Digital and Media Literacy

Ethan Zuckerman at Knight Media Learning Seminar

“It’s a challenge for us to connect people’s stories to their communities,” says Ethan Zuckerman, Director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab, a leading thinker in civic media.

“The problem isn’t the web, the problem is us,” says Zuckerman. “We have to find a way to become media producers.” his point: The Internet is the most powerful tool to connect people to diverse types of information. However, that is the potential of the tool, not its promise.

We all filter the world down to the places we want to be, Zuckerman notes. We practice homophily – we gravitate toward people like ourselves.

The web is no different. People are finding ways to participate in online conversations with people like themselves.

As tourists in a city, if we want to various parts of the city, we find a guide. How do we create guides for the Internet that can show us not only what we want to see, but what we need to see?

We need to find ways to capture and sort information, and then distribute the information to amplify it. Guides must be able to:
Curate: comb through the information to pull out the most interesting or relevant pieces.
Translate: make the information understandable.
Contextualize: explain why the information matters.

I’m struck as I listen by the relationship between these functions to Nathan Shedroff’s model of information design: moving data through information to knowledge (more on that later).

At Media Lab, developments like Media Cloud and Voces Moviles help people understand their information on the platforms they are already using. The hard work is figuring out the tools that can best connect specific people to their specific communities. Using that thinking, people can annotate their own spaces with the technology best suited for that work.

Then, communities can, and must, become curators for their own conversation.

Communities and Collaboration: Lessons Learned about Partnership Creation

“I’ve struggled with this partnership creation thing,” says Dennis Scholl, Vice President for Arts at Knight Foundation. Seventy community foundations across the nation have leveraged Knight grants to develop partnerships with over 450 community partners ranging from libraries to legacy media, social media and universities. A full report of this effort is available for download here, via Knight Foundation’s website: Collaboration and Connection: How Foundations Partner Effectively to Address Their Communities’ Information Needs.

From a broad perspective, Joaquin Alvarado, Senior Vice President for Digital Innovation at American Public Media, has developed a partner network with 70 media organizations around the nation. The partnerships allow the sharing of reporting on issues that matter to communities, and develop opportunities for even the most diminished voices to be heard by major media outlets.

In a more local example, Mary Lou Fulton, Senior Program Manager at The California Endowment, asks us to consider the lower income areas in our cities and the last time they appeared in the media. She says these communities suffer from the “murders and festivals syndrome.” News coverage in these areas are often reactive. The endowment funds multiple health-related projects including a substantial investment in youth media. Partnerships, she notes, are essential in under-funded communities. some examples of youth media efforts in California funded by The California Endowment and Knight Foundation:

Richmond Pulse
Coachella Unincorporated
TheKnowFresno

Lamenting the trajectory of our society, Sandy Close, Executive Director of New America Media, says journalism may be seen as a trade of old, but “working with journalism gives young people the sense of anticipating the future.” New America Media is an on-the-ground partner of the California Endowment, focusing on ethnic media. “Something is stirring in these sites,” she says, “our oldest notions of community are in shared space.”

Community Information Toolkit, version 1.1

Knight Foundation’s Community Information Toolkit creates a framework for assessing a community’s information ecosystem. Mayur Patel, Knight’s Vice President for Strategic Assessment, is leading the conversation on information ecosystem mapping.

Mapping a community’s information ecosystem is not as daunting as the words might suggest. The components of a community’s information system include the community’s technology infrastructure, supply of public information, and skills of community members to access that information.

After piloting the toolkit in three communities – Macon, GA, San Jose, CA, and Philadelphia, PA – the foundation created two affordable and simple ways for a community to take stock: a checklist that assesses access and a scavenger hun that provides a window into the way community members navigate their community’s information. Version 1.1 of the Community Information Toolkit was released at the 2012 Media Learning Seminar in Miami.

Three examples of the use of the toolkit for different purposes:

Public access television is a perfect partner for the information toolkit, says Kathy Bisbee at the Community Media Access Partnership in the Bay Area of California. At CMAPTV, Bisbee and her team organized a community conversation in Gilroy, California, surrounding the toolkit’s core issue of access to information.

The toolkit can be used as a neighborhood resource for engaging people at the hyperlocal level to increase community-based conversation in Greater Atlanta, says Alicia Philipp, President of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. “In our case, it’s not about media, the toolkit is about community engagement.” Patel notes that this type of work need not create new access points, but rather should use the access points already created within communities.

Kelly Lucas, CEO of Incourage Community Foundation in Central Wisconsin, asked a journalist to condense the Knight Commission Report and make it relevant to the people of central Wisconsin. For that community, the answer was jobs. Information mapping in the community brought the community together and taught it how to innovate. The foundation, as a hub for the conversation, has launched a program in workforce solutions with CEOs and funders to empower agents of community change in the region.

“Access to information is really a social justice issue for all of us,” says Lucas. She continues: Agents of change in a community have a unique value in the quest for access: “the knowledge of and sense of place.”

Baby Carrots, the Internet, and The Filter Bubble

Why would a web service filter the information that I see?

The information created in the entire history of humanity until 2010 is the same amount of information created online every two days. To filter that vast set of information, web companies have adopted the, “if you like this, you’ll like that” approach to curation.

What started as a tool for presenting product preferences quickly became a model for presenting information, says Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble. Today’s holy grail of web curators: Relevance.

We are each surrounded by a membrane of filters that determine what information comes in and what is left out. We are unaware of the processes that determine these filters.

Three challenges presented by this filter bubble include:

The Distortion Problem
The “like” concept creates a bias. It’s easy to like a marathon, but not so easy to like genocide in Darfur. That doesn’t mean the news is not relevant.

Balance
Filters diminish balance. We want to see news about Justin Bieber, but that needs to be balanced with news about Afghanistan. We eat the junk food we crave but we should target the nutrition we need.

A Matter of Control
We are putting increasing power in the hand of computer algorithms to tell us what to view. Editors used to serve as gatekeepers to information. The Internet swept away gatekeepers. The new gatekeepers are code. These new gatekeepers don’t even have the pretense of civic ethics that the old gatekeepers did.

What can be done?

1. Algorithm Ethics: Data sorts need to cause us to encounter multiple points of view.
2. Filter Literacy: Ats we consider digital literacy, we need to consider our knowledge of the filters.
3. Baby Carrots: Because people’s information environments are much more personalized, we need to ensure that the “nutritious snacks” make it through the filter bubble.

“We need the Internet to be as good as we hoped it would be.
And it won’t if we’re stuck in a bubble of one.”
- Eli Pariser

Design Thinking, with Michael Maness

Social media allows people to share their stories. For example, Twitter users are 4x more likely to share information on any social site than non-Twitter users. The platform enables distribution. Big media finds it, filters it, and curates it.

Michael Manness, Vice President for Journalism and Media Initiatives at Knight Foundation, suggests that design thinking will make these social platforms more robust and human centered.

Good design adds credibility to online activity. Infographics are 30 times more likely to be shared than traditional text. Multimedia components of press releases create longer sustained engagement than text-only versions. Data visualization connects text and visual representation.

Given these trends, the implementation of design thinking can help us address issues of humanity:

• Design thinking requires that designers pay attention to humans. For example, we can often find unmet needs and compensating behaviors that can inspire design.
• Design thinking allows designers to uncover needs and real issues. Even though design can hide flaws, the design process exposes them.
• Human-centered innovation requires us to inform, inspire, iterate, and innovate (via Change By Design). By thinking about our work as a design, we can remove the stigma of “sacred cows” and legacy infrastructure. Everything can be assessed together.

What’s Next, and Why it Could Matter to You, with Amy Webb

They’re not just scary trends that invade our privacy. Even frightening tools can be used for good. Amy Webb of Webbmedia Group, a digital strategy agency, highlighted three current trends that could be made relevant to community foundations at the Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar.

1. Social discovery. Tagging, or captioning, pictures with hyperlinks occurs across social media sites. Tagging currently creates networks of facial recognition that allows search based on facial images. Even though this is scary on one hand, on another it could allow for vast networks of help or support.
2. Mobile data. Everyone who uses mobile phones and tools on the phone is being tracked. Mobile phones can reveal biometrics, bus arrival times, and serve as predictors of personal preferences for marketing research. Lots of information can be collected via mobile technology and can be used to pinpoint a community’s areas of need.
3. Gamification. “We start from the point of view that we should teach people stuff, and they are inherently not fun.” Rules of gamification: what is the purpose? Players must believe in the purpose of the game. It must create good vibes – that positive outcomes occur for actions. It must be inherently social. It must have a clear beginning and end or levels.
   Instead of gamifying everything, bring elements of gaming to ongoing work.

Download a complete set of Webb’s notes here, with case studies that could be implemented for each.

WOW and Doable! A look at five successful community information projects

“These are ideas you can steal,” says Knight Foundation Vice President for Communities, Trabian Shorters, of the five community information projects discussed at this session of the 2012 Media Learning Seminar.

You Choose – Bay Area
“Your home, your future, your choice.” Margot Rawlins and the Silicon Valley Foundation developed an three-prong approach to engaging a community around the issue of community growth: a community leadership information toolkit, a media campaign including a local website, and a public forum series. 20% of the participants online and at public forums were fresh voices – those who had never participated in a regional planning discussion.

Ready, Set, Learn
Chris Barge of The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County (Colorado). The foundation addressed the achievement gap in local school infrastructure. Focus groups in the county identified that awareness of the vast achievement gap was limited. The campaign’s marketing plan drew the attention of the county school board. The board issued a referendum to fund a $5 million early childhood education program which was overwhelmingly passed by county voters.

GROW – Green Renaissance of Western New York
Clotilde Dedecker of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo found success by co-creating programs of scope and scale with organizations. In the case of GROW, the issue of environmental threats, justice, and health is supported by the foundation to engage citizens on the issues facing their communities.

West Anniston Today
Tycoma Miller of the West Anniston Foundation faced a community issue of PCB contamination. One of the issues for this community of 25,000 was the inclusion of youth in the conversation. For 40 years, this area was exposed to PCB contamination without their knowledge. Using the medium of radio, the foundation worked to connect citizens to this issue and give them a voice.

The Minnesota Idea Open
Jennifer Ford Reedy of the Minnesota Community Foundation took bold action by using technology to become open, accessible, collaborative, and creative and inspire philanthropy. By developing Idea Open, the foundation attempted to give Minnesotans a voice in developing their future. This annual challenge first focused on obesity and received over 400 ideas about how to combat obesity. The second year, the challenge focused on the issue of water. In each case, citizens voted on the best use of the foundation grants.

Dan Gillmor on Civic Engagement in a Networked Society

When Dan Gillmor took the stage at Knight Foundation’s Media Learning Seminar, his message was one of digital literacy. “Distribution is no longer the problem (for news). The problem is now access. Our students will invent the future of news delivery.”

Gillmor, founding director of the Knight Center or Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, questions where the best reporting exists. In some cases it comes ftom “the media.” In others, activist groups lead. In still others, the man or woman on the street hppens to capture the news as its occurring. The news can no longer be either journalists or bloggers, but rather must incorporate both.

Guiding principles for a Networked Society:

1. Using media, not Consuming Media: Readers must be able to determine the credibility of the information presented online.
2. Participation: Content creation is a key component of literacy. Creators become contributors to the conversation.
3. Focus on Velocity of News: We should treat slow news like slow food. Twitter, for example, is great news in the category of “Interesting if true.”

How can we support communities in a networked society?

1. Inventory: Take stock of outlets for news in the area and provide resources for connection.
2. Lead Conversations about the Community: current community conversations happen on editorial pages in the newspaper, but we need to moderate and promote these conversations.
3. Find Natural Allies: Libraries, schools, and co-ops offer local networks primed for journalism.
4. Encourage the Watchdog: The most important role of the watchdog is not to bite or bark, but to be present – to remind us that someone is watching.
5. Don’t Be Afraid to Fail: “I own my successes,” says Gillmor, “but I’ve learned more from my failures.” Smart failures can teach us all.
6. Persist: Our responsibility is to keep digital information accessible and free for citizens.

Media Learning Expo

Get some really innovative people in a room together and ask them to share what they do.

That’s the simple concept behind the Expo at Knight Foundation’s Media Learning Seminar this week at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami.

At the Expo, I went from booth to booth, hearing about innovative ideas and gathering resources that could inspire my own work in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte.

Among my favorite finds:

The Center for Civic Media at MIT: innovators and creators of the future. In conjunction with the MIT Media Lab, these guys get to try cool stuff to find out what works. Their orientation toward experimentation is noteworthy.

Book Brewer: an e-service that allows users to create, publish, and distribute books as e-books and print-on-demand.

Change By Us: a vehicle for partnerships between a city’s leadership and its communities. Leaders can use the service to offer a digital forum for citizen input, ideas, and community-based connections on a city-wide initiative.

DoSomething.org: a digital gathering site for cause-driven young adults. The site gives teen users the digital infrastructure to make a difference in their communities.

Ricochet Labs: a digital design studio an infrastructure for geographically-located games. Users create quiz-based games for specific communities and ricochet labs provides the digital infrastructure and support.

I can already envision some ways that each of these services can change my interaction with students in the classroom, the ways I invest in inquiry and research, and the means through which my students engage our community.

For my own personal gratification, I am happy to report that no less than 4 people at the expo asked me how I was taking notes directly into the digital conference brochure (yet another successful use of the Note Taker HD app and my stylus). Media learning for all.

Media Learning Seminar 2012

To get my head in the game for this week’s Media Learning Seminar in Miami, I went to a community space just outside the conference hotel.

Bayfront Park was bustling with families, couples, people exercising, kids on bikes, and groups of teens showing off for each other. As an onlooker, I watched the people, picking up on conversations – well, the ones that were in English anyway (I’m getting the impression that everyone in Miami is bilingual or better).

I sat by a father, teaching his son and daughter to ride their bikes. As the father alternated between English and Spanish, his two kids imagined what they might experience as bike riders. They postulated about what the future might hold for them in their new world. Their bikes would make them increasingly mobile, able to stray further from home.

Isn’t that the world we all live in?

I sat, typing on my iPad, at once connected to my work in Charlotte, but undeniably on the move. Mobile.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, sponsor of the Media Learning Seminar, works to create informed and engaged communities. As I sat in the park in the foundation’s own backyard, I was interested in the James L. Knight Theater -  just two blocks away at the Miami Convention Center -  and what it might mean to this community; how it might promote learning here.

But even more, I am interested in creating community in a world that is mobile – harnessing the mobile to help us invest in the local. This is the true work that the people attending this conference will aim to do. Each will learn and take information back to communities across the nation, attempting to inspire the local community to become more informed and more engaged.

I hope you’ll enjoy following along with me over the next two days as I learn and share with my colleagues here in Miami and in their networks across the nation.