Syria photos are up
You can see them here 
Animoto slideshow set to Fairuz here
& two brief stories on Demotix:
New Year’s Day with the South/Southeast Asian domestics in Jordan
In the Battle(Field): The US Military, Blogging & and the Struggle for Authority
My examination of the military’s reaction to the rise of social media has been accepted for publication by the journal Media, Culture and Society. I argue that the military has been caught off-guard by the rise of social media and its reaction uneven as different voices from within that arena seek to control and manipulate what is a networked, non-hierarchical form of communication. The military has long been able to virtually set the mainstream media’s agenda through its influence on mainstream reporting. The rise of solider bloggers and others who post unapproved content has led to fissures within the military “field” (yes, a Bourdieuian analysis) revealing the internal struggle for social, political and cultural capital. Some of what I ponder:
- a comparison of two key milbloggers, Colby Buzzell (aka a self-described pre-military skateboard punk) and J. P. Borda (college educated computer guy/National Guardsman who founded the world’s largest military blog aggregator, milblogging.com), whose trajectories as posterboys for military social media have been quite different
- a look at the online media and blogger reception to the 2007 Army directive that appeared to ban blogging
- the Pentagon Bloggers’ Rountables (they pick the bloggers, they set the agenda)
- the Milbloggies, awards for top blogs, as a consecration rite (I warned you about the Bourdieu part)
This study follows up on my chapter, “Taming the Warblog” in Stuart Allan and Einar Thorsen’s book, Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives.
And if you don’t trust me, read the Army Times on the military’s crackdown on bloggers.
Experimenting with Citizen Journalism Site Demotix
Last night I joined Demotix (“the news by you”) to see how to use the site. ( I signed up because my students were having problems posting content to various citizen journalism sites. The problem seems to be that most of these sites want images – still and video – and are less interested in text.)
Based in London, Demotix is particularly good with international news, so I posted a photo of a street poster I noticed this weekend in LA’s Echo Park neighborhood supporting the Iranian students who have been protesting the disputed Presidential Election in that country since June. (Demotix did a terrific job facilitating citizen content from the June protests).
Demotix has an interesting model that offers to license your work and share profits 50-50 if a mainstream media outlet buys your content. It’s kind of like having an agent. This makes it significantly different from sites like CNN’s iReport or YouTube, where you do the work of collecting the story or image and they make the money. Think about it.
Random observations:
- Very easy sign-up. I gave my real name. If you are trying to get your user generated content out, why use a fake one?
- They wanted a Paypal account in order to pay you if anyone does buy your stuff.
I have been especially struck by Demotix’s efficient dissemination tools. This morning, I had two emails from them, one that was written for easy forwarding via email for the old schoolers, and a second one encouraging me to use any social media networks I have to distribute the link to my post. The share link gave me a huge range of options, many of which I have never heard of! One was to WordPress, and when I clicked that one, it dumped the url for the link to my photo into this post.
What can I say? I’m a complete sucker for sites that describe their mission this way:
“To give the man and (often more importantly) woman on the street a voice. Whether they’re in Azerbaijan or Zanzibar. A space where they can tell their stories, build communities, and get their news out to the world. We see Demotix standing on the barricades of free speech and civil society.”
Shout-outs to CSUNis. CSUNers? CSUNistas? Whatever.
Truth be told, I was feeling discouraged lately, what with the devastating cuts to higher education in California. I don’t know what our future holds, but what I do know is that I work with some talented people:
- Grad student Kenya Young has landed a producer’s position with NPR’s
Kookie & Claire working hard on their theses
“Weekend All Things Considered” in DC.
- @Lizohanesian, an alum of our MA program, was hired this month as reporter-editor on the webside of the LA Weekly.
- Esha Momeni, our grad student who was jailed in Iran last fall, will be speaking at Amnesty International’s Southern regional meeting in Atlanta this weekend. Esha will also speak at CSUN Monday Nov. 9 at the Northridge Center in the student union at 5:20 p.m.
- Graduate student Seth Koury showed a roughcut of his amazing documentary, “Sound of Beirut” to some faculty members earlier this month. Guess this means we gotta let the guy graduate.
- Graduate student Sara Alamdar will defend her thesis in a few weeks. She studied coverage of Iran’s religious minorities by the government-controlled Tehran Times to see if the reporting changed under a reformist president versus a conservative president.
- Colleague Linda Bowen is serving as President of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. We attended the First Amendment Coalition’s event at Southwestern Law last Saturday where the LAT’s lawyers scared the beejebus out of journalists wanting to use Twitter or Facebook.
- Sandra Kukla’s thesis comparing AP coverage of the Gaza crisis with Malaysia’s Bernama wire service is nearly finished. Um, right?
- Claire Rietmann-Grout is busy editing and researching her upcoming thesis project, a documentary about her experiences as an American softball star who travels to Switzerland to play for a “club” and finds a different way of looking at the game and herself.
News about our grads
Anasa Sinegal
Recent CSUN grad Anasa Sinegal documents her search for a job in what may be the worst economic climate since the Depression on the wonkster employment blog, Workforce Developments, this week. Anasa is one of our top students, an Emmy winning former television journalist, who won thesis of the year in our department last spring. As HuffPost columnist Laura Chapin writes, the current 18-35 generation is facing a difficult economic future. In the meantime, Anasa is continuing her public intellectual work and will join former classmates John Daquioag and Esha Momeni on a panel later this fall at Cal Poly’s Global Citizenship conference.
Sarah Rosenblum, a graduate from a few years ago, recently landed a new job as events coordinator at the G2 Gallery after an extensive search in the turbulent SoCal job market. A very active gallery in Venice with lots of cool events, G2 focuses on environmental issues. Sarah’s former classmate, Treepon Kirdnak, who teaches at Bangkok University in Thailand, is the co-author of a new study, “Siam Snapped: Uploading Thai Muslims to Flickr” (w/ me!) that I will present at a conference at UC Riverside on Saturday. Treepon works a grueling schedule at his university and I’ve been amazed at how he’s still been able to come up with so many fresh insights. Must be something in the Som Tom.
Another graduate of our program, Liz Ohanesian, who has been pounding LA’s streets as a freelance writer and racking up the bylines at LA Weekly, will talk about how she has built a free-lance writing career in one of my journalism classes tomorrow morning. I am going to try to live stream with my cellphone via Qik. Wish me luck!
