The book looks to be a wide range of both theoretical and more situated, analytical chapters, in which authors get to grips with what they call “nano-media.”  Contributors “discuss different “nano-media” forms and practices, which surface as tellers of truth, which serve as sites for fresh interpretations of our realities, and which often disrupt the frames and conventions of mainstream mediated communication.”

And after disrupting the frames and conventions of mainstream media, it seems to me that a signal strength of researching alternative media — or the fissures in the media — is to explore the possibilities to construct new frames and conventions in order to strengthen the politics of resistance.

Abstract

Much research has explored the role media use plays in political participation. A limitation of this work is that alternative forms of media (e.g., protest Web sites) and participation (e.g., protests) have largely been ignored. Research shows that news media treat protest activity critically, suggesting mainstream media use might discourage alternative participation. This study employs a Random Digit Dialing survey (N = 476) of a large Midwestern community to examine the role mainstream and alternative media play in influencing both traditional political participation and protest forms of participation. The findings suggest that alternative media are positively related to alternative participation and underscore the emerging importance of Web-based media.

Michael P. Boyle and Mike Schmierbach (2009) ‘Media Use and Protest: The Role of Mainstream and Alternative Media Use in Predicting Traditional and Protest Participation’. Communication Quarterly 57 (1): 1 – 17.

This implies, in turn, that we may be settling for publicity in the place of the more the demanding democratic goods of politicization and equality. Somewhat more ominously, the popular embrace of these surrogates via emerging media technologies may actually undermine the prospect of a politics aimed at more radical outcomes. (Darin Barney [2008] Politics and Emerging Media: The Revenge of Publicity. Global Media Journal 1[1])

Although this position is far more subtle than the traditional media studies argument between academics who understand media effects as the linear adaption of media messages by passive/receptive audiences and other observers who articulate notions of active audiences/viewsers, an immediate question to these authors still arises. Are the participants in such Web 2.0 sites the same target group who would have otherwise engaged in “more radical” politics? Or are they today’s equivalent of those members of previous generations who may well have engaged actively with media (television, newspapers, etc.) in their private lives, but did not actively work towards active politicization or radical democracy. [One of my favourite examples of radical engagement with media in private spaces is Constance Penley's (1997) NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America. Verso]

On optimistic days, I’d point to the activisation of Facebook users who join, e.g., the CAAT (Campaign Against Arms Trade) group. On more pessimistic days, my first reaction to social networking sites is the huge problem arising from the amount of personal information we voluntarily make public. The KGB, the CIA, public relations companies and marketing managers would have paid exorbitant sums for this info in previous eras.

I am constantly impressed by the truly democratic scope of this use of the internet. Please excuse the “we” – meant primarily for US citizens, as a plea for them to act. And this is political action by click:

President-elect Barack Obama has committed billions of dollars to rebuilding America’s crumbling information infrastructure. It’s a bold part of his economic stimulus plan that will revitalize our economy and our democracy.¹

But as Obama’s plan moves through Congress, it’s come under siege by phone and cable lobbyists seeking to turn our economic stimulus into their blank check — written out to corporations like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon with no strings attached.²

Only a public outcry will ensure that public tax dollars go to serving the public interest.

Click Here to Send a Letter to Rep. Jerrold Nadler:
No Bailout for Phone and Cable Giants

Free Press has a five-point plan³ to ensure that any public investment actually serves the public interest. Our plan makes crystal clear that any taxpayer money should support broadband that is:

1. Universal: focused on connecting the nearly half of the country stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
2. Open: committed to free speech and without corporate gatekeepers, filters or discrimination.
3. Affordable: providing faster speeds at lower prices.
4. Innovative: dedicated to new projects only and available to new competitors, including municipalities and nonprofits.
5. Accountable: open to public scrutiny so we can ensure that our money isn’t being spent to prop up stock prices and support market monopolies.

Building better broadband cannot be another corporate bailout. It must be a buildout for better democracy.

Connecting everyone will give more Americans a voice in government, better educate our children,⁴ revitalize rural economies, and bring hundreds of thousands of new job opportunities to those who need them most.

Greedy phone and cable companies have squandered America’s global Internet leadership — overcharging consumers, throttling content, stifling innovation and dropping us from fifth to 22nd place in world broadband adoption.⁵

With the economic stimulus package on the fast track in Congress, our plan needs your support right now.

Contact Rep. Jerrold Nadler:
Get Congress on Track Building an Internet for Everyone

It’s time we changed business as usual in Washington. Help jump-start the economy and restore accountability and openness to America’s communications policy by acting today.

Thank you.

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press Action Fund
www.freepress.net

On Volxbibel users democratically re-write/re-translate the bible. The wiki is a workplace where each text can be edited and re-edited. After theologists and teachers have a look at the results of the various versions, a book is then published. Third version (3.0) is now on sale.

The Civil Media wiki covers the Civilmedia08 conference in Salzburg from 3-5 December 2008. “Cultures – Participation – Dialogue” invites media activists, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, community development workers and all interested to Salzburg to discuss the importance of communicty/grassroots/citizen’s/civil media, with a specific focus on intercultural dialogue in Europe.

From Project:Report in association with the Pulitzer Center.

When: 11-14 December 2008

Where: Hôtel Caro, Bucharest, Romania

Aims: To support the development of citizens’ radio across Europe, especially East and Central Europe. In discoursology terms, the aims are to find strategies to increase the ability of citizen’s radio to shift discursive conventions and the hegemonic narration of global events. This includes not only extending the reach of community radio to a broader community, but also emphasising the democratising potential for the participants involved in jointly producing community radio.

The organisers, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, AMARC, say:

The event will offer an opportunity for almost one hundred community radio  broadcasters from more than 30 countries across Europe to meet and develop strategies to strengthen community radio across the region, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.

The conference draws its theme – Broadcasting on the Edge – from the fact that the community radio sector is too often marginalized or even illegal in parts of Europe. It is unable to operate successfully in a number of countries because those countries have incomplete legal and statutory frameworks, thus leaving community radio in limbo.

All summer, free four-day workshops have been running in different Berlin districts to make trailers for the soap. Over the four days, 14 to 18 year olds learn how to work behind and in front of the camera, to layout on the computer and to deal with audio recordings. Professional media producers tell participants about their daily work, and about career options.

The final workshop is being held on 20/21 September and 27/28 September in Wedding. On 12 October, the results of the workshops will be presented live on the public access tv channel, Offener Kanal Berlin. A jury will choose the best ads. The tv show on OKB will be designed, planned and produced together with the workshop participants.

The technology exists to do just that. But a powerful corporate lobby is standing in the way with a multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign aimed at Rep. Jerrold Nadler .

Washington faces a critical choice: Use new technology to open the Internet for everyone, or side with the lobbyists and prevent millions from getting connected. Help Rep. Nadler make the right decision:

Tell Rep. Nadler : Open the Internet for Everyone

The latest front in the battle over the future of the Internet is about “white spaces” — empty frequencies between TV channels on the public airwaves. New technology can open this unused spectrum to powerful high-speed Internet services, bringing ubiquitous and affordable broadband to millions of Americans now left off the grid.

Here’s the problem: The National Association of Broadcasters and cell phone companies want to hoard this publicly owned resource. Their lobbyists have been blitzing Washington with misinformation to prevent white spaces from being used to benefit millions of people.

Too many Americans have been left on the wrong side of the digital divide — sidelined in a nation that increasingly demands high-speed Internet access to get things done, keep up in school and find out what’s happening in the world. The answer to this problem is right in front of us.

Take Action: Open White Spaces for Everyone

If you sign the letter, we promise to hand deliver it next week to Rep. Nadler . A second copy will go to the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees spectrum policy.

Unless we urge Congress and the FCC to open up white spaces, Rep. Nadler could side with the lobbyists and deny us one of our last, best opportunities to build a better Internet.

It’s a familiar story. Big media companies use any means possible to squash new ideas that threaten their control over information.

With your help today, we can stop them and open up the Internet for everyone.

Thank you,

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press

http://www.freepress.net/

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

1. Learn more about white spaces

2. Read Free Press Campaign Coordinator Megan Tady’s recent article ‘Wireless to the people’ about the opportunities this campaign presents.

3. Read the New America Foundation’s report about the revolutionary potential of ‘white space devices (pdf).

["Battle in Seattle"] is a docu-drama—a fictional story based on real events—that features extensive archival footage. It may shape what most people in the US and around the world think happened for decades to come—unless we speak up. We call for social movements to take action: to reclaim our history, our stories, and our future.

The story of popular resistance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999 is a story of how people power can change the world. It is a dangerous example for the global elite, and a powerful one for movements.

For eight years, the US corporate media, global elites, and their police have been twisting and marginalizing the truth, in order to invent their own story of Seattle 1999 and the stories of social movements’ resistance and victories. These lies and revisions of history have been used in an attempt to criminalize and repress our protests, movements, and mobilizations.

The movie will be released on the eighth anniversary of the 1999 Seattle anti-WTO uprising and shutdown. It was written by a well-meaning actor-director, but is unlikely to reflect the motives, experience, or thinking of the movements behind the shutdown of the WTO. The potential is high and the possibilities are infinite to interrupt this narrative and claim the history that we helped create.

It’s time that we in the social movements tell our own stories, reclaim our own histories, and publicly fight damaging myths of our movements past and present. We must intervene in the public understanding of what happened, what is happening, and what it all means. Stories are how we understand the world and thus shape the future—they are part of our fight against corporate power, empire, war, and social and environmental injustice and for the alternatives that will make a better world.

The real story of Seattle 1999 is of tens of thousands of people rising up, taking direct action, and changing history; standing up to corporations and governments and winning; joining with movements around the world in our common struggle against the WTO.