Media and Community Building

Community building can be defined as any local action taken by local individuals to build their community and provide opportunity for people to exercise their rights granted by the constitution. The powerful influence of Media on people and technological convergence help empower communities and reach social goals, engage citizens in contributing in public policy and shaping democracy.
Educated citizens are essential to a functioning democracy; they can actively question corporate power and mobilize resource to help establish social justice and fairness by engaging citizens in building a healthy society through the influence of Media.
For citizens to be engaged in democracy, they need to be critical thinkers, self expressive so that they can understand and contribute to public discourse and make informed decisions to the issues, opinions and ideas which matter most to them.
Community media help community members communicate, learn, create, connect together and share information. The purpose of Media and community building is to:
• Tell, share and preserve the community stories
• Better understand the community differences
• Discuss the community challenges and develop solutions
• Encourage and exercise the free exchange of ideas
• Practice inclusiveness and empowerment
• Promote and enable social change
• Build collaborations and partnerships in pursuit of a better community.
Media and communication technologies have contributed to building healthy, dynamic communities. Some of the tools that can be used in the service of community building are the following:
• Independent local Journalism that fully informs the community and acts as a watchdog to protects citizens from distorted news and provides a professional journalism.
• Newspapers, television and radio stations, local broadcast channels operated by multiple, diverse, and independent owners that compete vigorously and employ a diverse workforce.
• Radio and television programming produced by independent creators that is original, challenging, controversial, and diverse.
• Programming, stories, and speech produced by communities and citizens.
• Internet service provided by multiple, independent providers who compete vigorously and offer access to the entire Internet over a broadband connection, with freedom to attach within the home any legal device to the net connection and run any legal application.
• Public broadcasting insulated from political and commercial interests that is well-funded and especially serves communities underserved by privately-owned broadcasters.
• Regulatory policies emphasizing media education and citizen empowerment, not government censorship, as the best ways to avoid unwanted content.
• Media That Use The Public's Airwaves To Serve The Public Interest
Digital convergences extend human abilities and shrink space, it allows every user to connect anywhere, anytime and be able to have access to adapted and high quality content and communication services in a safe an accessible environment. Digital convergence empowers communities by allowing them to become active users, communicate and share information easily.
In the constant search of improving the quality of life and economic growth, technological convergence has served in developing and increasing effectiveness of communication, radically changing the way of doing business (online business), human interaction and social life (blogs, wiki, online dating, 2nd life, facebook, myspace). Indeed technology creates and develops new ways of communication; different ways of social interaction giving citizens power to become producers and contribute to establish democracy. Access to information is becoming easier than ever, because media plays a crucial role in shaping up various types of development in society: in changing opinions and actions. Through Media convergence, communities are able to empower citizens by using various technologies to inform and share information and building a better community.
Media also can help communities facing cultural exclusion, low-literacy, language barriers and/or disability by mobilization and education of community members and engage them in intervening to improve their lives by making services and education available to citizens by utilizing local newspapers, local broadcast, local website and emails and reaching out to citizens to advice them and provide local help, to educate them and allow them to express their voices and communicate their worries as a community.
To summarize, when building communities through media, active media citizens need not to control the message, deliver content with integrity, honesty and transparency, allow participation and share information to build value for the community and that by knowing the community dominant needs and providing solution to their problems, inspiring citizens and keeping them motivated and engaged.

Survey For Wikispace Video

Hi Everybody,

Please take a few minutes to complete the survey that I created that goes along with my strategic communications plan.

Thanks,

Click Here to take survey


Aaron Stenton

NEW Petition wording: PLEASE comment

How do people like the wording on this?:

"To: ALL UMass Students and members of the general public:

We are signing to show our support for UMass Boston's College of Public and Community Service & our Major/Concentration in Community Media & Technology.

It is integral that CPCS remain a part of UMass Boston. The Community Media and Technology Program should be reinstated as well. Many of us chose to attend UMass Boston because of the CMT program. It is a crucial program and deserves much more support than the previous administration allowed.


Speaking as a CMT student: we are the future for technology. CMT needs to be expanded to allow those who are interested and who have the ability to have the opportunity to display our talents and skills as well as the capability of all form of Media & Technology.

Sincerely,..."

SecondLife on Television!!!

Hey everybody,

I just wanted to pass along that Secondlife will be on television Thursday May 15th, at 8pm. (The day after our last meeting of the semester)

Check out the link below for more details.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/molotovalva/index.html


Maybe somebody can record this? It would be pretty interesting to have it some how recorded and then posted on our blog or Wiki page. Any ideas?

Aaron Stenton

Memorandum

What is everybody's opinion on the Memorandum for CPCS that was sent out a couple weeks ago?

I think it's an issue we should go over in class. We should go into deeper thoughts about this letter that was mailed out CPCS students. We should even possibly survey students in CPCS, to see if they received this letter and to see what their opinions are about it.

I will try to post a better image of this letter later on at some point.

Document on Graphics Facility by Yvonne Decelis

This is a document I (gradually) wrote for a graphics facility I set up (and maintained and trained on) at HMS.


WQGFOverview

Tactical Media Meeting April 30th 2008

Due to an illness of a friend of Fred Johnson's, Fred was unable to attend tonight's meeting.

Although, some of the meeting still went on, and was interactive through the use of Secondlife.

Jay showed me a few basics of how to use Secondlife. I have been unable to access it on my personal laptop as it does not have the graphical power to do so. This meeting was beneficial as a intro to using Secondlife.

Attendance: Aaron, Jay, Sarah, Yvonne.

We all were on Secondlife. Jay, Sarah & myself were in the actual Taylor center on separate computers accessing the Secondlife program. Yvonne was not in the Taylor center, but was on-line in the Tactical Media center on Secondlife. It was pretty cool to interact with her using the program.

I also brought in a hand out that I was going to pass out to everybody regarding our Tactical Media Myspace.com. Jay & Sarah were the only one's that did receive this hand out. Please ask me next Wednesday, May 7th to give you one.

Hopefully next meeting everybody will be able to log on to Secondlife so we all can experiment with it a little more so we can plan future meeting times as the semester is coming to a end.

Aaron Stenton

Poster File Preparation info by Yvonne Decelis

Poster File Preparation Info

This is a document containing the slides I ran for a brown bag seminar I did at Harvard Medical School from 2004 to 2006 on preparing files for poster printing.

-Yvonne Decelis

SAVE CPCS AND CMT petition

I have created a petition on this site for people to use:

SAVE CMT AND CPCS

Saving CPCS & Community Media & Technology

Who is in favor of creating an on-line petition? Who will take the lead on this? I feel it will be a great idea to go forth with creating one in order for our voices to be heard here at Umass Boston to show support for CPCS & our Major, or Minor, or Concentration in Community Media & Technology.

We are the future for technology, and without our input, it will be negative for those who are interested in our college's program. It needs to be expanded to allow those who are interested to get the opportunity to show off their talents and skills in Media & Technology.

So I ask of you all, who will take the step in starting this revolution to save our College & Program?

http://www.petitiononline.com/

Let 2008 be the year for CPCS & Community Media & Technology


Aaron Stenton