For a recent Civic Media Lunch, we welcomed the co-founder and radio coordinator from ZUMIX, Madeleine Steczynski and Elena Botkin-Levy. ZUMIX is a twenty-year-old East Boston-based nonprofit that builds community through music and the arts. Their core constituency is low-income youth -- picture a Boys and Girls Club filled with kids playing guitars and learning to use mixing boards...

Nuestras noticias, nuestra información, y hasta nuestro entretenimiento, todo pasa por un proceso de creación que determina qué vamos a absorber en nuestras vidas diarias. Tal vez no siempre creamos lo que veamos, escuchamos y leemos, pero la persistencia en la divulgación de esta información hace que sólo estemos expuestos a ciertos tipos de mensajes y valores. Nuestra realidad la experimentamos a través de esta información, porque es eso lo que conocemos del mundo exterior fuera de nuestras propias experiencias (que si las vemos diferentes a lo que nos exponen, las consideramos anomalías sociales), y por eso mismo, estamos limitados a imaginar el mundo, y a nosotros mismos, en base a esta visión de él.

Here's a quick summary of our progress on Aago, a mobile app for youth media creation and sharing. We are excited to start the fall term with new team members and engaged community partners!

No hay revolución sin la organización de procesos democráticos que concientizen a que individuos se empoderen para formar comunidades que tomen acción a pequeña y gran escala.

En Desarrollo Organizativo para el Cambio Social: Un Enfoque Integrado para la Transformación Comunitaria, una de las primeras preguntas que hace el estudio es sobre cómo "nuestras organizaciones pueden ser lo suficientemente audaces para alterar las relaciones estructurales fundamentales en la sociedad, y ser lo suficientemente sabias para actuar según los principios de sostenibilidad organizativa y de transformación comunitaria". O sea, ¿cómo va nuestra organización a ayudar a fomentar los movimientos sociales para un cambio radical?

I recently presented a paper at the International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society in Berlin, Germany. Elected as a graduate scholar to moderate the stream on 'Technology in Community', I had the privilege of meeting academics from around the world (some favorites included Christine Hine, Victoria Armstrong, Kathryn S. Coleman, and Jocelynne Scutt) working on research projects surrounding the use and impact of technologies on a local and global level. One of the presenters whose work I found most interesting was Deirdre Hynes. Originally from Ireland, Ms. Hynes is a senior lecturer in the Department of Information and Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. She teaches courses on digital media production, technology and communication, and the network society; her research interests focus more on the social shaping of technology. I asked her to tell me more about some of her previous research about the domestication of technologies in everyday life.

What got you interested in studying the domestication of technologies?

Seems that Iranian activists are using banknotes to relay messages:
http://payvand.com/blog/blog/2009/11/16/exhibit-iranian-banknotes-uprising/
Make sure to check it out and see all the examples of the modified banknotes.

From the post:
'Anti-government activists are not allowed to express themselves in Iranian media, so theses activists have taken their expressions to another high circulation mass-medium, banknotes. The Central Bank of Iran has tried to take these banknotes out of circulation, but there are just too many of them, and gave up. For the activists’ people it’s a way of saying “We are here, and the green movement is going on”.'

Lets see what we get when we analyze this from a data communications perspective:

Collaborative online news production: Introducing Open Park

Now that the spring semester is in full swing, I thought I would write a little Intro about my project for the Center for Future Civic Media [C4FCM] where I work as a Research Assistant, and the ideas and ideals behind it.

For those who are unfamiliar with the project - Phase I, defining the new professional journalistic practice of collaborating with colleagues and competitors on news stories, was conducted in the fall semester. Its results were the subject of my final paper for the C4FCM, as well as for the CMS class 'Media in Cultural Context, which is accessible in the Projects section of this site.
The Projects section also details Phase II, which focuses on refining the functions of an effective model for collective news-reporting by testing in the community what works and what doesn't with concrete real life-based collaborative news-writing experiments.

Let us hope that this will apply to all aspects of media coverage...
Hopefully this review is a good sign.

Gates orders review of policy barring military-coffin photos

By The Associated Press
02.11.09

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a review yesterday of a Pentagon policy banning media from taking pictures of flag-draped coffins of U.S. military dead, signaling he was open to overturning the policy to better honor fallen soldiers.

At least two Democratic senators have called on President Barack Obama to let news photographers attend ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and other military facilities when military remains are returned to the United States. Obama told reporters at his Feb. 9 news conference that he was reviewing the ban.

"If the needs of the families can be met, and the privacy concerns can be addressed, the more honor we can accord these fallen heroes, the better," Gates told reporters at a Pentagon news conference yesterday. "So I'm pretty open to whatever the results of this review may be."