cowbite.org

The #tweetbike

Paul Clarke is helping out during the tube strike by offering lifts to his twitter friends. Lovely. I almost wish I wasn't already at work. A bike ride around London is goodscaryfun. Follow him and thumb down a lift here.

Philip Schofield is on twitter

Haven't we come a long way from the broom cupboard.

Via Ben Ayers

Follow Channel 4 News on Twitter

One feed from the studio, and one from the newsroom blogger. Neither dish out headlines, rather they give the snippets of goss from behind the scenes. Nice.

Media literacy = communication skills. (half bakery alert)

I'm sitting at my my desk while in the belly of the C4 building the Digital Media Literacy Summit is in full swing. I've been keeping half an eye on the blogs, particularly Robin Hamman and Kevin Anderson at the Guardian, and the half baked blinding-flash-of-the-obvious thought has just struck me that media literacy is really synonymous with communication skills.

This from Kevin:

• How can people be empowered with the skills, competencies and confidence to get the most out of Web 2.0 media in the ways they relate, interact, work and create today?
• How can 'critical thinking' and awareness about media - sources, editing and ownership - best be 'taught' or encouraged? And by whom?
• Is the Charter for Media Literacy still fit for purpose?
• What collaborations between government, the media industries, education and cultural organisations - as well as with parents and users - are needed to develop a media literate UK?
• What new opportunities for creativity and participation do Web 2.0 capabilities offer people as citizens or as consumers, and in their various communities?

Isn't this at its most basic form a way of thinking about our comms skills now? We used to define "good communication skills" (in CVs and elsewhere) as "being quite good at talking to people in person and on the phone, and generally ok at writing stuff down in a way other people can understand". And media literacy was about understanding how things got on telly, and trying to spot bias in newspaper articles.

Given our wired/wifi, socially networked, interactive world, where users are broadcasting as much as they're consuming. These two threads are intertwining. If we think about web natives (usually, but not exclusively, young folks), they need to know what they're broadcasting on the web when they construct their blog/facebook/myspace/a.n.other profiles. It's basically outward facing communication - how you project yourself and communicate yourself to others. They also want to be adept at translating the messages they receive from the wider media world, filtering for relevence, bias etc. So, inward bound comms - are you listening closely?

As the more and more organisations harness digital media as a mechanism for holding conversations with their audiences/consumers, in the same way that individuals harness it to converse with each other (facebook groups, blogs etc), digital media literacy is surely about helping people decode those conversations well.

Paranoia & sex offenders online

Here's a really important piece by Stephanie Booth reflecting on MySpace's recent banning of 29,000+ sex offenders' profiles.

I'm not going to paraphrase it here, because you really should read it. But a couple of key points are:

• By legal definition "sex offender" does not automatically equal "paedophile", although the surrounding media coverage and popular assumptions assume it does. Of course it does include offenses against children, rape, assault etc. But it also covers acts such as indecent exposure and being caught having sex in public. And in some US states, homosexual behaviour. Not acts which immediately endanger kids using the internet.
• Of all the recorded sexual offenses committed against children the vast majority are committed by someone the child already knows. A family member, or friend of the family. Not someone they've met online.
  
• Of all the recorded sexual offenses committed against children via the internet, the vast majority are committed against teenagers, and are "criminal seduction" - an older adult  seducing a teen.
• We need to rethink how we encourage children and teenagers to be safe online;

Our research, actually looking at what puts kids at risk for receiving the most serious kinds of sexual  solicitation online, suggests that it’s not giving out personal information that puts kid at risk. It’s not having a blog or a personal website that does that either. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil.

We think that in order to address these crimes and prevent them, we’re gonna have to take on a lot more awkward and complicated topics that start with an acceptance of the fact that some teens are curious about sex and are looking for romance and adventure and take risks when they do that. We have to talk to them about their decision making if they are doing things like that.
David Finkelhor, Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization: Researchers Present the Facts and Debunk Myths, May 2007

 

There's also an interesting conversation going on over at Kevin Anderson's response to this issue, including issues of media, parental and the legal system's responsibilities.

links for 2007-07-26

• A Swarm of Angels // Remixing cinema
  Collaborative film-making. Fascinating. I wonder if it'll be any good ;)
  (tags: film collaboration)
• Cambrian House
  Crowdsourcing for business/start-up ideas.
  (tags: crowdsourcing)
• At the heart of it all: The concept of presence, by Lombard and Ditton
  (tags: presence socialnetworking)