It reminded me that maybe, just maybe, I want to give it a try. Maybe starting January 1, 2009. My earlier January post was inspired by Stephanie Roberts, who still seems to be taking a photograph a day. That’s her with the camera. I did a random Project 365 search and also found Dred242 in the ethernet, and he too has been dutifully shooting every day. That’s him on election day November 4, 2008. Alas looking at their camerassays  they are real photographers, where as for me, well, I am just a citizen media kind of guy.

• First point to remember. Blogs are simply a blank piece of paper. They can be used any way the blog publisher wants to use his or her blog. They can strive for truth, for example, PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, which parses ads for how truthful they are and how false they are.

In the past, a campaign would put out a lie. The news media aiming to be balanced would restate the lie and then get both sides to comment on it. Even a blatant lie got repeated so often, that it had traction within voters’ consciousnesses. It’s a lot harder to do so with PolitiFact fact-checking ads and talking points and then rating them with the worst offenders getting a Pants-on-Fire lie rating with a graphic to emphasize the point.

• Blogs can be blatantly partisan for example Drudge and Powerline on the right and Atrios and the Daily Kos on the left.

• Blogs can be a powerful force for justice, even if they are leaning in one direction or the other. For example, TalkingPointsMemo exposed the US Attorneys firings, which eventually meant the downfall of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and has had ramifications directly into the more recent claims of voter registration fraud. Here are self reported facts from TalkingPointsMemo for October 2008:

Absolute Unique Visitors: 3.12 million
Visits: 15.29 million
Page Views: 30.99 million.

• Blogs can be amazing tools for mobilizing forces. For example, obscure Minnesota US Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann called Barack Obama unpatriotic on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said he that he should be investigated. Within hours the left-leaning blogosphere started a campaign to fund her fully unknown opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg. In days he receives $1.4 million dollars from independent contributors via the blogosphere. The influx of money for advertising almost immediately begins to diminish a Bachmann advantage and puts her seat in play.

• Blog sites like Pollster.com and Fiverthirtyeight.com have running commentaries on every poll and parse every number. They are all about the horse race and nothing about the issues, but they are addictive.

• Blogs allow individuals like me to be a player in a way that would have been impossible five years ago. At my blog PJNet.org, which talks about citizen media, I try to practice what I preach so occasionally I do a citizen journalism post. Here are two examples:

During the primary Rudy Giuliani came to Marietta, Ga where I live. I took out my still camera with video capabilities and went to the town square. Giuliani got met by a large Ron Paul counter-demonstration. I got it all on video and uploaded it to my site and to my blog. It received 6,700 views. I did another one last week of people waiting in an early vote presidential election line; it got 230 views. Combined those are about 7,000 sets of eyeballs diverted from other mainstream media, and I am just one guy with a little still camera with video capabilities. Multiple that times that other tens of thousands people doing similar posting and you have a real movement on your hands. How big?

• The New York Times reports :

• YouTube videos mentioning either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain have been viewed 2.3 billion times, according to the measurement firm TubeMogul.

• “SNL” videos proved to be particularly popular online; Tina Fey’s impressions were viewed more than 50 million times.

• With 5 million views since March, Mr. Obama’s 37-minute speech about race is the most popular video on his YouTube channel. (New York Times, Nov. 2, 2008)

• A Pew Research Center survey conducted in October found that 39 percent of registered voters had watched campaign videos online.

• Four years ago in the 2004 election there was no YouTube.

So what about the overflow of information,  how can we tell the good from the bad, misinformation from good information? Part of our challenge as a university is to advance media literacy, but which is more democratic a few brand-name monopolistic media organizations dominating the news or a cacophony of voices?

Right now people are voting with their eyeballs for a cacophony of voices. Plus they are coming out to the polls in record numbers and they have a wealth of information unavailable to them in the past.

We do have some some problems looming. Much of the stimulus for the conversation comes from mainstream news sites, producing hard-to-gather journalism. The free blogosphere is undermining  the old business models that have supported quality journalism. How will solid journalism be supported in the future? We don’t know, but remember just four years ago there was no YouTube so anything is possible.

So were people miffed about the long line? I thought they would be, but you listen to what this random sample of folks had to say, you might be surprised. I was.

Starting today, registered United States voters can share their voting experiences via the Video Your Vote YouTube Channel. Some of the best videos will be showcased on PBS television, as part of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’s Election Day broadcast.

I love this sentence fragment: “In the first presidential election since YouTube’s inception…” Can you believe that YouTube has been around less than four years? Any how, the press release continues:

In the first presidential election since YouTube’s inception, this program aims to gather massive amounts of polling place video, with the Channel serving as an online library for Election Day footage.

Go here to learn more about the project and the legalities of shooting video at polling places in your state. Here is a Judy Woodruff video:

BlogTalkRadio has been around for a couple of years. One of my students actually became quite good at running his own show and started sounding more and more professional. One problem, I hate the shock jock content so will not link it here.

McBride had a student Kyle Duerstein sponsor a debate of the candidates for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court on his PantherTalk Live show. Some 800 people came to listen including local reporters. Fantastic idea.

McBride herself uses it for her online classes. You can listen to McBride’s BlogTalkRadio http://pjnet.org/?p=1897 Their sample is small, developed from mining Pew Internet & American Life Project 2005 research, but early indications from a study by Bartosz Wojdynski and Jessica Smith from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicate that:

It’s clear African Americans are sharing content in large numbers.

In fact, African Americans are producing more content proportionally than white groups. Wojdynski and Smith made their presentation entitled: The participatory Web: Demographic predictors of online content creation at the Convergence and Society:The Participatory Web conference at the University of South Carolina. Remember their sample is small, but a good first step in launching more research in this area.

My personal observation at my SoCon conferences at Kennesaw State University, indicate that the African American community at least in the Atlanta metro area is deeply involved in the digital world and in citizen media. However, this is just a personal observation.

Of course, if the Wojdynski and Smith study is a first step in confirming this trend, then we might have great opportunities to reach out to African American youth — especially African American boys — to get them more deeply involved in education by leveraging their interest in producing online content.

Trinity Mirror’s Teesside Evening Gazette is aiming to increase the number of contributors to its hyperlocal network of news websites to 1,000 over the next 12 months.

The citizen journalists will be recruited from some 22 postal codes in the paper’s circulation area. The story adds:

While the 22 sites currently have around 400 registered contributors, the paper is planning to recruit a host of new bloggers and community correspondents…New contributors will be approached by the Gazette’s two community coordinators, who are responsible for moderating and posting additional content to the sites.

You can see the video here and his notes and other comments here at PressThink.

Here is what she says at her new blog:

Not only will I share my teaching ideas and materials, as some great (e.g., Mindy McAdams) people have, I will also decipher research in journals related to online journalism. One common criticism I hear from some academics and professionals is that research published in journals is not written for the average reader. Just as history does, research can help explain, and even predict, how journalism will evolve.

She adds:

My goal as a researcher is to share and decipher research found in academic journals on the topic of newer media. … I will summarize and share with you the journal research articles that I have read, however I encourage you to talk to the authors of the research to find out more regarding what they have learned. And perhaps, conversations will lead to the sharing of ideas, and ultimately lead to increased accuracy of research conducted by those in academia.

YOUTUBE, PULITZER CENTER TO PUT MEDIA IN HANDS OF THE PEOPLE WITH PROJECT: REPORT

SAN BRUNO, CA–(September 8, 2008) – YouTube™, the leading online video community that
allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos, announced the launch of Project: Report in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and made possible by Sony and Intel. The first of its kind program begins September 8 and encourages aspiring journalists to produce short, high-quality video pieces focused on stories that are not usually covered by the traditional media.

The program will take place over three rounds. The first round will be judged by the Pulitzer Center and
will narrow the field down to the top ten reporters. The YouTube community will then vote to select the top five finalists and the ultimate winner. The winner will receive a $10,000 grant for travel abroad and the opportunity to work with the Pulitzer Center on a story of global importance. The finalists will also receive high-end video and editing equipment from Sony and be featured on the YouTube homepage. Additional prizes will be given to the top ten and top five participants as the contest progresses. “Central to the Pulitzer Center’s mission is coverage of stories that are being under-reported in today’s media environment,” said Jon Sawyer, executive director of the Pulitzer Center. “With YouTube’s global reach and popularity we have the unique opportunity to offer a program that encourages aspiring journalists to tell these stories in a fresh and compelling way.”

“Project: Report was inspired by the thousands of individuals around the world who have used YouTube
to change the way news is reported in today’s media landscape,” said Steve Grove, head of news and
politics for YouTube. “From videos of natural disasters to investigative reports on political candidates,
YouTube has become a go-to site for rare and dynamic news stories from around the world. Project:
Report will support and cultivate this type of content, encouraging aspiring journalists to continue
informing the world through YouTube.”

Starting today and continuing through October 5, contestants will create and submit a profile of three
minutes or less of an individual of significance in their community. An expert panel led by the Pulitzer
Center will choose the top 10 entrants. Each of the 10 semi-finalists will receive technology from Sony.
They will also participate in a journalism conference hosted by the Pulitzer Center.

The second round of the program will call on the 10 semi-finalists to create a video of four minutes or less to tell a local story that has global impact. The top five videos will be chosen by the YouTube community and the reporters who produced them will receive additional video equipment from Sony, as well as one-on-one mentorship with a journalist as they head into round three of the program.

In the third and final round, the five finalists will tell the story of an under-represented community — with a further reporting technique required. Each of the finalists will be provided with two additional Sony video cameras to give to members of the group they are reporting on, so that they can participate in the telling of their own stories. The reporter will then use this footage and integrate it into the telling of the story of five minutes or less.

Each of the three rounds will feature model videos from work sponsored by the Pulitzer Center as well as videos on reporting techniques from the journalists involved. The contest channel page will also feature videos with tips on technique from Sony and Intel.