The Media Mobilizing Project got big time coverage today in The New York Times. Todd Wolfson and the MMP crew really are getting new media tools in the hands of new and hard-pressed communities.
I met Todd through my work at PUP, and I have to confess that I was pretty skeptical about what his organization was trying to do when he first told me about it. You could even say I was skeptical to the point of being discouraging.
I can be accused of many things, though, but not of failing to acknowledge it when I'm demonstrably wrong. The fact that MMP really is getting normal people to use these tools has been well (and prominently) documented today. Click read more for the details!
Times reporter Noam Cohen does a great job of thumbnailing the discussion of MMP students at the beginning of their coursework, as they decide on a few topics to run with and make some final five minute videos about. It really captures the mixture of backgrounds of low-income people that are taking part and getting invested.
Of course, they hope to get people so well versed in these techniques that they will go forth, media-ify their communities, reach one, teach one and spread the word. The truth is, though, that this Organizer still thinks it takes an institution to keep good things like this going. Still, a long life for MMP is not the worst thing in the world.
I'll close this by lifting the Time's article's description of MMP's objectives, going forward:
Mr. Wolfson said his organization’s goal was to link community journalism to another issue summed up by the buzz words, the digital divide. “Citizen journalism is a wonderful idea, but it is only speaking to one segment of the population because of the digital divide,” he said.______________________ Cross-posted at This Too Will Pass...
“Poor communities are not involved in issues of digital divide,” Mr. Wolfson said, because they are only passive receivers of what appears on the Internet. “If I’m somebody who is learning how to make videos, I’ve got a computer, and I am low-income person and I can’t get on the Internet, that is going to stir me up.”
Wow. Great article, and
Wow. Great article, and congrats Todd.
The new digital
I've been thinking about digital media for a while, partly since it's my job and partly because it's what I spend a lot of my time on. And one of the things that you can say is or has been happening for some time now is that the world of digital production is increasingly moving away from where it started -- the text-based economy of office workers and technocrats -- and is becoming something more eclectic, more fully incorporating images and video and audio and new kinds of media, in addition to more user-created-content.
Blogging as one form of citizen journalism is in one sense radical, since it's more open and cacaphonous and it has different norms about opinions and humor and personality, etc. But in another sense, especially when you're talking about political blogging like we do here, it's not so radical, because it really does still privilege the knowledge worker -- lawyers and students and politicians and office workers and academics and freelancers and organizers and other people who spend most of their time reading and writing and talking because it's an integral part to what they alread do. This isn't just because it's text-based, although that's a big part of it -- to write a good post and then be able to come back and follow the debate and make arguments and counterarguments, all of that takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and a certain kind of training.
So, in some sense the digital divide is about certain fundamental technological thresholds -- access to computers and high-speed internet, etc -- but it's also about cultural and occupational thresholds as well.
But ... the fact that the conversation is beginning to switch to one including video (and hopefully audio and photos and other things) dislocates this privilege to a certain degree. Someone with access to video equipment and good training on how to use it will make a better video and make a better certain kind of citizen journalist than virtually all of the regulars on this blog. And the journalism itself will change. It may still be opinionated and entertaining and pointed, but there will be new possibilities and a closure of certain older ones.
It might be less caffeinated and more sobering. It might be less about what you've read and more about what you've seen. The time might slow down, where you see videos once a week instead of ten times per day. It might be completely different from any of that.
Anyways, I'm looking forward to it.
On Institutions
Hey Brady,
Thanks so much for the big ups!!!!
I do want to say however, that neither I nor MMP would ever claim that institutions are not central to the process of organizing for real social change. The question is, and this is one MMP is trying to open up, what do institutions and what does organizing look like with all of the new communication technologies. At this point we don't have an answer, but I guarantee it looks different then it did 40 years ago. And the difference is not only in the fact that we can communicate in all of these new ways, but in the fact that institutions or organizations will look and feel different and be shaped different because of these new technologies. In this sense MMP is an experiment trying to build a network of groups fighting on issues of workers rights, housing, education, immigration and other issues and using communications as the nerve center which connects these groups together.
that sounds right to me
yes, that sounds good. A sense of real openness needs to be the norm for everyone right now as things are changing quickly and it really will impact all of our work. I will say, for my part, I see New Media having much more impact on the tactics side of causes rather than the organizing side. I still don't think there's any substitute for direct interaction and the best organizing tool ever invented is still the telephone.
Still, when it becomes easier for Organized communities to tell their stories in a way that humanizes them for targets, interests and the powers-that-be, organizing gets easier and winning gets easier.
Very glad that MMP is on the vanguard of this in Philadelphia.
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This Too Will Pass, treating grave matters lightly and light matters gravely, since 2001.
Thanks Media Mobilizing Project
MMP was one of the first and few media outlets to take some in-depth time into the case of Jiang Zhen Xing, an immigrant woman who suffered a miscarriage following a violent deportation attempt. They've also given groups and individuals a chance to speak to the issues on camera when few media outlets are available to us. Thanks MMP!