bottom up change

Yesterday I attended a talk at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University where Tsui Lokman presented “Beyond Objectivity: Global Voices and the Future of Journalism.”  One of the ironic things about living in Boston is that there are always fascinating talks being given at the local universities, but most people can’t ever go because of work.  I’ve lived here for nearly four years and I’m embarrassed about how infrequently I’ve attended lectures.  I used to live in the DC area, and I had the same problem there: people rarely go to the free museums or the free lectures around town because everyone has to work.

Since I have more free time right now, I’ve made a point to attend some lectures at universities in the area.  Lokman’s talk yesterday was fascinating in the questions that it raised about the future of journalism.  It was fairly abstract, but he nevertheless did a pretty good job connecting the philosophical questions to some of the current problems journalists and writers are grappling with in this very uncertain yet exciting time for the media.  And better than that, he actually had some suggestions about the way forward.  I want to make some brief remarks about this talk because it addressed one of the central themes of this blog–how individuals and grassroots associations are transforming the world through new technologies.

Lokman is a doctoral candidate at the Annenburg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.  He was presenting some of the work he has done over the past year as a Fellow at the Berkman Center.  The thesis of his presentation was that because of the Internet, we need a new model for understanding how to judge the value of journalism, and Global Voices (GV) is an exemplar of an online news organization that is attempting to meet this new standard.  Global Voices is an online hub of international citizen reporting, or, to use its own self-description:

Global Voices is a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

There are several interesting features of GV.  First, it is truly global: there are stories from people who are writing on local problems from countries all over the world and content on GV is translated into over 15 languages.  This is rare in the blogosphere.  Second, GV wants to “aggregate, curate, and amplify” the work of citizen journalists online.  Instead of mere aggregation of bloggers who submit pieces, as other blogging communities do, GV has editors who select the most insightful pieces to then “amplify.”  That last feature is one of the more interesting aspects of GV, in my view, and one that Lokman seemed to view as an essential part of a successful new media strategy.

Getting back to Lokman’s talk, he argued that in the past, professional journalism has been primarily interested in the dissemination of information, and the standard for judging successful journalism was objectivity.  Reporters sought to get the facts right through source-checking and other methods, and the most successful journalists and news outlets were those that were viewed as providing objective information.  Reliable information was viewed as the gold standard for journalism because it was closely related to the needs of a democratic society–helping the public make good decisions.   But with the advent of the Internet and the rise of blogging, citizen journalism, and other ways that individuals are being empowered to create their own media, we need a different way of judging excellence in this new media environment.

Whereas objectivity was the highest norm of traditional journalism, Lokman argued that what he called “hospitality” must be the new standard for journalism today.  He uses this term literally, as in welcoming others into one’s space.  Why is this the new norm for journalism?  Although the Internet makes it much easier for more people to create their own media, and although we can hear from many more voices now than in the past, there is one major problem with blogs, etc.: there isn’t enough time in the day.  Or as Lokman put it, there is a “scarcity of attention.”  Media outlets and voices have exploded, but the amount of time we have to consume the news hasn’t changed.  As a result, we cannot effectively listen to the new voices that are telling their stories on the Internet.  And here is where Global Voices and its motto, “The world is talking.  Are you listening?” becomes salient.

Lokman believes that GV is a model for how future media entities might successfully do journalism because it takes hospitality seriously.  I’ll give one example of how GV attempts to achieve hospitality–this was not in Lokman’s talk, but I think it’s a good example.   Tomorrow President Obama is going to give a major speech to the Arab and Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt.  Suppose you were interested in getting an Egyptian perspective on what this speech means to the people of Egypt.  You might try to find an Egyptian blog, but more likely you wouldn’t even have time.  You’d likely just watch CNN and hope that they interviewed someone from Egypt.  But even if you were more ambitious, where would you go to get Egyptian news?  What about Egyptian blogs?  Which ones should you read?

This is where GV’s “amplification” of bloggers and citizen journalists in other nations becomes very useful.  Check out this piece on GV called “Egypt: Is Obama not Welcome?” by Eman AbdElRahman, an Egyptian blogger who is a contributor to GV.  AbdElRahman is an experienced blogger in Egypt who knows the Egyptian blogging community well.  As a result, she is well-positioned to find the most interesting accounts of Obama’s visit from citizen journalists and bloggers who are writing about this now.  And to deal with the time-constraints of the reader, she simply offers an overview of the general sentiment on the blogs and on Twitter before providing excerpts of some of the writers in Egypt.  AbdElRahman writes:

Forty-eight hours before US president Barack Obama delivers his much awaited speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds from Cairo University, the Egyptian blogosphere is almost unified by the same feeling. Bloggers are outraged by the massive and exaggerated preparations and precautions being taken by the Egyptian government to secure the visit, and most of them are doubting if the anticipated speech would usher any real change.

From the writers she highlights, we quickly gather that Cairo is basically going into “lock-down” mode for President Obama with schools and businesses closing.  We learn that President Mubarak will not even attend Obama’s speech at Cairo University.  We also learn that although there are high hopes that President Obama will address Egyptian concerns, such as the lack of democracy and the lack of progress on Middle Eastern peace, most writers are deeply skeptical that Obama will change anything.  AbdElRahman provides links to the sources of all of these authors so that the reader can explore more if they wish to.  But just the summary she provides is extremely valuable.

As this piece from Egypt demonstrates, Global Voices seems to come close to meeting Lokman’s “hospitality” standard in that it invites the best of the new bloggers and citizen journalists and amplifies their voices.  It also tries to make it easier for the reader to engage with these new voices by providing short excerpts of these writers.  In this way, the public is provided with an easy way to access the many perspectives that exist in this new media environment.

So does Global Voices exemplify what the future of journalism ought to look like, perhaps at least in outline?  Some members of the audience at the talk argued that GV has not been a success because it is not well-known.  There may be something to that.  Nevertheless, I think Lokman is onto something here.  GV does provide a very useful model of the way that news organizations might structure themselves in the future, especially when trying to capture the writing of the most insightful bloggers and citizen journalists out there.  I would caution, however, that objectivity is a value that we should keep in journalism, and it is at least as important as hospitality in the new media environment.  While it’s critical to amplify the voices of writers who are doing work outside of mainstream journalism, it is just as important that these writers try to adhere to the “old” practices of fact-checking in order to achieve the “old” value of objectivity.  Objectivity isn’t a value we can leave behind with new media, and Lockman’s talk suggested that we can get “beyond” objectivity (see the title).  We have to make space for more values, and I agree that hospitality is a good candidate.  Whether it is really a new value in journalism can be debated, of course.

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works” -President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

One of the Obama administration appointments that has not received enough attention by the traditional media is Vivek Kundra as the first Chief Information Officer of the federal government.  Out of all of the President’s appointments, this one may be the most significant.  Yes, perhaps even more significant than Secretary Geithner at Treasury, who has the dreary responsibility of pulling us out of the banking crisis which is at the core of the recession.  Why is Kundra’s position so important?

First, let me make a brief digression.  From my first post on this blog, I have often expressed my view about the need for fiscal responsibility in the Obama administration.  My view about government spending is that liberals need to be even more careful about how they spend money than conservatives.  That’s because it is much easier to stigmatize all of liberalism as a view that engenders wasteful spending and inefficient bureaucracy.  Liberalism’s greatest strength, in my opinion, is also its greatest weakness.  By having a more open view about the role of government than conservatism allows, liberals are more likely to have a guilt-free conscience about spending taxpayer money.  Whether this money goes to education, health care, or any number of areas where liberals believe government can play a constructive role, spending taxpayer money is seen as a necessary means to a noble end.  If some money is wasted along the way, the attitude sometimes seems to be that the ends justify the means.  While I have a lot of sympathy with a more open view of government, I also really, really hate spending taxpayers’ money on ineffective projects or inefficient beauraucracy, not to mention fraud and abuse.  I also believe that conservatives’ most potent weapon against liberals is when government wastes taxpayer money.  When this happens, the public comes to see liberals as not being trustworthy stewards of government.  It may well be true that the most powerful argument that economic conservatives have against liberalism is the DMV.

All of this is to say that the Democrats are very lucky to have Vivek Kundra in their ranks at this time.  Kundra previously served as the Chief Technology Officer for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration in the District of Columbia before he went on to serve as CIO for President Obama.  During his term in DC, Kundra was widely recognized as one of the most effective and innovative CTOs in the country.  This Washington Post profile of Kundra describes how he is bringing some of the “kinetic” energy and innovation of tech companies like Google into the public sector.

What is most impressive about Kundra are the accomplishments and promising innovations that his energy has produced during his brief tenure in the Fenty administration.  Kundra’s “Apps for Democracy” initiative allowed tech-savvy citizens to submit applications for computers and cell phones that would enable DC residents to easily access city data.    Data on anything from construction projects, dates for fixing potholes, crime rates by neighborhood, and more would be organized and easily searchable with these apps.  Those who invented the most popular apps would win a monetary prize.  Here is how Kundra described the result:

“I expected to get maybe 10 entries, but we got 47 apps in 30 days,” Kundra said. He said he spent $50,000 for the contest and prize money, and estimates he saved $2.6 million over what it would have cost to hire contract developers.

In addition to the money saved, I wonder how much time was saved with this project.  The entire contest was completed in October, 2008.  The People’s Choice Award winners from the contest included the “Carpool Mashable Matchmaker,” which allows people to easily find carpools and conserve energy, and the “DC Bikes” app, another program that promotes green transportation by giving DC residents bike paths in the city and warning them of high crime areas.  There were also Medal Winners.  Kundra’s Apps for Democracy project was so successful that Sunlight Foundation started a similar contest, “Apps for America,” through its Sunlight Labs project.  I’ll write about Apps for America in a future post.

A side benefit of Apps for Democracy is that it allowed citizens to feel engaged with their government in a new, futuristic way.  Kundra described his underlying Government 2.0 philosophy in a brief essay, “Building the Digital Public Square”:

In ancient Athens—the model for the democracy envisioned by the framers of our Constitution–citizens met, face to face, in the agora—the public square–to conduct business, debate civic issues, and drive the decisions of government. Gone are the days of daily meetings at the agora. Today, citizens know government as red tape, long lines, and cold, distant bureaucracies. The reins of government have slipped from “we the people” to inaccessible government officials.

The District of Columbia, however, is at the forefront of a new era of governance, one in which technological advances now allow people from around the world unfettered access to their government. Through these advances, constituents can hold their government accountable from the privacy of their own homes. The District of Columbia is bringing people closer to government through collaborative technologies like wikis, data feeds, videos and dashboards. We’re throwing open DC’s warehouse of public data so that everyone—constituents, policymakers, and businesses—can meet in a new digital public square.

It remains to be seen whether Kundra can bring the kind of groundbreaking innovation to the vast federal government in which agencies are known for bitter turf wars.  But now, perhaps more than ever, an effective CIO is needed.  At a time when the government is preparing to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars for economic stimulus and President Obama’s budget priorities, waste of taxpayer money is a real danger.  One big scandal of fraud, waste, or abuse of stimulus dollars, for instance, could do serious damage to President Obama’s ambitious agenda.  The technology is now being developed to make government more transparent than ever, giving citizens the tools to be more vigilant watch dogs of their government.  Hopefully apps will be created that will allow us to monitor spending more carefully so that a major scandal does not occur.  So, I expect to see big things from Kundra over the next few years.  One good place to start may be to work with the Treasury department and the Congressional Oversight Panel to allow citizens to track exactly how the banks are using TARP money.

I’ve taken about a week-long break from Twitter.  It’s a fun and useful social media tool, but it’s also addictive and it can be a huge time waster.  As with anything, it’s best used in moderation.  Instead of tweeting, I’ve been thinking about how social media can be used more effectively in politics.  This is a big issue, and I’ve already tried to take a stab at it in one post about using Twitter to increase bipartisan discussions and debate.

One use of Twitter that I think might be very powerful one day is to create links of contact between public officials and their constituents.  Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) @clairecmc is one of the public officials who uses Twitter better than most.  What is most common to see among Senators or Representatives is staffers basically tweeting the official’s agenda for the day.  But Sen. McCaskill tweets herself and often relays useful information to the public.  Here are a few of her recent tweets:

clairecmc: Just off phone with Gen Shinseki. Most don’t realize that large part of increase in discretionary spending in Pres budget is for veterans.11:28 AM Mar 27th from web

clairecmc: Once again, a large part of the INCREASE in DISCRETIONARY spending in the President’s budget is finally about keeping our word to veterans.12:44 PM Mar 27th from web

clairecmc: And keep in mind that in FY06 a Republican President signed off on 27 Billion in earmarks from the Republican Congress.

I didn’t know these facts.  So if Sen. McCaskill has constituents in Missouri who follow her on Twitter but disagree the level of spending in the budget, they will at least be able to hear her side of the story very easily.  Sen. McCaskill also claims to read all the replies to her tweets, which provides her with useful feedback from her constituents.  Right now she has nearly 19,000 followers, which may be one of the highest numbers of any public official besides @BarackObama.

An online grassroots effort called Tweet Congress is trying to collect signatures to encourage more Senators and Representatives to join Twitter.  You can go to this site, look up your local Rep or Senator, and petition him or her to join Twitter and start communicating with the public using this platform.  Of course, it all depends on how they use Twitter.  Just signing up is not progress in itself.  But overall, this looks like a good project to increase the social media savvy of our government.

Continuing the theme of transparency from my last post, there’s an interesting piece in the Washington Post today about the use of crowdsourcing to monitor the spending of stimulus money.  Crowdsourcing is a notion that was developed by an article in Wired a few years ago and it seems to be spreading in popularity.  The basic idea is that, using the internet, we can outsource work on a task or project to a large group of unknown people.

While “crowdsourcing” is one of those trendy buzzwords that is being thrown around a lot on the internet,  Stimulus Watch is an example of how the interactive nature of the web can increase transparency.  Stimulus Watch is not tracking the specific projects of the stimulus–at least, not yet.  Instead, it is seeking input from citizens around the country about the list of “shovel ready” projects that were proposed recently at the US Conference of Mayors.  The website asks its users to identify local projects and then allows them to comment on them and rate the projects in terms of their perceived importance.  The hope is that, as a result of this kind of citizen feedback, when Mayors do receive the stimulus money it will be spent on those projects that are viewed as being most critical by the public.  Here is how the site’s co-founder, Jerry Brito, describes the significance of crowdsourcing as a means for allowing citizens to keep on eye on government spending:

“You don’t have to hire an army of auditors, because it’s impossible for them to follow every single dollar and every single transaction,” Brito said in an interview. “However you can augment their work with citizens, who can keep tabs on things that go on in their neighborhood.”

There are many useful features at Stimulus Watch.  First, projects are divided into categories such as “Most Expensive”, “Most Critical,” and “Least Critical”.  There is also a search function so that users can easily find proposed shovel-ready projects in their area.  Finally, using a Wiki, the site provides users with a description of each project and a chance to offer more qualitative feedback in the form of comments and a discussion thread.

One question that I have with a site like this is how it prevents users from gaming the rating system.  I can imagine a city administrator seeking federal funding for a project sending an e-mail to employees asking them to rate the project favorably when, in fact, most citizens in the community would oppose the project.  It is unclear how a website like this can prevent bias and manipulation from distorting the results.  But that seems to be one problem with the idea of crowdsourcing in general.