[imc-tech-solidarity] Related activist / digital divide projects
evan@protest.net
evan at protest.net
Fri, 31 Jan 2003 12:26:31 -0800 (PST)
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Just some links and articles about related digital divide projects. Most
of these tend to either not be political or political in the wrong way.
But it's really good to know what is out there. Also we may be able to tap
some these sources to learn more about how to best ship computers and
bridge teh digital divide within our activist networks.
-evan
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 15:19:48 -0000
From: Marco Kuntze <marco@ethicalmedia.com>
To: evan@indymedia.org
Dear Even
Find enclosed some interesting links and organisations:
http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Digital Divide Network (www.digitaldividenetwork.org)
Digital Opportunity Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org)
OneWorld US (www.oneworld.net/us)
Sound Partners for Community Health (www.soundpartners.org)
http://www.benton.org
http://sdgateway.net/webworks/discussion.htm
http://www.oneworld.net
http://www.itrainonline.org
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu37we/uu37we0x.htm
http://mail.bellanet.org/kmdir/
http://www.knownet.org
http://www.techsoup.org/
All the best
Marco
Marco Kuntze
Director of Business Development
Office: 020 78338825
Mobile: 07989 445780
marco@ethicalmedia.com
Ethical Media Ltd
Studio D, 5 Torrens Street
London, EC1V 1NQ
www.ethicalmedia.com
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Subject: [GKD] CFP: Information Technologies and Int'l Development
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 16:40:21 -0000
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Dear Colleagues,
Happy New Year from Information Technologies and International
Development! We wish for you a healthy, happy, and peaceful 2003.
As you mostly already know, ITID aims to be the premier scholarly
journal focusing on the subject of information and communication
technologies within the developing world. Forthcoming in Fall 2003 from
the MIT Press, ITID is edited at MIT and the University of Maryland,
College Park. We already have a collection of excellent submissions and
are looking forward to a superb inaugural year. Please visit:
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/itid>; here you will find the call for papers,
submission guidelines, an email list, and news as it becomes available.
As the journal moves forward we hope this to be a vibrant online space.
We would like to encourage you again to submit papers for consideration
in the fist issues. In order to make the deadlines for the Fall 2003
issue we will require submissions on or before January 31, 2003. This
date is fast approaching and we particularly request your assistance in
developing and encouraging quality submissions according to this
timeline.
Contributions will be accepted in the following categories:
Research Articles: Full-length manuscripts reporting original research.
Research Notes : Shorter communications detailing original research
results.
Forum : Notes, letters, and reports which respond to previously
published articles; summarize conferences, workshops, and other relevant
meetings; review new books of interest to the field; overview emerging
research areas and new ideas; and generally engage the readership.
For the special inaugural year, we are seeking both general research
articles as well as Review Articles that identify major practical
and/or conceptual issue, and analyze them in detail while offering a
state of the field overview. We intend for these reviews to serve as the
most detailed and wide ranging analytic treatments available for their
topics. We have discussed the idea of Review Articles with the MIT Press
and we are looking towards ultimately publishing a set of these papers
in a stand-alone edited volume.
Thanks and kind regards,
Ernest J. Wilson, III
Michael L. Best
Editors-in-Chief
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Subject: Communications-Related Headlines for January 23, 2003
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 17:12:41 -0000
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Communications-Related Headlines is a free, daily news service posted Monday
through Friday by the Benton Foundation (http://www.benton.org). This
service will keep you up to date on important industry developments and
policy issues in communications, technology, journalism, public service
media, regulation and philanthropy.
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COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for January 23, 2003
INTERNET
U.S. Opens Online Portal to Rulemaking
Web Site Launched to Help Seniors Identify Drug Programs
Internet Fraud Grew in 2002, FTC Says
EDTECH
Computers 'Humanize' Teaching
DIGITAL DIVIDE
IT May Offer Solution To Poverty: Nepalese PM
OWNERSHIP
FCC Commissioner Hearing
INTERNET
U.S. OPENS ONLINE PORTAL TO RULEMAKING
Federal rulemaking procedures have already seen something of a boom in
comments filed via the Web over the last few years. The Bush Administration
took the next step this week with the launching of www.regulation.gov, which
enables individuals to find every proposed federal regulation and submit
their comments. "This will definitely open it up to people who find it
difficult to participate in the rulemaking process," said Neil R. Eisner,
assistant general counsel for the Dept. of Transportation. Some experts,
however, note that an increase in the number of participants will not
necessarily change the behavior of rule makers or democratize the regulatory
process.
[SOURCE: The Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cindy Skrzycki]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30469-2003Jan22.html)
WEB SITE LAUNCHED TO HELP SENIORS IDENTIFY DRUG PROGRAMS
Senior citizens can now use the Web to find more affordable prescription
medications. Launched by the National Council of Aging,
www.BenefitsCheckUp.org now allows families to obtain a personalized report
of discount drug programs for which an individual qualifies. The site
catalogs some 240 state and company-sponsored programs. "We know that
millions of seniors can't afford all the medications they need and far too
many are skipping doses or not filling prescriptions," said NCA president
James Firman.
[SOURCE: USA Today, AUTHOR: Associated Press]
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-01-22-site-health_x
.htm)
INTERNET FRAUD GREW IN 2002, FTC SAYS
Consumer complaints about Web scams were up in 2002, according to numbers
released yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission. Identity fraud claims
topped the list, accounting for 43% of the 380,000 reports. Howard Beales of
the FTC's consumer protection bureau said that the increase in complaints is
likely do to greater public awareness of the Commission's Consumer Sentinel
complaint database as well as increased involvement from local authorities.
Nevertheless, he said, it is clear that the percentage of scams conducted
via the Internet has grown.
[SOURCE: Yahoo! News, AUTHOR: Reuters]
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030122/ts_nm/crime_fra
ud_consumers_dc)
DIGITAL DIVIDE
IT MAY OFFER SOLUTION TO POVERTY: NEPALESE PM
Nepal's Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand says information technology
could be the solution to poverty. "As poverty is the main characteristic of
the technologically unreached, promoting universal access to information and
communication technologies may be the solution," he said at the opening of a
six-day international seminar on Information and Communication Technology in
Kathmandu. The Prime Minister warned that failure to address the digital
divide would result in "further marginalisation as access to opportunities
for wealth creation are reduced or polarized."
[SOURCE: Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online]
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-23jan2003-118.htm)
EDTECH
COMPUTERS 'HUMANIZE' TEACHING
Two members of the USA Today All-USA Teacher First Team are having great
success with using classroom computers to reach at-risk students. Marge
Christensen Gould, CEO of the LEARN Center at Catalina High Magnet School in
Tucson, has developed a simulated work environment to help at-risk literacy
students develop reading and job skills necessary to keep them in the work
force and out of the criminal justice program. Jim Green and his team at the
Continuing Education Academy in Tolleson, AZ boast computer course offerings
via NovaNET, such as virtual anatomy and chemistry labs. Both say computers
help to provide individualized, self-paced instruction, relieving the
pressure to keep up for students who've struggled in other classrooms.
[SOURCE: USA Today, AUTHOR: Tracey Wong Briggs]
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-22-ariz-teach_x.htm)
OWNERSHIP
FCC COMMISSIONER HEARING
USC will host a forum on proposed Federal Communication Commission changes
to current rules governing media ownership. FCC commissioners, including
Chairman Michael Powell, have been invited and are expected to participate,
along with leaders from industry, labor, and the academic community. The
forum, which is open to the public, will be held on Tuesday, February 18.
[SOURCE: USC Annenberg]
(http://ascweb.usc.edu/asc.php?pageID=110&story=137&upcoming=1)
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Rachel Anderson (rachel@benton.org), Andy Carvin (andy@benton.org) and
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Subject: What's new on DigitalOpportunity.org 29-Jan-03 10:30 AM
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 10:30:42 -0000
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What's New on Digital Opportunity Channel -
http://www.digitalopportunity.org
****************************************
News
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/news/
****************************************
Radio coverage of WSF available on the Web
http://radio.oneworld.net/
A radio network has a team of 20 reporters in Porto Alegre, Brazil,
producing daily coverage of the World Education Forum and of the World
Social Forum. Listen to the daily updates (in Portuguese) on OneWorld Radio.
Municipal services go online in Nepal
http://www.undp.org/dpa/frontpagearchive/2003/january/24jan03/index.html
A digital pace is starting to replace the rhythm of filing paper forms and
stamping documents at the municipal offices in central Nepal.
Senegal's women broadcasters get ICT training
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=7371&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=2
01&reload=1043815095
Women moderators of AFIA.FM, a community radio broadcasting in the region of
Senegal's capital Dakar, are getting training in basic radio production
skills, including the use of ICTs.
New Web technology to bridge scientific communication
http://www.scidev.net/frame3.asp?id=2401200312235645&t=F&authors=James%20Hen
dler&posted=24%20Jan%202003&c=1&r=1
Semantic Web, a new-generation Web technology, promises to improve
communication between scientists from different disciplines.
South African 'green school' receives software
http://allafrica.com/stories/200301280248.html
Students and teachers of a "green school" in South Africa's Lake St Lucia
region have received donations of computer software and furniture under a
global living lakes project. The donation is meant to ensure that local
school pupils are educated about the importance of their environment.
Multinational study to assess role of ICTs in human development
http://www.apdip.net/rhdr/overview.asp
The Human Development Resource Centre in India and UNDP's Asia-Pacific
Information Development Programme have jointly launched a multinational
study that aims to assess the ways in which ICTs can be harnessed to best
address the key critical concerns and sectors of human development. China,
India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and
Vietnam will participate in the study.
East Timor radio station to focus on environment issues
http://www.comminit.com/pdskdv82002/sld-5806.html
Radio Comunidade Lospalos in East Timor is initiating a weekly radio
programme focussing on the environment. The programme will give the local
population a forum to discuss their concerns about environmental degradation
and express their opinions about how to solve this problem.
After raids, Malaysian news Website gets eviction order
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=4787
Malaysia's Internet news Website Malaysiakini.com has been asked to vacate
its premises just days after police raided them, apparently for publishing
criticism of the government. Reporters Without Borders has warned that it is
yet another attempt to shut down the country's chief source of independent
news.
Afghan businesses help bureaucrats learn ICT skills
http://www.undp.org/afghanistan/archive/2003/jan03.html
Private entrepreneurs in war-ravaged Afghanistan are working with UNDP to
train the country's new generation of civil servants in ICT skills.
Science Congress highlights India's e-governance success
http://www.infochangeindia.org/ItanddItop.jsp?section_idv=9#1917
The 90th Indian Science Congress, held in Bangalore recently, highlighted
various success stories in the fields of information technology and
e-governance, especially in rural areas.
Kenyan handicapped students get computers to use
http://allafrica.com/stories/200301270561.html
A Kenyan school for handicapped children has set up a classroom equipped
with 10 old computers refurbished and adapted by Centurion Systems for use
by the students needing special learning facilities.
Virus attack on the Net betrays dangers of software monopolies
http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=9190
While South Korea knocked offline with Microsoft databases around the world
coming under virus attack over the last weekend, a seminar on "new
technologies and strategies for digital inclusion and social change" at the
World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was cautioned of a potential
collapse of the Internet because of the virtual Microsoft monopoly on
computer software.
*****************************************************
Analysis
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/features/analysis/
*****************************************************
Is the information society a useful concept for civil society?
http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/md/md2002-4/infosociety.html
Is the term "The Information Society" useful for civil society? Does it
adequately describe the changes in global social structures and processes
that are currently taking place? Is there really a new form of society
emerging? And if so, a society for whom, and how can it be harnessed to
enhance human rights and fulfil pressing human needs?
The Network is always on - but can you disconnect?
http://allafrica.com/stories/200301230829.html
We're on the verge of a new world in which network services get to know us
in order to then work behind the scenes handling many tasks for us, often
without having to be asked, writes Stefano Mattiello. But caution is needed
here, because essentially it's really no different from deciding how much
you must reveal about yourself to another person.
Inexpensive mobile phones can push back rural poverty
http://allafrica.com/stories/200301270337.html
As the use of mobile phones spreads in Africa, doubts are surfacing that the
number of Africans who will have access to the services may be smaller
because of the high cost of purchasing the standard cellular phone.
African content on the Web: Alive and kicking
http://www.iconnect-online.org/base/ic_show_news?id=1988&cat=x
Despite the small proportion of the global Web that emanates from Africa,
Peter da Costa argues that Web content about Africa is alive and growing.
But to find it you need to scratch below the surface, to move beyond
conventional conceptual boundaries, and to redefine what you mean by African
content.
************************************************************
Success Stories
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/features/success_stories/
************************************************************
**********************************************************
Campaigns
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/get_involved/campaigns/
**********************************************************
Get involved in field projects anywhere in world
http://www.developmentspace.com/dms/servlet/BS
DevelopmentSpace is a virtual marketplace where donors can seek out
developing projects that meet their needs. You can also contribute in other
ways: as advisors, networkers, fundraisers, advocates or authenticators.
Take this opportunity to be intimately involved in field projects all over
the world.
Online discussions around WEF themes
http://www.takingitglobal.org/discuss/forumdisplay.php?forumid=712
Do you have ideas or opinions on how the world's leaders should address
important global issues? In collaboration with the World Economic Forum,
TakingITGlobal is hosting online discussions around the Forum's 5 major
themes for 2003, with a focus on trust and values. Learn what others think
and share your thoughts.
******************************************
Events
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/events/
******************************************
WSIS Latin America and Caribbean Regional Conference
http://www.itu.int/wsis/events/lac.html
Mon 27 January 2003 - Thu 30 January 2003
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
This conference will serve as a regional forum for Latin America and
Caribbean policymakers and civil society leaders to prepare for the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to be hosted in Geneva in December
2003 and in Tunis in 2005.
The Infrastructures of Digital Design: Thinking/Building/Living
http://infrastructures.ucsd.edu
Fri 31 January 2003 - Sun 2 February 2003
San Diego, California, USA
Infrastructures of Digital Design argues that there is a great deal of
aesthetic, political and cultural heat in infrastructure. To conceive of
thinking/building/living infrastructures is a call to move beyond
conventional understandings of design and focus attention on the ways people
work and play, create and critique within the interstices of digital
environments.
The Politics of Code: Shaping the Future of the Next Internet
http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk/code/
Thu 6 February 2003
Oxford, UK
The Internet is at a crossroads; critical choices will be made in the coming
months about the Internet's architecture that will shape the Internet for
years to come. The Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy and the
Oxford Internet Institute are therefore convening a conference to identify
what those critical choices are, and to discuss in an innovative
cross-disciplinary set-up of practitioners and academics how we can shape
the future of the next Internet.
Web-Enabled Government 2003: A Project Perspective
http://www.e-gov.com/events/2003/we_gov
Mon 10 February 2003 - Wed 12 February 2003
Washington, DC
Web-Enabling Government -- transforming traditional government operations to
integrated, Internet-based environments for improved public sector
accessibility, efficiency, and customer service -- has become a primary
objective for organizations across all levels of government. This conference
program will focus on how to procure, build, and manage these programs, with
an emphasis on public sector challenges and success stories.
PREPCOM II
http://www.itu.int/wsis/events/events_WSISandITUEvents_Prepcom2.html
Mon 17 February 2003 - Fri 28 February 2003
Geneva, Switzerland
The second meeting of the Preparatory Committee of the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) will focus on developing a draft Declaration of
Principles and Action Plan, to be submitted eventually for the approval of
heads of state attending the WSIS meeting in December 2003.
CoSN K-12 School Networking Conference
http://www.k12schoolnetworking.org
Tue 25 February 2003 - Fri 28 February 2003
Washington, DC, USA
The Consortium for School Networking K-12 School Networking Conference is
the premier event for education leaders on learning through the Internet and
technology. The conference attracts more than 500 district, state, national
and international edtech leaders, all looking to learn from others in the
field to define the future of the Internet in our schools. The conference
will also feature an international research-policy symposium, featuring
representatives of education ministries from Europe and elsewhere.
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Subject: [Solaris] Crisis/Media workshop, Sarai/Delhi (March 3-5)
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 22:58:33 -0000
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Crisis/Media: The Uncertain States of Reportage
Sarai-Waag Workshop
at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi
March 3-5, 2003
"The hottest place in hell is reserved for those
who tried to stay neutral in times of crisis..."
The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Crisis/Media, is a conference that will bring together media
professionals, activists, and scholars to discuss crisis in the media,
and the crisis of the media today.
Since September 11, crises in the media have become everyday events
and have taken on global dimensions. But what happens when crisis
becomes commonplace? How can media tell the stories
behind/beneath the crisis? How are the tensions between local/global,
mainstream /alternative, event/representation unfolding? In thinking
about these and other questions, the conference will try to focus on both
the ways in which media cover/create/manage spectacular crisis
events, and on the crisis that this reportage has produced for media
itself. (For a full description See Below)
Key Issues:
* Are the Crises in the Media, the Crises of the Media? Where do the
lines between reporting in the mainstream and the alternative media
harden, and where do they blur?
* Has the "broadcast" model, which was the mainstay of the big media
business, proved to be too bulky and too conservative in a world in
which things change by the minute?
* Has the internet really made it possible for correspondents to be
co-respondents to the realties of a changing world?
Sessions:
* South Asia : Bearing Witness to the Truth in Difficult Times
* Correspondents in the Crossfire : Reporting Situations of Conflict
* The Crisis of Everyday Life : Dispatches from Global Cities
* Stories of Earth and Water : Reporting Ecological Crises
* The Future of Global Independent Media Activism
Special focuses and reports from:
South Asia, Argentina, Australia, the Balkans
Activities:
Plenaries, Discussions, Open Sessions, Screenings
Presentations:
Apart from previously scheduled presentations, the workshop will
feature some open sessions. If you are interested in making a
presentation in one of the open sessions, please send a brief
description of what you want to do to crisis-media@sarai.net
Support for Travel and Accommodation:
In general, we will not be able to cover any transport or accommodation
costs, for coming to Delhi for the workshop, or for staying in Delhi. If you
need a letter of support from Sarai, in order to raise funding for a trip
that
you are planning, then we will be happy to send you one. Write to
rachel@sarai.net asking for a letter of support.
Pre-Registration:
If you are not presenting a paper but wish to attend the conference, you
can pre-register by sending an email to crisis-media@sarai.net.
Webpage:
For updates, notices, and schedules from now until the workshop,
check www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm Links to
various interesting resources and readings are also available from this
webpage.
For further details contact rachel@sarai.net
Full Description:
CRISIS/MEDIA : The Uncertain States of Reportage
Ever since the events of September 11, the image of a world in crisis is
something that we have grown accustomed to. It is not as if crises have
not had global dimensions before. Perhaps all that is different is the
frequency, intensity and reiteration of the reportage of crises, an
epidemic of images and data of a world out of sorts with itself, which
marks and distinguishes the contemporary moment on a global scale.
In times like this to attempt to be 'objective' or 'neutral' is to become a
mercenary of power, a purveyor of platitudes. At the same time, we have
little understanding of the complex professional and ethical dilemmas
that bedevil the act of the media's bearing witness to our world. The
crisis in the media are the crisis of the media.
The rise of new information technologies has ensured that crises are
reported and commented upon even as they unfold on our television
screens, radio programmes, newspaper pages and computer
monitors. The trailers advertising news programmes have made
images of war, violence, terrorism and disaster the staple diet of the
twenty first century's quotidian sense of the world. Each bulletin
anticipates tomorrow's, or the next bulletin's crisis, the very next crisis.
So that the breaking news may break even, all day, everyday. And yet,
often, they are relinquished to the oblivion from which they emerged, as
rapidly as they emerged.
If the spectacle of the crisis becomes quotidian, banal and
commonplace, does it make sense to speak of a "crisis" anymore, as a
temporally distinct phenomenon, a time apart from the rhythms of
normal time? Or does this overproduction of crises give us an
opportunity to reflect on the making and unmaking of crises, their
announcement and forgetting?
Does it allow us to ask questions about media in crisis with
themselves, about their offerings of uncertain truths to shadowy
audiences. In what way do emerging alternative paradigms of reporting
and commenting on crises, like the Indymedia Network, themselves
become the raw material for mainstream news processing. Where do
the lines between the mainstream and the alternative harden, and
where do they blur? Has the "broadcast" model, which was the
mainstay of the big media business, proved to be too bulky and too
conservative in a world in which things change by the minute? Has the
internet really made it possible for correspondents to be
co-respondents to the realties of a changing world?
To reflect on these and other related issues, Sarai : The New Media
Initiative at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi and
the Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam will be hosting a three
day international seminar titled - "Crisis/Media : The Uncertain States of
Reportage."
This conference will deal with both the ways in which media
cover/create/manage spectacular crisis events and also how they deal
with the aftermath of crises. One of the aims of the conference is also to
shift the focus of reflection away from simply looking at the 'event' of the
crisis to looking at the structural processes that anchor what gets
reported as 'the crisis', in everyday life.
Typically, the media crews arrive instantly whenever a "Crisis" hits the
surface of what is constructed as 'Global Consciousness'. Usually, by
the time this happens, the locally available human, cultural and
intellectual resources available in that society have been severely
depleted. This means that the "crisis" is interpreted and made
intelligible mainly by 'experts'. This also means that the global media
fails very often to recognize the varied approaches to "living" the crisis
that exists on the ground, it also makes the crisis a unique event,
unrelated to what might be linking it to events and processes
elsewhere. The "crisis" then gets reported away as an instance of that
happens to 'other' people and 'other' spaces whose realities are
fundamentally different form that of those who view the crisis from
outside. Typically, the crisis is treated as something that no one, not
even the people the media crews interview can make sense of, almost
as if it had no history. Finally, the media brings in celebrity
intellectuals
and pop figures to ethically salvage the event for the viewers as a
cathartic experience and offer redemption as a therapeutic act. Of
course no one asks the question as to why no one was paying attention
to the situation when there were people trying to make sense of it before
journalists, cultural workers, intellectuals, activists, human rights
groups and other interlocutors succumbed to the crisis that
retrospectively seems unfathomable.
The problem cannot of course be posed simply in terms of 'local voices'
versus 'external reportage'. Local voices may be implicated in the crisis
itself, and may be either acting to fuel it, or be silenced by it - just as
the
reporter who flies in from elsewhere may either seek to turn the crisis
into a unique spectacle, bereft of context and history, or, be the
'necessary outsider', who can be trusted to listen and report in a manner
that is true to the facts on the grounds without fear or prejudice .
The imperative of critical, analytical reportage, that tries to weave
together a complex pattern of voices, motivations, facts and processes
is a function of sympathy, intelligence, curiosity and a commitment to the
freedom of information that is neither reducible to 'local knowledge' nor
to the 'universal' agendas of freedom and justice, but is in each case a
unique combination of distance as well as intimacy. Each situation
engenders its own vantage points, which can be identified as the
centres towards which the truth about the crisis tends to gravitate. The
conference will seek to understand this dynamic of the shifting dynamic
of truth and its relation to the tensions between closeness and distance,
the local and the global, the mainstream and the alternative versions of
the crisis and how it unfolds, as event and as representation.
The conference will bring together media professionals, activists and
scholars in order to create a dialogue between different kinds of
approaches and spaces. We hope to learn from different crises about
the processes that were similar. We will learn from Kosovo about
Gujarat, and from Gujarat about Rwanda. We will examine structural
similarities in the restrictions on civil liberties after 9/11 across the
world; we will also assess how the media makes sense of the
continuing economic crisis in Argentina. We will examine how popular
culture and cinema 'memorialize' crisis situations, or, create the
conditions for selective amnesia. We will view riots in relation to the
degeneration of everyday life, and see unfolding unreported crises in
realities that have to do with water, housing, health and the environment.
Crisis Media will first of all recognize that there is a crisis in and of
the
media, and this cannot be addressed simply by calling for less
reportage and more analysis. Instead we will argue for analysis in the
reportage, and a disruption of the apparatus of centralized and
centralizing information networks. We need to break down the same
images that everyone sees, worldwide, in many different ways. And we
need to find news ways to tell stories, and to distribute the untold story.
The problem of critical media analysis of global crises so far has been
to deconstruct the ownership of media and its ideological agenda,
attempting to uncover a 'truth' of state and corporate control behind the
news. The conference takes this for granted, and seeks instead to ask
how we may go beyond it, and how alternative media too can stop
looking and feeling like cheaply produced versions of mainstream
media production. Crisis/Media will be taking place exactly one year
after the events of Gujarat 2002, a crisis that was extensively reported
and could be either memorialized or passed over in silence by the
media as the years go by.
It has become customary in situations of extreme violence to try and
make sense of the terror in terms of atavistic and primordial passions,
in terms well rehearsed in the Huntingtonian theses of the 'Clash of
Civilizations'. In a peculiar sense, this 'normalizes' the crisis more than
anything else, so the eruption of the crisis is seen in terms of
irreconcilable differences, and the return to normality is seen in terms of
generous 'cultural' accommodation and reconciliation. Both these
explanatory moves, of the eruption and of the return to normality, offer a
way out of a critical analysis of the situations that turn into crises. They
also offer a way of returning to the 'business as usual' attitude that
eventually papers over the crisis as preparations are made to unravel
the 'next' crisis on the world stage. The conference will search for
paradigms other than the vaguely cultural to understand situations of
crisis, so that crises can be encountered intellectually on concrete and
material terms.
The workshop will have keynote speakers, presentation sessions, open
sessions, public interviews, screenings, and exhibitions. The event will
be audio streamed and video fragments will be available after the event
as streaming files on the website of the Society of Old and New Media.
The conference will take place at Sarai, Delhi in the first week of March
2003, after the presentation of the third Sarai reader on February 28,
2003.
A team at Sarai will document the proceedings of the conference and
interview the presenters to create a log/journal of the conference.
Transcripts will be made available on the Waag website. The aim is to
edit the material into a publication that can become a benchmark in
thinking about media practice
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