The new media

- a development perspective -

Peter Ballantyne

For the Annual Meeting

of the Informal Network of DAC Development Communicators

Lisbon, November 2007

Outline

• Web 2.0

– From „places to visit‟ to „spaces to interact‟

• Some new tools

– Blogs, vlogs, wikis, tags, feeds …

• Cross-cutting notions

• Implications? Opportunities …?

Web 2.0

• User-generated content– „anyone can be an author, publisher, or broadcaster‟

• User „re-mixed‟ content– „anyone can run a web site‟

• Tools enabling inter-connections and interactions – „anyone can be a communicator‟

• “all the actors in development cooperation are communicators” – Susana Defunes

Some big ideas

• Emerging revolution– Architectures of communication

– Demographics of communication

– Cultures of communication

• Pragmatic efficiencies– Publishing

– Interacting

– Sharing

– Disseminating

– Accessing

The new tools• Blogs: originally personal „diary‟ sites of individuals

• Wikis: co-edited and updated web spaces

• Social bookmarking: web bookmarks indexed (tagged) across the internet (instead of in local browsers).

• RSS Feeds: applications that produce automatic updates when a particular content service is updated.

• Social networking sites: „meeting spaces‟ for individuals and organizations to build relationships

• Multi-media sharing sites: Spaces to publish and share images, photos, audio, video, etc.

• Mapping tools. Different content embedded in maps

• Mash-ups: different content combined to produce something new

User generated content

Blogs

Videos and photos

Wikis

Expose your experience and information

to the sun!

Shine some light on your knowledge!

- the ComPart Sunflowers -

Social bookmarking

Social networking

RSS Feeds

Personalising

Mash-ups

Shared notions

• Open content that „flows‟ – across platforms, across orgs, …

• Low „threshold‟ to create and use

• Peer to peer, expectation of reciprocity, commentary,

• Mindset – recognizes diversity, values knowledge and efforts of others, encourages collaboration

Implications

• We can use the tools and mash content for „internal‟ info and knowledge sharing– Behavior and attitudes

• Our „products‟ need to be web 2 or web2 friendly– Passports to travel, schengen visa‟s

• We need to go to the communities and users– Use their tools

– Learn to „let go‟

From their own correspondent - Aid agency workers are

increasingly acting as reporters and filmmakers for the UK media

Glenda Cooper, The Guardian, Monday November 5 2007

• “New technology is altering how we report, where we report from and who is doing the reporting of disasters. And that means that journalists and aid agencies are having to rethink their roles.”

• “Reporters can get what they need direct from the public. The result: aid agencies are turning their own staff into citizen journalists and filmmakers, in order to get their message across.”

More

www.blogger.com

www.wordpress.com

www.pbwiki.com

www.mediawiki.com

www.youtube.com

www.blip.tv

www.flickr.com

www.slideshare.net

www.linkedin.com

www.myspace.com

www.geo.worldbank.org

www.bloglines.com

www.google.com/ig

www.wikipedia.org

www.euforic.org