Denise Cheng's Field Reports

Crossposting from PCM blog: A crash course on citizen journalism

Denise Cheng — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:42:43 -0700

I wrote this for my PCM blog and thought it might be interesting food for thought as a field report. The context for traditional journalism when participatory journalism appeared was one of threat. Ultimately, journalists realized that regardless of how they might disparage it, this participatory movement was here to stay and expand. A couple of years later, it's a way of life and a given when it comes to the Internet. Since I've been working at PCM, I've also been thinking about how social media/participatory journalism have not only been threats to traditional journalism but also to community media centers that cannot or choose not to adapt to the Internet as a distribution platform. Why is this? Because although community media centers have aimed to do for their constituencies what the Internet has allowed anyone with a connection to do (that is, to create media and have a distribution platform), the Internet does it on a much bigger scale and isn't concerned so much with the quality of production as much as it is the content. Fancy jib cams, twenty-inch lenses, top-notch microphones... none of those are necessary to create good media. Thanks to the Internet, media's become very DIY, and community media centers must not only latch on, they have to be ahead of the curb if they want to stay relevant.

A CRASH COURSE ON CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Or participatory media, as I like to call it, for more inclusive reasons.

One of my favorite quotes about participatory journalism is from Macromedia founder Marc Canter. “Five percent of the populace (probably even less) can create. The others watch, listen, read, consume. I think one of the destinies of digital technology is to enable the other 95% to express their creativity somehow. That’s the gestalt view.”

Back when I was in college, I wanted (and still entertain the idea) to be a journalist. Right before my senior year, a movement was beginning to gather steam, a movement called citizen journalism.

“Who are these people?” Lev Grossman posed in Time’s 2006 Person of the Year article. “Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak fries at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion? The answer is, you do.”

Everywhere I looked, on magazine covers, front pages and home pages, I saw three words: “Print is dead!” Columbia’s Dean of Journalism Nicholas Lemann was not in such a rush to support the statement. In his mind, it was amateur hour, where at its best, you might get a couple of decent opinions, but more brilliant and polished insights on the matter are already available in the papers. He echoed the thoughts of many journalists at the time.

So who are citizen journalists and why do they do what they do? Here’s where the term “citizen journalism” falls apart. The term was coined by academics trying to name something they saw, a something where everyday people were creating worthwhile media distributed on the Internet. Other terms for it are participatory journalism, pro-am journalism and grassroots journalism. Of those that frame the movement in terms of journalism, I believe the most encompassing name is participatory journalism (Aside: In my personal opinion, the biggest reason citizen journalism isn't an adequate term is because "citizen" denotes geography, and this doesn't take into account diasporas, immigrant identities, or the unfortunate few who aren't protected under any citizenship).

Of course, there are many bloggers who see themselves as the alternative to mainstream media, but why participatory journalism? Well, the Baghdad Blogger put it best. His blog, Where is Raed? was the go-to source for on-the-ground information during the War on Iraq. As an Iraqi citizen, he had access to areas that even the most high-power
journalists could not wander into.

“[Blogs are] good because they seem like small windows in to how people are living and thinking in the outside world. I also realized that there’s nothing coming from the Arab world. So I thought I’d start one. To give something back to the blogging community … Honestly, I’m not comfortable with the idea that I am considered a ‘news source.’ I am just blogging. A blog is where you can make the news more real for you… for me.”

The Baghdad Blogger wasn’t blogging with the intent of becoming an authority; he was writing what he saw in his little corner of the world in spite of politics, research and statistics. His accounts enhanced that greater entity called news. His facts were sensory ones.

“Let me tell you one thing first,” he wrote. “War sucks big time. Don’t let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom. Somehow when the bombs start dropping or you hear the sounds of machine guns at the end of your street you don’t think about your ‘imminent liberation’ anymore.”

Since graduating college, I’ve come across a couple of new terms: Web 2.0, social media, new media. All of this thanks to my position with Portland Community Media as the New Media Vista. Ultimately, all of these are very similar to participatory journalism, where normal and average people are choosing what goes on their front pages (Digg, Newsvine, Reddit) instead of journalists, where commenting on blogs can create a sense of community. Where people are fulfilling their need to share and create. Simply put, social media, new media and Web 2.0 are all terms referring to media that is driven by social desire and positive reinforcement. This media encourages dialogue and collaboration and uses technological tools to reinforce human social relationships. The difference between citizen journalism and social media are simply how they are phrased: One looks at everything from a social interaction perspective while the other focuses specifically on journalism.

This is clearly a powerful force, one that journalists, community media centers and marketers are trying to harness. At first, journalists begrudgingly accepted citizen journalism’s de facto existence, but are now scrambling to find a way to reinject the social aspect into news in order to secure their survival, which is ironic because news is ultimately about people. To understand this, it must also be understood that the way mainstream media have progressed in the last century is akin to a soup kitchen: The public was served predetermined headlines and portions with little say in what they wanted to have. It was an experts-to-advisee system. Broadcaster to consumers.

Ultimately, the best citizen journalism and social media sites seem to keep three things in mind. One, that your public is a capable public with interesting and valuable information to share. Two, that everyone craves community and positive reinforcement. Three, that everyone--from the site’s members to the site’s administrator and hosting company--is both the broadcaster and the audience. Any social media or citizen journalism site takes a lot to maintain, but if participants are invested enough in the content they create, the quality and the warm fuzzies they get from social exchange, they can ultimately become monitors who watch out for vandalism of their media forum (i.e.: Wikipedia).

For further reading, check out:

Press Think by Jay Rosen
We the Media by Dan Gillmor
We Media by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis
Social media business strategy and more by Chris Brogan
Alltop - Top Social Media News

Knight Foundation update

Denise Cheng — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:27:09 -0700

Just wanted to let everyone know: our application was reviewed by the Knight Foundation, and now they want a full proposal as follow-up to our letter of inquiry!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAAYAYYYYY!!!!!

Portland Speaks: The genesis of the idea

Denise Cheng — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:33:39 -0700

From July onward, I've spent much of my time at Portland Community Media working on a proposal for a project that would allow immigrants and Millennials to create media at low-cost anywhere and at anytime. To do this, we focused on the cell phone as a media creation device and the Internet as the primary distribution platform with the hope of television as a second one. Here's how the idea began:

After coming back from Africa, I have a deeper appreciation for the immigrant experience. As a minority, I could only superficially understand the immigrant struggle till my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. In addition to this, there’s very little ethnic diversity in Portland, and I was curious why, out of the major West Coast cities, it had been excluded from the richness of cultural infusion.
My first day on the job as a CTC Vista, I had a talk with Jason, who managesthe government production side of PCM. I was asking about immigrant representation on PCM channels and programming done by immigrants, of which Jason said there was very little. We talked about the lack of outreach by PCM to immigrant communities in the area even though it’s in line with the mission, and we discussed the need for their presence in community media in Portland.
Having come from print journalism, I have a penchant for paper. Bea, my supervisor, shares this as a bookbinder. We discussed what would be the most comfortable and familiar medium for immigrants. Despite my position as the New Media Vista, I really wanted to bring print into PCM. We decided that, of all forms of media, paper is the most familiar in the world and probably the most comfortable form of communication that anyone can opt for.
Since I was hired on to be the New Media Vista without really understanding what the buzzword of “New Media” and “Web 2.0” were, I was also researching heavily during my first couple of weeks on the job. I read a lot about social media and also came across this website focusing on the phone as an activist tool. It was incredibly interesting for me to learn how phones were being used for flash mobbing and information distribution in third world countries.
At the time, my boyfriend was also about to replace his shitty phone and was intently scouring the Internet for new cell phone technology and customer ratings. I asked him about transferring contacts, SMS’, and other forms of data from his old phone to a new one. I remembered how all my phones used to have a voice memo feature and the short amount of time it allowed for recording. I figured this was anywhere between 1-10 minutes because I used to accidentally hit the voice memo feature on my old cell phone while on calls. I realized how that might be a possibility for new media use for immigrants and thought it might be appropriate technology because of what I saw in Lesotho: Everyone has a cell phone regardless of how remote they are, and a lot of it is driven by the phone as a status symbol. "Everyone" is a bit of an exaggeration, but I later learned that the most familiar and bestselling communicative technology device in the world is the cell phone, which suggests that the phone is at least more familiar than other new communication media.
I started to test the technical side of this idea with phones that belonged to coworkers and friends. The goal was trying to figure out the average amount of time that the memo feature records, and that’s where I discovered that, in fact, not all phones have voice memo features, and phones range in recording time from a minute to whatever amount of memory is left on the phone.
It was around that time that Bea put Jacob and me together on a project to figure out how PCM could address the needs of both immigrant communities and Millennials. PCM has a very hard time retaining Millennials at the facility, and yet they are some of the most media active and social justice oriented people in Portland.
Eventually, I stumbled upon a social networking site called “Utterz,” (now known as Utterli), and although the hope of the voice memo feature was zero-cost media creation, it seemed that a system like Utterli (people dial in to record memos and interviews) was the best compromise between cell phone plans and incongruencies in cell phone features. Utterli, however, is a free form social media site, and Portland Speaks has more of a focus in the form of target groups.
However, following a group brainstorm and dissection, Jacob and I felt somewhat confused and disillusioned since our parameters were loose and our ideas were being scrambled, so I set out to define the original idea and it burgeoned into the attached proposal and illustrations. It was then decided that the idea would be submitted for the Knight Foundation's News Challenge grant (our application can be found here).
All in all, this has been an incredible learning process with lots of creativity but also some incredibly devastating downs. Welcome to the real world, I guess.

A bit of crossposting on digital storytelling

Denise Cheng — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:48:50 -0600

Thought I'd share a more appropriate post that I wrote for the PCM blog a couple of days ago. This is probably what I should be submitting for my field reports...

-----

Digital storytelling: The wonders never cease

10 Oct. 2008

I've had the privilege of being part of two digital storytelling workshops at Portland Community Media: once as sort of a teacher's aide and the second time as a participant.

I first heard of digital storytelling in 2006 as I was rounding the corner to my last semester in college. I was home for winter break and decided to take advantage of my locale to learn about media centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I met Theeba Soundararajan of Third World Majority (TWM) and Jessica McCoy, who was the CTC Vista for Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) at the time.

Both were storytelling organizations with slightly differing missions. They're media centers focused on expression, but TWM was more focused on giving minorities and immigrant communities the media tools that have traditionally been used to ignore, suppress or misrepresent them.

Theeba opened my eyes to digital storytelling as a tool for those who have been sidestepped and wrongly represented on the local and national scene. As a person who has trained in journalism, I've seen much of this and even experienced it, which can be very jolting for someone who plays on both sides.

I've had a couple of experiences now, but the most shocking was after returning from Lesotho as a Peace Corps volunteer and hearing an NPR Marketplace broadcast entitled Chinese businesses rile Lesotho locals. To establish the scene, there's a lot of resentment against the Chinese by Basotho because the Chinese have been economically successful there while the Basotho are cementing themselves in poverty. As a Chinese American, I experienced a hefty amount of misdirected discrimination. The Marketplace broadcast seemed to side with the idea that the Chinese were snatching up every economic opportunity, leaving nothing for the Basotho. Granted, there are sketchy business decisions that some Chinese have made, but the Basotho are in their particular position most of all because of lack of entrepreneurial spirit (my official title as a PCV was "Small Business Advisor"). It was disturbing to hear the NPR report not because I share a physical appearance with the Chinese, but because I had experienced both sides and could not believe the lopsided situation an NPR show represented. Talk about a group that's exploited Lesotho's economy, where was any mention of South Africa and their complete infiltration into Basotho commodities and cultural goods? In many ways, Marketplace legitimized the discrimination against Lesotho's Chinese community. I still haven't heard a peep after writing a letter to the editor, not even acknowledgement of receipt.

Of course, this goes on everyday. There are countless misrepresentations in the news, and while it's hard to combat if you have limited media resources at your hand (which I've also experienced), it's even harder when you have none. In that case, there's no reason to even cultivate an audience.

Jessica and I spent much more time talking about the role of storytellers and story holders. Storytellers in our society can be seen as journalists, filmmakers, politicians--those who don't tell their own stories but tell other people's. Story holders are the people whose stories are being told. The big question for me at the time was if storytellers and story subjects share the intent of confronting readers with a question, is it better for the storyteller to tell it or the story holder? An unresolved question, but ultimately, we came to the conclusion that as nonprofessional storytellers, story holders have much more power to eschew pretenses and rules, dramatic questions, rhetoric or otherwise. Doing personal storytelling also serves to empower people in addition to getting the word out.

Back to the present-day, where I've been a part of two digital storytelling workshops. The first digital storytelling workshop I attended was a partnership between PCM and CDS. One particular person's story was about her predicament as an illegal immigrant who grew up in the US and knows no other home than the States. She doesn't qualify for college scholarships (a heavy burden for any student, especially spotlighted now in our recent economic crisis) because she'd have to prove citizenship. She speaks of looking "American" and being Latina, of being a high-achieving high schooler in AP courses with other Americans who are blind to her ethnicity and asked why "they" don't just go "home" and immigrate legally. At worst (and it's quite a short step in the case of illegal immigrants everywhere) she risks deportation with slim chances of return. At best, she can hope for sanctuary and some financial alleviation if the Dream Act passes.

Our instructor for the second workshop played this person's story as an example of digital storytelling. Several participants mentioned how uncomfortable the story made them feel, how her voice was trembling so much they thought she'd shatter into tears at any moment over her situation. They didn't know what to make of the story. Aside: I love awkward movies (The Squid and the Whale is a fantastic one), the tension around the white elephant in the room; I'm certain that awkwardness is an art itself in the art of film and acting. But that day in the second digital storytelling workshop, as I listened to the person's story again and heard the comments after, I realized that story holders have a power that storytellers do not. Because they're not ideas represented by actors and polished words, story holders have the power of truth in the voiceover room through the emotions they can't mask. It would be a shame if they could remove themselves.

Check out:

The Oxford Project - A fantastic example of what storytellers and storyholders can do together.

Um...

Denise Cheng — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:06:00 -0600

I'm not really sure what to put up since I feel all written out. I've stopped writing my PCM blog for the last several weeks because I've been so busy, but before that I was posting once a week. I also just finished researching and writing a grant proposal (literature review included) that we're hoping to submit to the Knight Foundation. I also made a dummy website as a visualization for it (in other words, I don't know how to use WYSIWYGs, so I laid it out in InDesign). We're hoping to target both the immigrant population and young people, the two fastest growing demographics in Portland. Not to mention that while everywhere else in the US baby boomers are the majority, Gen Y is the majority here.
What have I done in the last couple of months (can this field report count as two entries? :D)... I've gone to:

Portland Zine Symposium
Portland Grassroots Media Camp

I unexpectedly helped out with a digital storytelling class (which I had never done) that was a partnership between Progressive Communicators Network, PCM and the Center for Digital Storytelling. I took a digital storytelling class about a month after and have discovered the frustrations of anchor points in Final Cut. I'm currently taking a field class in shooting/production and a class in multimedia digital storytelling (read: Flash and Photoshop)...
I taught my first class last Tuesday called "Distribution Beyond Borders." It was a class focused on personal branding using social media tools to draw people to self-produced creative content. It was really fun to teach, and I got Secret Aardvark Hot Sauce as a present for having taught my first class. :)
Overall, though, things at work are slowing down now that I've finished writing the grant proposal. It's not dragging at all, but I guess I'm feeling paranoid about the possibility in the future. I guess now is a good time to learn CSS and Drupal...
In non-boring news, I recently went to a pig party where they roasted a whole pig on a spit for a couple's bday. Connie, the hostess, put some lipstick on the pig.
I got to see thousands of swifts fly into the Chapman School chimney in mid-September. The Chapman School in NW Portland is one of the biggest swift congregation points on the West Coast as they migrate for the winter.
I went on a disastrous backpacking trip (my first) in which I ended up with huge welts on my hip. One disappeared while the other turned blackish-brown and is still on my right hip more than a month following.
I went to my college's 35th reunion; every 5 years they have a huge reunion from the first graduating class of my college.
I've also decided recently that I really enjoy roasted garlic and I like Joe Biden. My thoughts on the vp debate: Probably the majority of immigrants can identify with Joe Biden better than Sarah Palin when it comes to self-broadcasted image. Palin is constantly talking about "Joe Six-Pack" (slightly offensive) and "Hockey Moms," which may appeal to the middle class, but a very specific middle class: the general white middle class. I think most immigrants who come to the States are looking for a better future and educational opportunities for their kids. That's an everybody-value. In my parents' case, they worked toward getting American degrees so they would have that threshold credential to do as well as they could for themselves. However, becoming a hockey mom, a soccer mom, a band parent, &c. organized sports and such aren't necessarily something immigrants value or would think to expose their kids to. So in terms of relating to one image or another, I personally relate more to Joe Biden and not because I'm rich (clearly, none of us are right now). I suspect that to some groups of people, Joe Biden and the rest of those politicians from low-income, middle-income backgrounds radiate the "I made it" vibe. For me, personally, I think the only thing Joe Biden was broadcasting about himself in the debates was critical thought and reflection. Sarah Palin pandered more to a specific group by selling a specific image.
Last of my recent likes, those of you with connections to people who have NetFlix or if you have it yourselves should check out Flight of the Conchords.

Dream analyst, anyone?

Denise Cheng — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:57:37 -0600

I had a dream last night where Abby and I were a superhero duo out to save the world. Unfortunately every time we threw a "pow" or "bam," cheesy '80s music would blare in perfect rhythm.

Looks like I'll have to learn HTML for future posts...

Denise Cheng — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:59:26 -0600

A lot of what I do is research, which means reading many techie and media blogs, going on YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, and following any other leads I happen to catch. Half the time I’m not sure whether what I’m doing counts as work, since how many people can claim that going on Facebook or using Ning is part of their job function? Not surprisingly, I sometimes find myself in incredibly mind-numbing lulls because there’s only so much staring and reading you can do before your brain fries.
I’ve also started keeping a blog on Portland Community Media’s website that I update every Friday. The blog feature on the site is not often used and is extremely contained (no way to post to other sites like Digg or Facebook, can’t email and no RSS feeds). Only staff members use it. Because of this, I’m currently helping them revitalize their blog feature and their web presence.
I’m part of the Access 2.0 committee and the Media Education team. Access 2.0 is a three-year grant that allows PCM to update all its gear to support future New Media stuff and to transition from video to digital records. We're halfway through Year Two right now. Under Access 2.0, I’m scheduled to team-teach twice for the coming quarter on “social networking” (oooh... shiny).
This last weekend I went to Pickathon, an indie bluegrass music festival at Pendarvis Farm outside of Portland (next PCM blog entry). PCM was filming there, and I got my first taste of directing and filming. It’s incredible how much video has in common with photography, except that everything’s moving. And all the considerations you have to make because of movement and how that dictates the order of frames. It was especially fun working the camera, and I even learned how to work a jib cam.
So coming up I’m supposed to do interviews with the various teams at PCM about how they use Facil. We’re transitioning to a Drupal database and PCM wants to figure out the pros and cons to fashion their new database.
I also have some ideas in the works for new media (and New Media) programs at PCM that are more accessible to a greater demographic—in particular for low-income. PCM has not been the best at outreach; people come to them. I’m not sure whether PCM even has the staff capacity for outreach. It has waived class fees before for students who can’t afford them, but I still think there’s a lot of barriers despite this. Serial classes, tech savvy-ness, volunteering for production—all of this stuff is not necessarily doable if you really have to scrape for a living. Multiple jobs, being on call, even the amount of cultural exposure to technology are not necessarily conducive to video tech for expression. More to come, but right now I’m thinking cell phones and mobile tech.

Oh, and read my blog. :)
http://pcmtv.org/?q=blog/80