I am currently a research assistant at the Center for Civic Media. Being a foreigner to both MIT and the country in general, it has been a great learning experience. Prior to joining the lab, I worked at the Nation, the leading media house based in Kenya, developing tools to tell stories differently. Part of this experience was also working with activists in Liberia developing tools to help them tell their stories through multimedia. Before the chance to work with journalists came along, I was working for an international agency building tools to help countries become more resilient to disasters. My current interests lie in new ways of engaging citizens leading to specific actions for the common good.
Why my interest?
“It takes a village to raise a man”. This is a common ancient African proverb used to refer to social interactions amongst villagers and how villagers would contribute to individual growth. It further says that by contributing to the community not only does the community benefit,the same applies to the individual. Media is constantly changing and is the mirror of society. The level of influence media holds is significant. A survey done a while back in Kenya placed the media as the most trusted while the police on the other hand were on the other side of the spectrum. How is this level of trust achieved? Which institutions engage more with the population and how do they engage? This does bring about two notions of civic media. On one hand civic media can be championed as a methodology to get all stakeholders to the table and engage while on the other hand it can be viewed as a methodology through which specific community groups expand participation amongst themselves and other actors.
More power is now being placed in the the people. With a variety of tools, society(communities) can now create living documents. Living documents that are available to the entire world. How do we empower these communities to make use of available media to obtain certain communal goals whether social,political or economical in nature? At the end of this semester, I hope to attain the know how of how traditional media can incorporate civic media.
Thoughts on Civic Media
I see civic media as the means through which the populace in search of a common goal or interest use to engage different actors to obtain their set goals. Civic media involve the interests central to a specific community. Civic media is participatory. It requires some effort or initiative from several actors with a common goal. Several actors come together to communicate their goals or objectives to others or to a wider audience. An excellent example is with the Arab spring which triggered a wave of peaceful protests. For the protests to occur, several demonstrators through their actions contributed to the protests that lead to civil unrest and collapse of some administrations.
A very important element in Civic media is that it can use any form of technology. In Russia, in a small town a group of painters converged to raise the issue of potholes that were frequent in their streets. They chose a very interesting medium to convey their message. Not the traditional newspaper advertorial,or the fancy video but rather paintings. But not just any paintings, their canvas was one of the tarmaced roads riddled with potholes. They drew the faces of their elected officials on the potholes. This eventually resulted in the local government filling up the potholes.
Civic media strengthens communities. Due to its participatory nature, ties among the members become better. This is simply because of the unity of purpose they share. Moreover ,it helps the interest groups recognize and share the real differences they have making it easier to achieve true consensus.