Hello everyone, my name is Kyle Yuan! I am a freshman here at MIT and Intro to Civic Media is my first HASS class of my college career. I had originally signed up for a different course, but due to a scheduling conflict, I added CMS.360 last week, so I did not attend the first meeting of the year. However, I am very interested in medical journalism and I aspire to be the next Sanjay Gupta, who is my idol in every way! In all seriousness though, Civic Media is essential and generally ubiquitous; we need it to become a well-informed populace, and it is everywhere we look (except in North Korea)! Since I did not attend the first class, I have a relatively uninformed opinion of the 10 points workshop. Based on what I can garner from the completed list however, I generally agree with everything that’s on the list. Hive mind for the win!
Civic Media encompasses a huge breadth of knowledge and definition, but there are a few core aspects that aid in elucidating its definition:
1) Civic Media is accessible. The primary different between mass media and civic media is the inclusion of the individual in the latter. While we commonly assume that both types of media are the same, mass media is created by corporations while civic media is created by the citizen. A great example of civic media (albeit advertised in mass media) is the Tiananmen Square tank man. Although mass media corporations were present at the protest, this famous photograph was taken by a participant in civic media, which is accessible by all, for all.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tianasquare.jpg
2) Civic Media promotes action and engagement. While both mass and civic media catalyzes new thoughts and actions, civic media generally enlightens the audience on important global and local issues. From the local newspaper encouraging citizens to recycle to the brave souls who maintain WikiLeaks, the target audience is spurred to take action for a better future.
http://theweek.com/article/index/205437/wikileaks-the-7-strangest-revela…
Yes, I realize it is contradictory that I am posting an article from The Week. But please bear with me; I never said mass media was a bad thing!
3) Civic Media encourages transparency and accountability. Not only does this form of communication cause the audience to change (as stated above), but it also gives undiluted depictions of real world events and issues. Such transparency and lack of censorship is important because it has the power to cause entire governments to change, for better or for worse. Thanks to the transparency of civic media, the rest of the world discovered the brutality of the Arab Spring, catalyzing massive support for the democratic revolutionaries in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and other countries.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xiqhz9_raw-video-yemen-unrest-caught-on…
I realize that my above descriptions of civic media may be completely wrong, but that’s ok! If I already know about the limitless facets of civic media, there would not have been a point to taking the course. I strive to learn more about this new form of media, which has come about this century thanks to astounding advances in technology. By the end of CMS.360, I hope to look back upon this very blog post and point out ALL of the mistakes and inaccuracies that are almost definitely present here.
In other words, I hope to garner knowledge about civic media for my long term goal of becoming a medial journalist. Here we go!
Take care everyone,
Kyle Yuan