Constitutional Law

A Related Epidemic: Swine Flu brings New Lows in Context to Chatter Ratio

Posted on April 30, 2009
One pig, if only in the news topic logo*, usually gets a cameo in television coverage of swine flu. The lonely pig is out of context, though- separated from the three-quarters of a million caged, crammed, and fattened pigs slaughtered annually at the massively polluting pig factory in the town with the first human case of the virus...

New Resource Devoted to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

Posted on April 30, 2009
The Citizen Media Law Project, which I direct, today launched a new page that aggregates everything on our site relating to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("Section 230"), the important federal statute that protects operators of websites and other interactive computer services from liability for publishing the statements of third-parties...

Pulitzer Validates Journalism-Technology Collaborations

Posted on April 28, 2009
If the survival of journalism depends on technology innovation, one or more of three things will have to happen: Journalists will learn technology development; Technology developers will learn journalism; Journalists and technology professionals will learn to collaborate...

Maps for Social Change and Community Involvement

Posted on April 24, 2009
2008 was the year of aggregating data related to local communities and displaying that information on maps. Knight News Challenge grantee EveryBlock, for example, labored to convince city governments to make their data more open and accessible, and then created a beautiful map interface to display what is happening where in real time...

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Technological Design Decisions Behind Gram Vaani's Radio Platform

Posted on April 22, 2009
This is a post more for the technology minded, but even others should find it interesting to get an inside view of what goes into designing appropriate technological systems in rural contexts that we are addressing. We've made many design decisions along the way, based on our prior experiences, foresight into expected problems, and observations made while visiting and learning about community radio stations in India...

How Can We Improve Information Needs of Local Communities?

Posted on April 21, 2009
With some fanfare, the Knight Foundation and Aspen Institute announced a new Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy a couple years ago, with the idea of finding out just what needs were being served -- and what was lacking...

Waiting for the bill

Posted on April 20, 2009
It has been an exciting few weeks for Freedom Fone. We finally got back a version of our prototpye software which works with SIM cards, so we can use it here in Zimbabwe. We've been having focus group discussions with a range of people to help inform our first local deployment...

Pounding the Pavement and Planning Ahead for Printcasting

Posted on April 20, 2009
It's been about a month since Printcasting launched in Bakersfield, and our local grassroots outreach is well under way. Every week our marketing evangelist meets with several new groups and individuals. Many of them see immediate uses for Printcasts, and we're starting to see a stream of new activity...

MTV Iggy and Community Video Coming Together

Posted on April 17, 2009
Video Volunteers has partnered with MTV Iggy to produce videos in Kashmir about life in the refugee camps of Jammu. Here's a link to one of the videos, about a boy who watched his entire family be slaughtered: <embed src="http://media.mtvnservices...

Cultivating a Community Garden, not a Public Toilet

Posted on April 16, 2009
I recently attended the Integrated Media Association conference in Atlanta and sat in on a panel of web content providers addressing public radio folks about online content. Jesse Thorne moderated a great discussion about how to provide content your audience wants to hear, how to listen and how to foster online communities around your content...

Does the input medium matter in cell phone journalism?

Posted on April 14, 2009
Although newspapers have gone through 150 years of evolution away from popular contributions and towards fully professional writing, technology is rapidly re-empowering non-professionals. Anyone who has rudimentary access to technology can blog or twitter, take cell phone photos and video of dramatic moments, and quickly get them 'out there'...

Progress Made: So What About the Hyphen? (Car Plant Scene 1)

Posted on April 06, 2009
According to the Council for Research Excellence, created by the Nielsen Company, an adult is exposed to screens - TVs, cellphones, even G.P.S. devices - for about 8.5 hours a day, the NYT reports. It seems like those last five weeks I have spent twice more time in front of my Mac and iPhone screens moving the Sochi Olympics Project forward...

Making a Map Mash-Up with the G1 Phone and Flickr

Posted on April 06, 2009
Combining mobility, time and location is becoming one of the most valuable techniques of media creation. Last week, some students and I did a small experiment that demonstrates how easy this is to do, and suggests all kinds of possibilities for journalistic follow-ups...

News From the Front: Reflections of an Intern

Posted on April 03, 2009
It’s been a long six months, but I’m finally dusting off my keyboard and re-starting my blog here. First things first, a disclaimer: I don’t graduate until May, so it’s safe to say that I still don’t know what I’m talking about...

Freedom Fone at W3C - Maputo

Posted on April 02, 2009
Freedom Fone's Technical Director, Brenda Burrell, is currently at the W3C workshop in Maputo: Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development. The workshop has organised by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), particularly the Mobile Web Initiative, and its Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group...

Technological Advances Can Reveal Failure to Reflect Community

Posted on April 01, 2009
In a few weeks the American Society of Newspaper Editors will release its annual census. The census, created to capture an accurate picture of the industry's diversity, will also tell us how many jobs were lost in this year of lay offs, buy-outs and shuttered newspapers...

Social Networking and Political Movements

Posted on April 01, 2009
An upcoming event caught my attention as something I thought other Ideas Lab bloggers and readers might be interested in: Using Social Networking to Marshal the Youth Vote: Online discussion with Rock the Vote director Heather Smith - Tuesday April 7 Very significant elections are coming up in South Africa on April 22, and for the first time in the country's history, there is relatively strong opposition to the governing party...

Where Citizens Gather: An Interview with The Future of Public Media Project's Jessica Clark (Part Two)

Posted on March 31, 2009
Today, we continue our discussion with Jessica Clark, co-author of Public Media 2.0, an important white paper recently issued by American University's Center for Social Media. What does your research suggest about the relative roles of professional media producers and Pro-Am media makers in the new ecology of public media? Professionally produced content is central to public media 2...

Where Citizens Gather: An Interview with The Future of Public Media Project's Jessica Clark (Part One)

Posted on March 31, 2009
Amidst all of the dire talk these days about the fate of the American newspaper, the Center for Social Media at American University has issued an important white paper exploring the future of public media more generally. When most of us think about "public media" these days, we are most likely to be talking about Public Broadcasting, where the Public refers as much to Public Funding as it refers to any conception of the Public Sphere...

Collaboration is Queen - Spot.Us Moving Forward

Posted on March 30, 2009
There are more updates to spot.us than I can really fit into a MediaShift IdeaLab post. For the list-y version of recent milestones - scroll down to the bottom. But first, I want to highlight a very specific example of forward momentum both for Spot...

How Many Homegrown News Stories Are in Your Daily Paper?

Posted on March 27, 2009
Let's try a simple count of locally produced news stories in your daily newspaper. Yes, the print edition. The whole news system feeds off the flow of newspaper content, right? Lots of people asking, what's going to replace newspapers if they can't make it? Expecting amateurs to step in is dumb, and it won't happen...

ReportingOn: Phrased in the Form of a Question

Posted on March 26, 2009
When I last wrote here to report on ReportingOn's progress, I talked about the work I was doing with my development and design team to define the terms of the RO pitch. A dozen or so whiteboards later, the Lion Burger team is actively putting together mockups and the beginnings of the database for what we're calling "Phase 2" of the project...

Redesigning Journalism At Stanford's Design School

Posted on March 26, 2009
I had the great privilege to be invited to sit on a panel earlier this month at the Institute of Design at Stanford to provide feedback on an effort called, "Redesigning Journalism." I've been wanting to visit the "D School" for some time now. So I jumped at the chance to participate...

School Media clubs and the question of context and incentives for citizen journalism

Posted on March 26, 2009
Getting your photo published by CNN, or having the BBC follow up on a story lead you've emailed or sent in by short message text (or Twitter) is often its own reward. Whatever your motivation might have been - civic duty, anger, impressing your friends, ambition - it's a kick for many just to see their name in pixels...

Peace Blogging Along the Colombia-Venezuela Border

Posted on March 26, 2009
View Larger Map Map of El Nula, a small village in the Venzuelan state of Apure along the Colombian border. One of the world's lesser-known conflicts has endured for over a decade along the Colombia-Venezuela border. According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants' latest report: Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries, together with the Fuerzas Bolivarianas de Liberación (FBL), a Venezuelan irregular armed group, exercised de facto control over the border states of Táchira, Apure, and Zulia, where most Colombian asylum seekers arrived...

School Media Clubs and the Question of Incentives for Citizen Journalism

Posted on March 26, 2009
Getting your photo published by CNN, or having the BBC follow up on a story lead you've emailed or sent in by short message text (or Twitter) is often its own reward. Whatever your motivation might have been - civic duty, anger, impressing your friends, ambition - it's a kick for many just to see their name in pixels...

Citizen Media Law Project Leads Amicus Effort Promoting Rights of Anonymous Speakers in Illinois

Posted on March 25, 2009
In a case involving important First Amendment rights, the Citizen Media Law Project joined a number of media and advocacy organizations, including Gannett Co., Inc., Hearst Corporation, Illinois Press Association, Online News Association, Public Citizen, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Tribune Company, in asking an Illinois appellate court to protect the rights of anonymous speakers online by imposing procedural safeguards before requiring that their identities be disclosed...

Second Implementation of the Open Media Project Complete

Posted on March 24, 2009
Ten members of the Deproduction team traveled to Austin this month to implement the Open Media tools at the second of 6 Beta sites, ChannelAustin. We traveled down in two RV's and scheduled the visit to coincide with SXSW, where we hosted a core conversation as part of the interactive festival...

Introducing the 3rd "Programmer-Journalist"

Posted on March 23, 2009
Nick Allen, a computer science student who got intrigued by journalism as a college senior, is the third "programmer-journalist" enrolled at the Medill School through the Knight News Challenge scholarship program. The first two (Brian Boyer and Ryan Mark) graduated in December...

Good News as a Business Model?

Posted on March 22, 2009
In his "Are We Home Alone?" OpEd today New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says "I've never talked to more people in one week who told me, "You know, I listen to the news, and I get really depressed." I feel the same way. It's something I've wondered about for years...

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