BBC

Social Media & Mass Media : Looking at BBC's guidelines for using pictures from Social Media

BBC is one of the few mass media outlets that has a worldwide footprint, and as someone who used to live in a region which is heavily covered by the BBC, it was very interesting to see the "outside perspective" that it brought in for issues which had a strongly localized context. With the BBC going into the practice of inviting participation (via social networks) to their reporting process, I think it would be very interesting to see the resultant blending of the local and the outside perspective.

The BBC has published their social media policy online, and as I was going through it, their editorial guidelines for using pictures from social media seemed very interesting to me. The guidelines cover three important areas - context, consent and amplification.

A civic media success story: examining the BBC Action Network

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has a long history of innovation in civic media. One of the more intriguing instances of this tradition is the BBC Action Network, a grassroots online civic engagement initiative. It launched in 2003 under the name iCan, and quickly succeeded as a medium of choice for local community activism groups. The Action Network provides a space for the creation and organization of local action groups, incorporating a set of tools into the site that facilitates the operation of these groups.