MediaShift Idea Lab: Comments

Comment on "Why ReportingOn Launched on Django"

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:56:00 -0500

I'm quite intrigued by the Django-based social network tools (Pinax) you mention. Perhaps they will help us with the Crunchberry Project.

- Rich Gordon

Comment on "Can the Internet have a heart?"

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:37:13 -0500

Paul, I like your topics. I read your longer article. It's helpful to see all the links and ideas in one posts. I like that the Social Actions website lists the communities that it aggregates actions from. However, it is disappointing, as usual, that Social Actions uses a Creative Commons "share alike" license - a license that conflicts with the Public Domain - in that it keeps Public Domain venues (like our Minciu Sodas venues) from using their material. The willingness to share content - without requiring the tracking of license, or attribution - is I think the litmus test for a sharing, caring person. It is sad that sites like Kiva do not allow their content to be shared or their participants to be contacted. I don't see how we can organize a culture of sharing or caring with such walls. Thank you, Andrius

- Andrius Kulikauskas

Comment on "Finding Political Sleazemongers"

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:59:17 -0500

Wow! Thanks Chris for posting that.

- Anna Haynes

Comment on "Finding Political Sleazemongers"

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:20:07 -0500

Ellen:

I think this touches on a critical issue we all face as the number of news and information sources multiply: How do we critically evaluate these sources so we know what information to trust?

This notion isn't just limited to political discourse, but touches on all aspects of digital information. For instance, many corporations have embraced social media to spread marketing messages across the Web, a method that allows them to "recruit" all sorts of folks with big followings to build buzz for their products and services. But these social media gurus are not necessarily obligated to disclose a relationship with a company to their audience. Some do, some don't.

I recently interviewed an executive at a company which provides a third-party commenting service for blogs and Web sites. They provide a number of tools to moderating comments and community interactions. As part of their service, if you're starting some online forums, their employees will post in the forums, or seed them with questions, to make it appear to casual visitors that there's a lot of conversation occurring. But they don't identify themselves as employees. They may not be spreading any lies, but my instincts tell me that it doesn't feel quite right.

So, you're touching on some important issues. And I think any effort that helps people meet that challenge and critically evaluate sources is a noble and necessary one. That said, I think your approach is slightly off the mark.

First, I don't think there is a "right to privacy in posting on the web." You're posting in public. Period. If you publish something online with the intention that it will be viewed by others (which would seem to be the intent of publishing any propaganda), and you choose to fake your name, then it's totally legitimate for someone to point that out. I don't see an ethical dilemma there or a privacy issue.

But, once you unmask this person, then what? There are two potential scenarios that meet the "outrage factor." First, the person is fundamentally publishing information that is factual, but failing to disclose that they are being paid by a campaign. If the campaign is failing to disclose that the person is being paid, or attempts to lie about it, then there might be some outrage factor.

The bigger outrage would be if the information is fundamentally false, or misleading AND the source was being paid by the campaign. In both these cases, you have to do three things: Establish that the source is not disclosing their real identity; evaluate the quality and accuracy of the information; and determine there is a real connection to the campaign.

For me, the most useful part of all of this is the second piece: evaluating the quality and accuracy of the information. Fortunately, there are a lot of excellent efforts during this campaign to do that.

Beyond that, I think there is a more positive way to approach this problem. Patrick Thornton, who blogs at Journalism Iconoclast (http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/) has a project underway to create an "online ethics seal." The seal evaluates five different catergories:

1. Sourcing
2. Objectivity/advocacy/opinion journalism or opinion
3. Linking
4. Copy editing/fact checking (does a second person fact check?)
5. Conflicts of Interests

What I like about the concept is that encourages disclosure and transparency, and rewards sites that embrace those values. The project is still in its early stages, but it's worth checking out here:

http://tinyurl.com/4lozwm

However, keep please keep us posted on what the class decides to do and what it learns. If there's a central site to follow their work, please let us know where to find it.

- Chris O'Brien

Comment on "Finding Political Sleazemongers"

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:53:38 -0500

We need a Creative Commons equivalent for disclosures.
(i.e., of varying degrees of stringency)

Then if a blogger is sporting a "I'm independent" disclosure, but turns out to be shilling for a campaign, s/he is fair game to expose - while someone making no such promise isn't.

And it'd help the reader, in evaluating the various bloggers' credibility.

- Anna Haynes

Comment on "One Week of ReportingOn, International Style"

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:14:06 -0500

Next update:

Help translate the ReportingOn FAQ into Spanish here: http://bit.ly/ROfaqES

(Ayuda para traducir el FAQ de ReportingOn, por favor!)

- Ryan Sholin

Comment on "Finding Political Sleazemongers"

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:55:10 -0500

It's a false choice. We can exercise all the self-restraint we want– it is an entirely different set of people who will be exposing the personal information of people who are under threat of job loss, imprisonment, torture, or death.

Clearly, the sort of people who would expose anyone's information in those circumstances are not likely to exercise restraint.

Instead, exposing those who are doing harm spreading lies (and have little to loose but their effectiveness when exposed) will likely promote the development of technology to protect true anonymity.

So regardless whether you think anybody should have a right to anonymity, go after and show the liars for who they are.

- Benjamin Melançon

Comment on "One Week of ReportingOn, International Style"

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:21:09 -0500

Developments since I posted this:

We've added comments on each update, so registered users can indefinitely continue a conversation that starts with 140 characters.

A number of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking journalists and bloggers who have reached out to me are interested in helping to figure out how to accommodate an international userbase without putting up too many barriers based on language or location.

As soon as I get a little further into my to-do list for features on the site, I'll post here (in a couple languages?) to brainstorm about language and international connections.

- Ryan Sholin

Comment on "The IncluderEpisode 1Sisterhood"

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:27:32 -0500

I write to the light and it leaps to respond. That moth beating on my window - is it inside or out?

- localvore

Comment on "Beanstockd in 500 Words or Less "

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:46:54 -0500

Thanks for the comment, Amanda. In France, minimizing consumption was often because of the expense - you're absolutely right. But what we observed was that this idea translated beyond expensive resources to a way of thinking, even among wealthy families [for example, the same small pot roast would be dinner every night until it was finished - food was never wasted]. It translated to a culture of scarcity, where attention to consumption was carried at the forefront of the population's consciousness as they went about their daily activities.

The social pressure I mentioned was specifically regarding my cofounder and myself analyzing the source of our own behavioral change while living abroad- since most of our living expenses were prepaid (host families), what actually caused us to change our behavior was the social pressure of living within this consumption-conscious society, where our friends and host families were vigilant about their consumption. This is something we felt we could powerfully recreate through a team-based, community-wide competition where each person's contribution (or lack thereof) affected their team's outcome in the game.

- Angela

Comment on "Why ReportingOn Launched on Django"

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:20:32 -0500

I think it has more to with just figuring out what you want to do - then match up the platform to the needs.

Who cares if its Drupal, Django, Wordpress or good old HTML. It's like - just pick one and DO something.

I like the end quote: "as a proof of concept that a journalist" (or other professional) "with just a little programming knowledge can build something interesting on a low budget"

Very good post,
tom

- Tom Altman

Comment on "The IncluderEpisode 3The Chain of Angels"

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:28:19 -0500

Andre was a good guy. He always stayed to himself. He was always on the block, kicking with the guys. Just having fun. Trying to stay out of trouble. You didn't really see him too much hanging around because he always had a job most of the time. And when he got out of jail, he changed a lot. But I think when you're around negative people, you get negative, and the innocent ones always get killed, by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And I think all that stuff would have been avoided if his brother-in-law Darrell Migll would have avoided it. None of that would have happened. Andre would be here today to see his kids. Sometimes you have to avoid trouble and let things go. Some people say life is hard, but I think make their life hard because if you be around positive people, you get positive. So I think it's best for people to stay around their kind of people. If they want to do positive, hang with positive people. If you want to do negative, keep negative where it's at. And always put Jehovah first. Cause wherever there's a will, there's a way. God don't put too much on you that you can't bear, because he allows things to happen, but he don't cause things to happen. And I think none of that would have happened if they would have just let it go and let the man upstairs take care. The end.

- Christopher Russell

Comment on "The IncluderEpisode 3The Chain of Angels"

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:40:21 -0500

Very Good. I want to read more. Reminds me of works by Sudhir Venkatesh, American project : the rise and fall of a modern ghetto and Off the Books. Perry the Librarian.

- Perry Recker

Comment on "The IncluderEpisode 3The Chain of Angels"

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:55:43 -0500

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1206320,sside100708.article

beautiful wrote:
Andre was a great man and wonderful Father sad that this had to happen to him he just recently lost 2 brothers they will all be missed. You are in a better place now may you R.I.P

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU

- Andrius Kulikauskas

Comment on "South African Seniors Speak: Age Demands Action"

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:51:41 -0500

David, Thank you for your important post, helpful links, and your leadership at Rising Voices. I've spent the summer with two elders in quite different circumstances, as I write here: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/10/the-includerepisode-3the-chain.html I think one of the challenges is that young people realize that often our elders have much more important things to say than we do, but they need our help to say them, or at least, to listen. And so our elders are strong and they attract young people who want an alternative and they can grow in their presence.

- Andrius Kulikauskas

Comment on "Prisoners Become Media Makers in Jamaica"

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:50:59 -0500

former inmate of fort augusta from 1991 wants to tell story.

- bonita

Comment on "The IncluderEpisode 2Year 2"

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:27:27 -0500

Fred Kayiwa, October 3
http://www.onehelpinganother.com
posted at http://www.includer.org/?p=7#comments

Am so proud with the Includer Project
To me i have learnt alot
with my telent club kids
Thanks To Ricardo for his support here
Now we have the ECLD and we are starting learning Computer knowledge easily

- Andrius Kulikauskas

Comment on "Beanstockd in 500 Words or Less "

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:32:01 -0500

It isn't hardly a secret that I've got an eye for public policy, but reading your story, I find myself wondering if there isn't a missing piece here. The French don't take short showers and air dry their clothes to win points. They do it because energy is expensive.

There are reasons for that, and they have a lot do to with public policy and with access to natural resources. Do you have ideas about how to address those issues in games?

- Amanda Hickman

Comment on "Why ReportingOn Launched on Django"

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:50:58 -0500

Exciting Ryan!
Despite being married to Drupal, I think its great you did it in Django. It looks great and I'm glad you're making progress. I hope your efforts will be a strong contribution to the Django community.

Tony

- Tony Shawcross

Comment on "Why ReportingOn Launched on Django"

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:43:58 -0500

@Benjamin:

I knew you'd have an answer. I did get that far, but could never manage to pry the Title field off the content type, and definitely didn't get far enough to build a happy little form for users to type their updates into.

My bigger problem was that there was nowhere to look for the answer. How many Drupal developers are building microblogging tools?

(Actually, at a glance, the search results for "drupal microblog" have increased dramatically since I last looked early this summer.)

But there were a ton of existing and in-development Django projects to learn from, so it was just a better fit for me at the moment.

- Ryan Sholin