Future of News/Future Civic Media DEMOs

This page is for describing your demo
Format:

Project Title

Project Abstract

URL

Project Team Members

Format example:

Civic Toaster

The old maxim says that a community that toasts bread together, stays together. But today's toasters isolate and divide us. We at the University of Berlin are developing a community-based toasting network that helps to brown sliced bread in a collaborative, open way, using Internet2 and a Django back-end.

http://www.toast2bestir.org/

W. N. der Bred, S. L. Eighst

Presentation format: 2 posters, one laptop, 2 presenters

PLEASE PLACE YOUR DEMO UNDER THIS LINE:

 Comix News Network

Comix News Network is an open source web tool that combines a content management system with a custom application that allows people to create their own web comics easily and simply as a complement to regular student reporting and a platform for discussions about issues that concern them. It’s designed to enable and encourage artistic engagement, civic journalism, and social networking.

Abhimanyu Das, Matt Hockenberry

One presenter, laptop demo

Say What!?

In this project, we explore perspective-taking, programming and storytelling as a path to youth civic engagement. We developed a seven-part workshop that focuses on the relationship between empathy and civic engagement. The workshop fosters mutual understanding, collaborative problem-solving, and self-expression through Scratch storytelling. We have tested the workshop in Boston, Birmingham, and Mongolia.

Karen Brennan, Shaundra Daily, Colleen Kaman

Presentation format: (a monitor?), one laptop, one presenter

Open Park

Open Park is a news-reporting tool for professional journalists, journalism students and other news media content producers to cover the news collaboratively and share resources in a non-competitive way using new civic media formats such as online social networks and services, print/electronic and audio formats, and new smart interfaces and technologies for co-located and remote collaboration. It is also a new practice that will elaborate and introduce a Code of Ethics for collaborative journalism for use in both physical and virtual newsrooms. Finally, Open Park seeks to establish a new business model for sustainable, quality-consistent news-reporting. I will be demo-ing the initial version of the OP website, with its current functionalities, case studies, discussion forums, and related collaborative projects.

Florence Gallez

Presentation format: one presenter, one laptop, one large projection screen

Awareness Mapping Project Team: Jay Silver, Karen Brennan, John Maloney, Mitchel Resnick

Problem Many people aren’t aware of: •	things that are happening in their local communities •	perspectives of other members of their communities •	impacts that their actions have (or could have) in their communities •	ways to communicate their ideas to other members of their communities

Abstract We are exploring how the creation of interactive maps can cultivate awareness about local environments, supporting civic engagement by helping community members communicate new perspectives.

To this end, we are developing a set of technologies and strategies that help people create, share, and discuss “awareness-maps” – nonliteral, interactive representations of places, people, and experiences that help the creators (and their audiences) express and understand their environments in new and unanticipated ways.

We are considering three categories of environments: •	micro-geographies: hyper-local spaces, like a rooftop, a bedroom, or a street corner •	micro-events: short periods of time, like a carnival, a flash mob, or a forest excursion •	micro-reactions: sets of contextualized emotions, like a joyful occasion, a frustrating meeting, or a playful gathering

Innovation There are many other community-mapping projects, but our Awareness Mapping project is innovative along several dimensions: •	Ability to create dynamic, interactive maps (using our Scratch software) •	Encouraging sharing microgeographic experiences and cross-visitation of each others' maps sites

Civic Engagement For people to become engaged in their local communities, they need ways to observe and understand what’s happening in the communities – and ways of sharing their ideas and perspectives with other members of the communities. The Awareness Mapping project makes that possible. Moreover, the Awareness Mapping project focuses especially on young people, helping young people develop a foundation of community understanding and participation that will prepare them to become increasingly active members of the community as they grow up.

Format: Poster and Laptop Demo

Printcasting

Printcasting will allow individuals to easily create ad-supported, customized publications with a mix of local news and information. The software will help aggregate feeds from news organizations, bloggers or newsletters, for example, so that would-be publishers can pick and choose among them to create a niche publication. The Printcasting model then will guide users through placing articles, photos and ads onto a template that either could be delivered by e-mail or printed at home and distributed. For example, a publication for reef-diving photographers could include ads for nearby dive shops or underwater cameras. The idea is to pair localized ads and content to create targeted publications.

Dan Pacheco

Format:

Sochi Olympics Project

The people of Sochi, the Russian resort city hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, will be able to use the latest online tools to both discuss and influence the impact of the games. A web site and database will allow the community to track and debate how the plans are changing life there over a five-year period. The idea is to help residents better prepare for the Olympics, to inform the media about the city’s issues and to use discussions about the games as a way to improve life in Sochi.

Alexander Zolotarev

Format:

Tools for Public Access TV

This project will enable public access TV stations and community technology centers to use common tools to create web sites that enable the transfer of video between the web site and the TV station. Together, public access TV and community technology centers can engage disadvantaged communities in new media platforms. While there are thousands of public access stations and community technology centers country-wide that provide media education and equipment, they don’t share a tool-set enabling them to become part of a collective, user-driven, online media network.

Tony Shawcross

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Spot Journalism

Spot Journalism will provide a new way to pay for local investigative reporting by soliciting financial support from the public. Through this project, independent journalists and residents will propose stories, while Spot Journalism uses the Web to seek “micro-payments” to cover the costs. If enough donors contribute the amount needed, a journalist will be hired to do the reporting. The money has to come from a variety of sources, though. Each project will need many small contributions before being approved in order to avoid personal crusades. In addition to offering a new model for investigative work, Spot Journalism will provide a way to discover the issues important to a community while giving a voice to those who wonder why a given problem is not being investigated.

David Cohn

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RadioEngage (RadioDrupal)

Drupal, one of the popular open-source software platforms that publish web sites, will be used to create a turnkey web site for radio news organizations. This content management and publishing system will address the needs of radio news sites, such as creating and archiving audio and text, producing podcasts and playlists and streaming live audio and video. KUSP, a public radio station on California’s Central Coast, will test the project.

Margaret Rosas

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News on Cellphones

While computers can readily access news feeds through the Internet, only the more expensive cell phones have the same capability. This project will make it easy for significantly cheaper models to select and receive news feeds, expanding the news universe for those whose only digital device is a cell phone. Users, particularly in areas where Internet access isn’t affordable, will be able to receive news via text messaging. They also will be able to rate top stories in lists to be shared with friends. The project will be tested in the rural area of a developing country.

Joel Selanikio

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Video Volunteers

Video Volunteers, a New York-based nonprofit, will train 100 people in rural India as Community Video Producers. These citizen journalists will produce magazine- style video news reports, typically on local social issues, and show them on widescreen projectors in poor communities. The idea is to distribute public interest information to the poor – without having to provide the entire population with digital tools. To date, Video Volunteers’ screenings in India have reached 140,000 people in 150 communities. The video technology is not new. The innovation is to do citizen journalism on a significant scale in a poor, rural area.

Jessica Mayberry

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Community News Network

Student editors at the UCLA Bruin will create online publishing software geared to mobile editing. College journalists then will be able to use the content management system to remotely assign and edit stories, videos and photos for online college sites. Also, readers will use it to submit their own content and communicate with one another.

Dharmishta Rood and Anthony Pesce

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Community Radio in India

This project will connect rural radio stations to the Internet by using new software and computer-based FM transmitters. The innovations will significantly reduce the cost of creating the stations in India - from an estimated $50,000 to $2,500. India is issuing a new round of community radio station licenses, so the proposal is timely. The effort will start by helping nonprofits already operating in India launch radio stations.

Aaditeshwar Seth

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Beanstockd

Beanstockd is a developing idea to encourage green living through an interactive game. Using social networking tools and real-time news and information, players would be able to track their environmental impact, discover how they stack up against neighbors and team up in a friendly competition to leave the smallest imprint on their community. The game revolves around a virtual stock market, where each player receives an amount of personal stock based on their environmental footprint. Players can increase their stock value by reducing their footprint, or invest in other teams who are predicted to do the same. The project is tailored for a small community, such as a university campus, and aims to unite its members around reducing the area’s demand on natural resources.

Angela Antony and Sandra Ekong

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Reporting On

Reporters working on similar topics will be able to communicate and share ideas using a social networking tool and a web site created through this project. The site will indicate how many journalists across the country are working on the same issue, such as declining tax bases or water problems. Reporters then could exchange resources and approaches, or use one another’s communities as examples in their own stories. Journalists in small newsrooms often feel isolated. Given the opportunity to communicate with others, a reporter can add context to articles and, perhaps most importantly, know when a seemingly small local story is part of a larger regional, or national, trend.

Ryan Sholin

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SignCasts

Brein McNamara will blog about ways to empower deaf people to become citizen journalists. He will write about the digital information needs of deaf people, including his own proposal to integrate a web-based video capture system with the videophones popular among the hearing-impaired. The blog also will highlight the gaps not being filled by current technology.

Brein McNamaraFormat:

Center for Future Civic Media

To create the Center for Future Civic Media, a leadership project designed to encourage community news experiments and new technologies and practices.

Chris Csikszentmihályi, Mitchel Resnick, Henry Jenkins

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Open-Source Community News

To create an open-source version of VillageSoup’s successful community news software, combining professional journalism, blogs, citizen journalism, online advertising and “reverse publishing” from online to print.

Richard AndersonFormat:

Digital News Academic Program

To create an academic program blending computer science and journalism, designed to fill a staffing void at many digital news sites. By offering scholarships to Medill’s graduate journalism program to people with education and/or expertise in computer programming, the goal is to turn out students who understand both journalism and technology, connect one to another in ways that build audiences and also enhance and protect the civic functions of journalism in a democratic society.

Rich GordonFormat:

Chi-Town Daily News

The Chi-Town Daily News will recruit and train a network of 75 citizen journalists – one in each Chicago neighborhood. The journalists will work with editors to produce a professional, comprehensive daily local news report.

Geoff Dougherty

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Citizen Journalist Resources

The Citizen Media Law Project, a joint venture between Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Center for Citizen Media, is creating a set of online resources for citizen journalists. This will include state and federal legal guides; advice on business formation; and a database of lawsuits, subpoenas and legal threats involving citizen media.

David Ardia

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NY News Games

Gotham Gazette will develop games to inform and engage players about key issues confronting New York City. Gotham Gazette will hold forums on the games’ issues, report on what solutions the players developed and relay those ideas to city officials.

Gail Robinson

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Playing the News

Playing the News is a news simulation environment which lets citizens play through a complex, evolving news story through interaction with the newsmakers.

Nora Paul and Kathleen Hansen

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Rising Voices

Over the past two years, Global Voices has introduced readers around the world to the brilliant, funny, insightful and touching voices of bloggers from developing nations. Rising Voices is our new effort to introduce thousands of new developing world bloggers to the world, helping students, journalists, activists and people from rural areas to the blogosphere.

Ethan Zuckerman

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Digital News Incubators

Create ‘incubators’ at seven academic institutions to foster creative thinking about solutions to digital news problems. The schools are: Michigan State, University of Kansas, Kansas State, Western Kentucky University, Ithaca College, University of Nevada-Las Vegas and St. Michael’s College.

Angela Powers, Ann Brill, Diane Lynch, Ardyth Broadrick Sohn, Jane Briggs-Bunting, Kimberly Sultze, Pam McAllister Johnson

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Placeblogger

To make it easier for people to find hyperlocal news and information about their city or neighborhood through promotion of “universal geotagging” in blogs.

Lisa Williams

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Wireless Philadelphia

To develop online digital newscasts for Philadelphia’s immigrant community and to distribute them via the new citywide wireless platform.

Todd Wolfson

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Web Journalism

Create a citizen/professional journalism project using innovative web tools and citizen journalism practices to track Boulder, Colo.’s, implementation of a carbon tax.

Amy Gahran and Adam Glenn

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Oakland Jazz Scene Game

Re-creating Oakland’s once vibrant jazz and blues club scene as an online video game and virtual world. The game will allow players to experience the club scene as it was in its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, before it fell victim to redevelopment schemes and urban decay.

Paul Grabowicz

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Ideal Newsroom

To plan an “ideal newsroom” for the digital news era and create an online resource for student newspapers and other news organizations looking to bring their facilities up to date with new media trends.

Chris O'BrienFormat:

Blog on connecting people, content and community

Blog: About giving all individuals a voice within their local and global communities through a centralized, user-maintained news system. The idea currently combines GPS (Global Positioning System) tagging, Internet technology, and community-oriented design to allow news media consumers to see the information that matters most to them.

Dan Schultz

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Blog on Diversity in Journalism

Blog: About creating and maintaining diversity in digital media.

Dori J. MaynardFormat:

Beat Reporters & Social Networks

Blog: About how beat reporters can work with social networks to improve their reporting.

Jay Rosen

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Interactive Community Spaces

Blog: About the Interactive Community Spaces project, the use of GPS tracking to inform people through mobile media.

Paul Lamb and Leslie Rule

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The Ideas Factory

Blog: About The Ideas Factory, which will generate and share big ideas from the world of citizen engagement online via the Knight Foundation blog for innovators in online news and citizen media.

Steven Clift

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Document Cloud

To accelerate investigative reporting and boost transparency by creating an easily searchable online database of public records.

Eric Umansky, Scott Klein, Aron Pilhofer, Ben Koski

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Councilpedia

To engage and inform New Yorkers around local issues by creating a publicly assessable wiki devoted to local legislators’ voting records and campaign contributions.

Gail Robinson

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Data Visualization in Sarajevo

To spur the people of Sarajevo to help solve the city’s environmental problems by creating an online portal where professional and citizen journalists will contribute reports to be displayed on a visualization map.

Aaron Presnall

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Mobile Media Toolkit

To help citizen journalists around the world easily find the mobile applications they need to create and broadcast local news reports.

Katrin Verclas

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Media Bugs

To promote transparency by creating a place where the public can report, track and help resolve errors in news coverage.

Scott Rosenberg

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The Daily Phoenix

To help Phoenix residents connect with their city through a Web portal that will offer information, games and social networking to the city’s new light rail commuters.

Aleksandra Chojnacka and Adam Klowonn

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Virtual Street Corners

To connect and spur discussion among the residents of two disparate neighborhoods through video newscasts displayed on city corners.

John Ewing

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Crowdsourcing Crisis Information

To strengthen the reporting and understanding of breaking news events by creating a free Web map and timeline that combines and plots reports from citizens and journalists.

Ory Okolloh

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CMS Upload Utility

To save media organizations both time and resources by creating a quick way to convert and load multiple newspaper files to a Web site.

Joe Boydston

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VirtualGaza

Developed in response to the January assault on the Gaza Strip, VirtualGaza creates a space where ordinary Palestinians under siege can describe their experiences in their own words, and where the destruction of the Gaza strip can be documented by those experiencing it directly. The diary entries, photographs, and video material gathered have been contributed by residents of Gaza. Testimony is located on a map precise only to the neighborhood level to ensure personal safety and contributor anonymity, where desired.

Virtual Gaza invites you to help break the information blockade.

Josh Levinger

Format: 1 laptop, 1 presenter

No Park

No Park (http://no-park.net) is a collaborative map-wiki about the aesthetics, politics, and uses of public space. Users populate the wiki with subjective information about a space, community, or locale, then the wiki automatically generates a custom Google Map by culling its pages for location meta-data, like geo-location, canonical name, description, image, and categorization tags. The resulting map can be viewed on the wiki or syndicated via KML to other applications.

Map-wiki applications, like No Park, will benefit any community interested in quickly and easily generating highly customized media-rich maps.

Ryan O'Toole

Format: 1 laptop, 1 presenter

Selectricity

Selectricity is "voting machinery for the masses." It consists of a suite of tools to allow groups of people to make decisions through voting. While most voting projects are geared to government based decision-making, Selectricity aims to apply election method of voting research created for governments toward every day decisions (e.g., where should we go to dinner or who should be officers of a campus club). The system emphasizes preferential decision-making, cryptographic means of voter verifiability, and algorithmically complex election methods.

I will be demoing a set of newly released features for Selectricity including a "kiosk" mode that acts more like a voting machine, more flexible elections designed for small organizations, elections embeddable in third-party websites, and a new API.

http://selectricity.org

Benjamin Mako Hill