 taggers before Christmas.

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It works. Good luck Michele

Last month I wrote a little something about how technology is defined by the simple truth that it is somehting which doesn’t yet work properly.

Today I got another point of view. Writing on the Bamboo Project blog (another frequent user of the nptech tag) Michele Roy Martin describes how her daughter and ex-husband found themselves intimately involved in a shooting at a school in the US. The news spread fast. Michele’s take, though, was:

What struck me about all this was not only how quickly news spread through the use of technology, but also how the kids and families were able to use this media to begin connecting, processing, discussing and mourning what had happened. I thought about how as a parent, if it had been my child, I would have been so grateful to go to a site and see this outpouring of love and connection coming from other people, people who didn’t even know my child. As the mother of a child who saw what happened, I’m also grateful that she has the ability to process her own trauma and grief by connecting to so many people. It’s astonishing to me to see what technology can accomplish in creating human bonds.

I read a lot of stories about how people are worried that online community interferes with “real” community. That may be true in some cases. But this is one time when I believe that technology may actually help in healing “real life.”

I hope things settle quickly for you and your family. Take care.

Mood Mapping – the highs and lows of street life.

A few evenings ago I was chewing over some ideas which might make a good punt for the 21st Century News Challenge. As you do with these things I was getting a little giddy.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic, I thought, if you could map a neighbourhood by how people feel? It would not only give people living there a sense of how their neighbours are, it would also give public services valuable information on what lifts people’s moods and boosts security, and what provokes fear or anxiety.
I was toying with with technology involving mobile phones – perhaps a neighbourhood text line, where you could send a smiley (or the opposite), which knows the location of the phone? Extra text could be added as tags.

So a quick Google found Christian Nold’s work on Bio-Mapping. (hat tip to architect Rob Annable.) Christian is an artist who combines skin sensors which detect mood with global positioning kit and mapping software. Anyone wearing his kit can walk through their neighbourhood leaving a trail of emotion which can later be viewed on Google Earth. They can also add information about specific places – which may help identify why they felt what they did. Those taking part are in my mind a new form of citizen journalist – the ultimate mood blogger.
The potential for this as a means to get under the skin of a community is enormous. Refine or revise the technology and you can offer an almost instant mood exchange among people.

Would this be insanity – a more insidious version of cctv – or a new way to measure and influence social cohesion and or capital?