Elon University has an entry in the Knight News Challenge, a
$5 million competition for grants to support community-focused service projects
that use Web 2.0 tools to help inform people.
You can see Elon’s entry, “Mobile Jornalista do Cidadão (Citizen-Journalist) Empowerment – São
Paulo Favelas” and register a vote in support of it by going to the following
site and registering to participate:
Votes will be only
be accepted through Nov. 14, so vote today! While Knight is not officially
“counting” the popular vote on the grant proposals, a higher rating boosts our
position among the more than 1,600 entries and makes our work more visible to
everyone.
Elon’s application
proposes a two-year program. Faculty Janna Anderson, David Copeland, Michelle
Ferrier and Kenn Gaither have requested $200,000 from Knight to accomplish its
goals. By November 15 applicants will be notified as to whether they will be invited
to submit full proposals and become finalists for the awards.
Here’s some
information from the application:
Describe your project:
Research. Engage. Energize. Empower. This
hand-crafted global-mobile citizen-journalist-development pilot will be rooted
in Heliópolis, São Paulo, Brazil; it is expected to serve as a template to
develop, train, retain, and retrain citizen journalists in other disadvantaged
regions of the world and connect them with the optimal regional distribution
and support system. Significant research will assess optimal outreach methods
for under-served people in this locality and identify ways to build a human
information network through the use of most-effective tools. Through
interviews, focus groups and various forms of reconnaissance, local people of
quality and commitment will be identified and recruited as local leaders. Localized
training tools will be developed after thorough locally grounded research.
“Old” tools and constantly emerging tools will be included for
optimal outreach and diffusion of information. Local means for distribution of
gathered news content will be investigated; radio, text-message, blog, Web 2.0
and traditional print publications are early candidates for distribution. It is
expected that we will involve regional reporters associated with international
news organizations like Reuters and CNN in addition to regional bloggers and
other new-media communicators in mentoring these citizen journalists, training
them as international eyes and ears who produce local content and who can also
share big stuff with international media outlets, and all students will come
away with the opportunity to be digital stringers for these individuals. We
will investigate ways in which local journalism professionals in established
media and in local new-media power centers can be networked to the favela mojos
(mobile journalists) and become active participants.
How will your project improve
the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Research
determines region-specific training and distribution: Mainstream media is
geared to serving the literate middle and upper classes. In this geographic
community a citizen-journalism initiative will allow roots-up reporting and
effective information distribution based on research we do to assess most
effective means. A region-specific how-to wiki for citizen journalists at this
location will be designed for training and support; social media, SMS, etc.,
also; and a real-world “home base” with a resource person; in addition to Web
presence and the leverage of current digital tools, we will implement emerging
tools – iamnews is one possible vehicle. We will incentivize the process to
produce accurate local news.
How is your idea innovative?
(new or different from what already exists)
Research, engage, energize, empower. Training
people to be citizen journalists and, in turn, train other citizens how to
gather and report news (through researched, localized methods) to people who
are not literate or are less literate. Capacity-building in the community to
educate it about its NEED for news is part of the package; the building of a
human information network through all means possible. We do not propose to just
put some tools up online or hand out cameras and say, “There you go, use that.”
Tools change. We will study the evolving information ecosystem to determine the
best methods for optimal local outreach and distribution. An
international-development model will emerge.
What experience do you or your
organization have to successfully develop this project?
Experts
in international communications and emerging media will lead the effort. Four
Elon University faculty will be involved: Dr. Kenn Gaither, an expert on
international strategic communication, new-media book series editor for Cambria
Press, fluent in Portuguese, with teaching experience in Brazil; Dr. David
Copeland, Elon’s Interactive Master’s graduate program director; Dr. Michelle
Ferrier, a Poynter Institute columnist with professional expertise in online
communities and managing editor of MyTopia, the Daytona daily newspaper’s
online site; and Profesor Janna Anderson, a veteran journalist with an
expertise in emerging media and a contract researcher for the Pew Internet
Project and director of http://www.imaginingtheinternet.org. In addition, we
have been in contact with Jorge Maranhão, creator of the institute “Cultura da
Cidadania A Voz do Cidadão” and author of “Mídia e Cidadania” (Media and
Citizenship), who has informed us that citizen-journalism is rare in Brazil and
in need of support. He has offered his assistance. We will send six to nine
grad students to work full-time at the site in Jan. 2009 and Jan. 2010. The
Elon communications-empowerment program will develop a method for educating and
equipping confident, competent Mobile-Global Citizen Communications Teams in
less-developed areas. Capacity-building – helping people understand WHY
communication is important and recruiting them to participate in the
digital-information age conversation – is one of the most important issues we
need to address today.