Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
In Paris, an anti-ad insurgency
Sebastian Rotella and Audrey Bastide, PUB
Activists opposed to billboards invite police to rallies where they tag the offending signs, seeking a day in court.
—-
Over the centuries, the French have cultivated the fine art of rebellion.
The list of targets encompasses tyrants, wars, colonialism and, above all, capitalism in its many manifestations. The latest enemy may seem unlikely: billboards.
The Dismantlers, as a nationwide group of anti-ad crusaders call themselves, aren’t violent or loud or clandestine. In fact, they invite the police to protest rallies where they deface signs. With a copywriter’s flair, one of their slogans warns: “Attention! Avert your eyes from ads: You risk being very strongly manipulated.” The goal of the Dismantlers is to get arrested, argue the righteousness of their cause in court and, you guessed it, gain publicity.
“We challenge the mercantile society that destroys all human relationships, professional relationships, health, the environment,” said Alexandre Baret, 35, a founder of the group. “It’s a message that proposes to attack advertising as the fuel of this not very healthy society.”
(31 January 2009)
The man behind Obama’s online strategy
Stephen Moss and Sarah Phillips, Guardian
Thomas Gensemer masterminded Barack Obama’s groundbreaking and astonishingly successful online presidential campaign. Could he help Gordon Brown at the next election?
—
… Gensemer wants to demystify online campaigning, and his message is straightforward. “Organisations can build very quickly, if they do the messaging right. They need to be able to answer the question, ‘What can someone do for me today?’ But a lot of these organisations, political and cause-related, aren’t really used to that question. What can they do? ‘Well, they can give me money. That’s what we do. I’m a charity.’ But they need to deepen it. You need first to answer the question of what the money goes for.”
He wants to nurture active supporters, not passive donors – people who have a stake in the organisation they have signed up to support, envisage a long-term relationship and want to be taken seriously. He tells a story of another political campaign he worked on in the US (he prefers not to name it) where supporters were invited to send feedback by email. “I was wondering, ‘Where does that email go?’ he says. “I was still wondering three or four days later. Finally, we found out. We got to the inbox and there were 78,000 emails in there that had never even been read. That was never allowed to happen with the Obama campaign. From day one we said that can’t happen.”
(18 February 2009)
The death of the news
Gary Kamiya, Salon
Journalism as we know it is in crisis. Daily newspapers are going out of business at an unprecedented rate, and the survivors are slashing their budgets. Thousands of reporters and editors have lost their jobs. No print publication is immune, including the mighty New York Times. As analyst Allan Mutter noted, 2008 was the worst year in history for newspaper publishers, with shares dropping a stunning 83 percent on average. Newspapers lost $64.5 billion in market value in 12 months.
All traditional media is in trouble, from magazines to network TV. But newspapers are the most threatened.
(17 February 2009)
New report: “Public media 2.0: dynamic, engaged publics”
Center for Social Media, American University
Tomorrow’s Public Media Will Be Bigger, Better, And Different From Public Broadcasting
—
Human rights activists in Kenya create a program that enables victims in regions of conflict to document and share their harrowing experiences through text messaging. A year later, the same program is used to document violence in Gaza. It’s a perfect example of what a new, in-depth report from American University’s Center for Social Media calls “public media 2.0”—media created by the public, for the public.
On Tuesday, February 17, the report, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics, will be available online at http://www.futureofpublicmedia.net. The report, based on four years of research, argues that multi-platform, participatory media will be central to democratic life in the years ahead. It also suggests that public broadcasting could play a central role if the medium is properly restructured and supported.
“The people formerly known as the audience have reorganized themselves into networks,” said Jessica Clark, director of the center’s Future of Public Media Project. “That throws open the doors for what public media can be.”
Clark coauthored the report with Pat Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media and professor at AU’s School of Communication, which houses the Center. The report offers a glimpse of tomorrow by showing how experiments in public media 2.0 are emerging across sites and sectors—from political debates on Wikipedia, to environmental discussions in Second Life, to community-based media shared via mobile phones.
“Tomorrow’s public media will be media made by, for, and with the public, but it won’t happen by accident,” said Aufderheide. “This report provides a map of opportunities and ways to make the most of them.”
Some key concepts about public media 2.0 include:
• It will be crucial to an open, democratic society
• The core function is to generate publics around social issues
• It needs widely-shared standards and practices
• Impact measurements are crucial
• Public broadcasting could act as a national network, but only with restructuring
• Public media 2.0 will need broad public mobilization for federal support
The report builds upon research by the center’s staff and fellows and is supported by the Ford Foundation’s Global Perspectives in a Digital Age initiative, the goal of which is to transform public service media.
(17 February 2009)
The report is posted online: Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics.
