Capture Wales - Capture imaginations?

Our lecture with Daniel Meadows seemed to capture the imagination of the CJS diploma students, just as his Digital Storytelling project captured the imaginations of the 'ordinary people' who took part.

The project encouraged people to construct two minute digital stories, based around personal pictures. Daniel Meadows and his team held workshops around the country, and the results were broadcast on BBC Wales.

Alan Jeffreys was one of the participants. Alan's video illustrates his life through his relationship with his favourite stuffed animal. It's both touching and informative, taking us through the major markers in his personal history, while painting a clear picture of an older man reminiscing about bygone days. In just 120 seconds.

The people who took part in the workshops were helped by the Capture Wales team, but the idea spread beyond its seeds, with community groups producing similar videos without guidance.

If I had been told this before going to Daniel Meadows' lecture I would have been surprised - in my experience, people can be scared to do creative things without encouragement. But after seeing the digital stories produced for BBC Wales, many of the diploma students were rushing out to make their own narrative. Cemlyn Davies told the story of his beloved Liverpool triumphing over Chelsea.

Getting journalists to tell stories may be as difficult as getting the Pope to pray, so our enthusiasm as a group may not be the best example. So I typed "digital storytelling Wales" into YouTube, and one of the first hits was from a group called Merthyr Stories.

Merthyr Stories have produced videos like this:




The Capture Wales stories focus on individuals, whilst this video narrates the story of a community based around a mine in Treharris.

Daniel Meadows says digital stories, "when imagined as a tool of democratised media, it has -- I believe -- the potential to change the way we engage in our communities". He also talks about giving "a voice to all who are accustomed to thinking of themselves -- in a broadcast context anyway -- only as audience.”

Essentially, making digital stories has the potential to be a democratic form of media. But people need to be given the facilities to contribute to 'the conversation', and taught the skills to produce creative media. Merthyr Stories is run by the borough Council, the Welsh Assembly Government and Glamorgan University.

If people can be encouraged to produce creative media, could schemes to engage people with news media more directly be successful? People like to tell and hear stories, and what is news if it isn't a collection of stories? The success of digital storytelling in Wales shows perceptions of who is entitled, or able, to broadcast can be changed through involving people directly in the process.

If people are encouraged to contribute to news media in a similar manner, then "the conversation" could become truly democratic.

Image courtesy of wadem@flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wadem/2901137499/

Web 2.0 - the linotype of the digital age?

Our session on citizen journalism left me with more questions than answers. But most of these questions hadn't occurred to me before the lecture, and surely as journalists its part of our job description to explore unfamiliar areas.

My explorations in citizen journalism haven't led me to any solid conclusions regarding its democratic potential, or how to overcome problems with representation.
If anything, more questions have been added to the pile.

Is this a bad thing? A lot of the issues raised focus on the future of citizen journalism and user generated content, and their place in the media landscape. We can't predict the future, and as journalists, we shouldn't try, so failing to draw concrete opinions from an ongoing debate should only be seen as healthy.

Could late nineteenth century contemporaries have predicted the rise of the mass media with the invention of the lino type machine? The new method of printing allowed newspapers to be produced quickly, cheaply, and in great volume, meaning that they became relatively affordable for the masses for the first time.


People all over the country could read the same news, at the same time, which can be seen as a democratisation of information. But it was only possible because the industrial revolution provided Britain with an extensive road and rail network, meaning papers could be printed in London in the evening, and be read on the streets of Manchester the next morning.

Is the internet the lino type of the digital age, and web 2.0 its industrial revolution?

Maybe, but the revolution will have to reach everybody before a true dialogue can be opened. It certainly hasn’t yet.

The statistics discussed in the lecture suggest the conversation between broadcasters and consumers is nowhere near democratic, with the majority of contributors belonging to a narrow socio-economic group. This doesn't detract from the democratic potential of citizen journalism.

George Reedy was talking about an over powerful presidency when he said "A thesis which could not survive an undergraduate seminar in a liberal arts college becomes accepted doctrine, and the only question is not whether it should be done but how it should be done”.
The sentiment he expressed is transferrable to this situation - an open discussion can help paint a truer picture of a situation.

Rupert Murdoch is not a man who's views I thought I would be championing when I started this course, but he made some good points in his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2005.

Whilst most of the speech is a promotion of all things NewsCorp, his description of the "highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know" serves as an advert for a more open discussion and the inclusion of user generated content by news providers.

The handful of powerful editors can be seen as Reedy's over mighty president, who doesn't discuss what his citizens want or need, and comes up with ideas that would be quickly rejected if put up for open discussion.

I'm not sure that the rise of the 'prosumer' will comply with Davide Casaleggio's futurist vision.



But that’s the point. We aren't sure if embracing citizen journalism will lead to a more democratic mass media, but we can invest in its potential. It seems foolish not to.

Image courtesy of Marcin Wichary@Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2252094942/