Tag: Citizen Journalism

What do bloggers look like?

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This video was a quick one shot at the Social Media Surgery for voluntary groups in Birmingham this evening (should say 2009 – my bad). Despite the leading questions, I hope it gives you a sense of how people from community groups feel about the help they get from volunteer bloggers and social media folk. About 25 “recipients” (real people) plus  the social media surgeons who were in no particular order:

Jon Bounds, Pete Ashton, Jon Hickman, Joanna Geary, Gavin Wray, Benjamin Brum, Simon Whitehouse (see here), Abby Corfan, Phil Oakley, Watfordgap, Danny Smith, Katie Spragg, Mark Steadman.

For a more general view please have a look here. Pete shot this and uploaded it there and then to demonstrate embedding. Bless him!

Government cancels Parliamentary vote following internet campaign on MP's expenses

Early this week My Society urged us to write to our MP’s to insist that the new Freedom of Information Bill should not be used to conceal MP’s expenses.  I sent this to Lynne Jones:

I was really concerned this week to read reports in both left and right wing biased newspapers that parliament is moving to conceal the receipts for MP’s expenses, not simply from open public scrutiny but also from FOI requests.

To be confident that MP’s are spending public money fairly we need that process to fully transparent.  I do hope hope you will do everything you can to ensure that’s the case.

She replied:

I am not sure exactly what we are going to be asked to vote on as yet but I am opposed to special provisions that would exempt MPs from disclosures that other people in other public sector organisations have to make. So as to be accountable, I will put something on my website next week.

Today Tom Steinburg of mySociety tells us that their campaign has worked. Clay Sirky describes it as victory for transparency. Let me give you everything Tom says says:

The vote on concealing MPs’ expenses has been cancelled by the government!

In other words – we won!

This is a huge victory not just for transparency, it’s a bellweather for a change in the way politics works. There’s no such thing as a good day to bury bad news any more, the Internet has seen to that.

Over 7000 people joined a Facebook group, they sent thousands of emails to over 90% of all MPs. Hundreds of thousands of people found out about the story by visiting TheyWorkForYou to find something they wanted to know, reading an email alert, or simply discovered what was going on whilst checking their Facebook or Twitter pages. Almost all of this happened, from nowhere, within 48 hours, putting enough pressure on Parliament to force change.

Congrats – the internets and the mainstream media work together, plus of course the Conservative Party withdrawing their support for the Bill.

Seth Godin and Charlie Beckett get clever about journalism

Seth Godin reckons that

“Newspapers took two cents of journalism and wrapped in ninety-eight cents of overhead and distraction,” and that “if we really care about the investigation and the analysis, we’ll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it’s a public good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of journalists.”.

He is very, very right. (hat tip Ed Moore)

Interesting read from Charlie Beckett from a seminar at my old University, Sussex.

“Any media, be it small scale community projects or a more mass news media organisation, will always be more sustainable and relevant if public participation is built in to all aspects of production and consumption. This all feels part of my vision of future media as more Networked.”

Do Muslims have a sense of humour?

islamickittehborder.jpgThat’s one of the questions asked on the site of a new programme being launched in Birmingham on November 7th.  The full question on Heard and not Seen is

I want to ask, “Do Muslims have a sense of humour?”.
I ask as the media portrays them in a negative way; extremism, fundamentalism etc etc. Where do Muslims go to relax and have fun as I understand they don’t drink either. I’m just curious…

One answer can be found on the site below the question, whilst I think an even better one comes from here in the form of the islamic lolcats you see on the left.

Heard and not Seen is run by Friction Arts (who’ve just shifted their own website over to wordpress) and is best described as askthedriver for Muslims.

If you also want to go to the launch and ask some questions details are here.