Reflecting on social reporting or enabling social reporters

Picture 25.png[Summary: A personal learning reflection on digital reporting from events – enable people to report, don’t report on their behalf…]

I’ve facilitated young people as ‘roving reporter‘ and ‘digital journalists’, or even, in the terminology David Wilcox is developing, ‘social reporters‘, at events before – and I’ve acted directly as the digital reporter at a few events in the past.

However, trying to blog and digitally report from the annual conference of the Association of Principal Youth and Community Officers on Monday I found it surprisingly challenging to tap into the buzz of the event and build up a coherent blog record of what was going on. That’s not to say we haven’t managed to provide a good foundation for online discussion and networking between APYCO members in the future – but it did get me reflecting on the difference between being the reporter and facilitating the reporting process.

Supporting young people to be the digital reporters at events about young people has always made sense. Given the skills to operate video cameras and update the blog – young people are then able to go out into a conference or event and use their insights into the issues that affect them to ask the right questions. Holding the camera or the Dictaphone, and being in control of the blog, alters the usual balance of power between young people and adults in the conference setting – and generally produces great results.

So why didn’t I work with APYCO to equip a number of the youth service managers there to be the social reporters – to go out an interview their colleagues and to talk about the issues that affect them? Time & resources perhaps. And also not having yet had the experience of digital reporting from a managers event to reflect on. But I’ll certainly make sure I take the enabling others to report approach in the future rather than taking on the reporting role directly.

Reflections on Video Change project

Picture 9.pngEarlier this year I facilitated a pilot online course for Oxfam GB called Video Change. The course, which in the end ran over 8 weeks, sought to equip existing Oxfam activists with the skills for making video for the web.

The course itself didn’t quite produce the level of activity and video making that we had hoped for, but it has produced a lot of learning which will feed into future work by the Activist Support & Campaigns teams in Oxfam GB to provide online learning and support opportunities for activists and campaigners.

Below you can find a few assorted reflections and key shared learning from the course content and process of running the course:

What makes a great campaigning video?

In Week 2 of Video Change I invited participants to pick 5 or so videos that they thought were great examples of online video and video for campaigning.

Of course, we didn’t expect there would be consensus on what makes a good campaigning video – but we were struck by just how diverse the selections that were made were – ranging from 15 minute documentaries through to 30 second clips from the TV.

You can see some of the videos that were selected below or in this VodPod:

And here some some of the participants reflections on the online campaigning videos they chose:

“With the volume of videos on the web if it doesn’t grab me within 5 secs and hold my attention i’m going to switch off. The most popular clips are almost always funny so 4 out of the 5 videos here are funny.”

“It had a non-intuitive approach to the issue, which should hopefully be engaging to people who “get” environmental issues, but who don’t want to spend a lot of time being preached to – so the video is short, and leaves you waiting for the punchline. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that a good video is quite a lot like a good stand-up comedy gag!”

“What I like about this is, that it’s about a simple activity that anyone can do to make a difference for people living in poverty.To my mind, this is very empowering. It’s simple in style too, although I suspect the editing wasn’t as straightforward as it looks. No frills: the presenter believes what she is saying, and says it. Brilliant.”

“I felt the ‘call to action’ at the end was a bit weak. It needed something to really tell me what I can do next.”

What does all this mean for those creating campaign videos?

Whilst the participants in Video Change were a very specific group of already engaged online video consumers – there is some value in reflecting upon their choices of video and what it could mean for campaigners and NGOs seeking to use video as part of their activist work. In particular, we found:

  • There is no one format or style of video that will appeal to everyone – obvious of course – but it does have interesting implications for NGOs. A number of videos participants chose during the course were remixes of other videos – or were video memes. Instead of trying to create a catch all video with wide appeal it may turn out best for NGOs to create clips which can be remixed by volunteers and supporters to appeal to different audiences.
  • Most videos benefit from a clear call to action – Some of the videos were valued as inspiring in their own right – but many failed to provide a clear sense of how someone could respond to what they had just seen. Simple, down to earth, suggestions of how to respond to a video on the last few seconds can increase impact.
  • Get attention and then get the message across (in that order) – Videos that focussed on getting people’s attention first, and then getting their message across second, seemed to be more popular than those which put their message up front. The most popular videos tended to take people on a journey, even if only a 30 second journey.
  • Activity packed edits got more attention – When videos were reporting on a recent campaigning event or activity then including lively music and regularly changing camera angles (using B-roll footage) kept people’s attention for longer.

If you’ve got other tips for creating campaign videos – do share those in the comments below.

Running an open or closed course

Picture 13.pngWhilst my original pitch for the course was to run an open learning project, in the end we decided to try and closed pilot – working with existing Oxfam activists. Part of the thinking was that this way we could focus on the video campaigning skills, rather than spending time exploring the issues Oxfam campaigns on as well.

Clearly open courses, like the Work Literacy social media course currently running, have a lot more potential for attracting large numbers of participants and vibrant discussions. However, it’s worth noting that these open courses are very much about learning to apply to one’s individual life and work – rather than to apply in support or a campaigning organisation.

Our conclusion from Video Change was that the benefit of running more open courses in the future outweighs the risk of some participants using their new skills to go ‘off message’ – but it’s worth recognising that many big NGOs are still only starting on the path of understanding that they need to let go of a degree of control over message in order to see greater returns of action and engagement.

On a technical level – facilitating the course using Ning set to be a private network was a little tricky – as you loose access to the open RSS feeds which can make it a lot easier to follow what is going on across the network.

Online training or online learning

The idea which inspired me to suggest an online course to the Oxfam team was my participation in the 31 days to a better blog challenge in 2007. In hindsight it is clear that that was an ‘online learning’ project, rather than an ‘online training’ project – and Video Change ended up being a slightly confused combination of the two.

Working in a closed pilot with participants, most of whom didn’t have their own established social media spaces online (blogs, twitter etc) and many of whom were not familiar with reflective learning online, meant that I ended up in a teaching role rather than the learning facilitator role I had hoped for. Being clear about whether a project is about online teaching (needs a classroom style online environment, set inputs and clear plans) or learning (needs a network and reflective environment, inputs and resources which respond to participants needs).

Screen-casts are a great tool
Picture 11.png
Each week of the course had one or two video inputs (perhaps one was a presentation) and a one-page guide introducing that weeks activities and challenges (I’ll share some of the Guides here soon…). However, I quickly found myself making extensive use of Jing to create screen-casts to explain particular steps involved in creating, sharing or promoting a video – and these narrated screen casts were really well received.

With the ease of creating Screen-casts with a tool like Jing they are something I’ll be aiming to add more often to my training toolkit.


The future of a Video Change model?

As a pilot Video Change taught us a lot. It’s unlikely to run in the same format again – but hopefully we’ll soon be able to share many of the course resources more widely – and the idea of online learning for activists and campaigners will emerge in a slightly different form in Oxfam soon.

Innovation in Participatory Learning

If you’ve been inspired by UK Youth Online to plan a project that pilots new models of online youth work or participatory learning through digital technology then you might like to check out the MacArthur/HASTAC Digital Media Learning competition.

The competition is offering between $30,000 and $250,000 for innovations in participative learning using digital technology. The deadline is tight (October 15th) but it would be great to see UK youth sector groups putting in proposals.

I would be happy to offer free support to any UK based groups thinking about putting in a bid – just drop me a line.

One page guides remixed

Remixed One Page Guide
Remixed One Page Guide

Michele Martin has just dropped me an e-mail with a link to some remixed versions of the one page guides series.

Designed for the Innovation in Learning conference, Michele has remixed the following:

One Pager on Finding-Reading Blogs
One Pager on Flickr
One Pager on Netvibes and RSS
One Pager on Wikis
Social Bookmarking One Pager

You can find the original one page guides they are based on here.

Which reminds me to ask:

  • Have you been using any of the one page guides? Are there other remixed copies out there that I don’t know about?
  • What should be next in the series? I’ve not created any for a while – but I’m hoping to put together one or two new guides soon – what you would like to see?

Update: Lacona Coy has put together a post linking up the One Page Guides with Commoncraft videos for each. A handy getting started reference.

A veritable festival of youth and social media

The 26th and 27th September should see a veritable festival of events linked to youth participation, youth work and social media down in London. In fact, I wish I'd seen all the connections earlier to brand the whole lot as a festival.
Here's what is coming up:


  • Research launch of the Youth Work and Social Networking report (26th Sept, 2.45pm till 4.45pm) – the work that seems to have taken over a large chunk of the last six months of my time. Along with Pete Cranston, I'll be sharing what we've discovered, providing both a theoretical and practical account of how youth workers and other professionals working with young people can support young people to navigate the risks and make the most of the opportunities of online social networking, and opening up a discussion of different uses of social network sites in youth work.
    The research launch is free to attend, and if you want more details or to reserve your place, get in touch with ritak@nya.org.uk


  • UK Youth Online open space event (27th Sept, 10am till 5pm, followed by a trip to a local pub) – on Saturday 27th we'll be opening up the agenda even more to explore all things linked to young people and social media. Thanks to the kind support of DIUS this free event will provide space for practitioners, academics, innovators, funders, managers and others interested in the impact of new technology on work with young people to gather together and explore a wide range of issues through short presentations, discussions and demonstrations.
    For more details about UK Youth Online check out the network website, where you can also register to take part.

Please do pass details of all these events on to anyone who you think might be interested.

 

And what if you can't make the 26th and 27th September, or if London is a bit of a trek for you? Well, get in touch and let's get planning for some more local festivals exploring youth, technology and social media…

Three aspects of blogging to promote positive activities

I've just been interviewed for an article about how blogging can be used to promote positive activities. Using blogging as part of promoting youth work was only one part of one of the 7 reasons why youth workers should be blogging – but in the interview I found that it can be usefully broken down into three parts.
Three aspects of blogging to promote positive activities

  1. Blog for search – share information – many young people expect information from multiple sources – and they will expect information to be available online. If a young people have seen a poster or a flyer for your event then there is a good chance some will try and google search details of the event later on – either to check what it was all about, or to check the time/venue etc.

    A blog provides a very quick publishing platform to get information out there and to get it picked up by search engines. A dedicated blog for your youth club is going to be far easier to keep up-to-date than pages on a local authority website. And it's quite likely to perform better in search engines for particular queries about your events and activities.

    You can also take the headlines from a blog and get other websites and services to automatically 'pull in' that information – so that news from your blog is dispalyed in the places where young people are online (for example, you can pull the headlines into a Widget on MySpace, or to a Fan Page on Facebook, or you can set up a service to automatically text the latest headlines to young people who have subscribed…)


  2. Blog for young people – share media – at just about any event with young people there will be photos taken and video clips recorded – and it is highly likely these will be shared online. Rather than ban photos and videos at an event because of safety concerns – youth services can take on the role of providing safe online photo and video galleries from events – where images are only displayed with consent and where any young people can ask for their images to be removed if they wish.

    By becoming the destination for photos and videos from an event two things are possible:

    1. A service can justifiably ask young people to limit their own sharing of photos and videos in ways which may not be safe;

    2. A service can build an audience who come to see the photos and videos, but then find out about other activities and opportunities to get involved. (Although – don't forget to make sure you tell people the web address where they can access the media on your blog)


  3. Blog for you – consultation and conversation – once you've build a community around a blog with media and content attractive to young people – then you can start including blog posts that ask questions of young people, invite comments and help you to improve your services. You can share information about upcoming decisions that need to be made, or you can create blog posts that ask a question of young people – and you and they can use the comments feature on a blog to engage in conversation about the issues in question.

These three parts may even be seen as 'stages' of starting to blog to promote youth services – as whilst blogs provide an instant publishing platform, it does take time and intentional effort for them to build a regular readership and a community.

Perhaps we will have a session at the UK Youth Online unconference on the 27th September 2008 to explore blogging to promote positive activities. If you're interested then do come along. UK Youth Online is a free and co-created event – and you can find more details about it, or register to be part of it, here.

Over on the Youth Work and Social Networking blog

I've tried to keep the plethora of reflections and shared bits and pieces from the Youth Work and Social Networking project over on their own blog – but I'm aware some people have been expecting me to post them here also. So, here is a quick run-down of some of the posts, documents and resources you will find over on the Youth Work and Social Networking project blog.

There are also a number of others posts pointing to recent research and online resources.
The final report of the Youth Work and Social Networking project will be launched on th 26th September in London – so if you would like to be at that (or at the UK Youth Online un-conference the following day) then please do get in touch. 

Video Change Update: Bananas, 6 Million More and Air Guitar

A little while back I blogged about something called 'Video Change' – and I've spent quite a bit of the last seven weeks facilitating it. Video Change is a pilot online course/shared learning journey, delivered using Ning, that has aimed to support campaigners to create online video as part of their social justice campaigning activity.

I'll be blogging a little more about the whole process, and some of what we have learnt later on – but for now – just wanted to share with you a little of what the Video Change participants have been creating:

Whilst on the topic of online video for campaigning – here's a note I got from Kerstin Twachtmann at ActionAid last week which may be of interest:

Our youth team are attempting to smash the world record for the biggest number of people playing their air guitars at this year’s Reading festival!

As part of this we are running an online competition with the chance to win a pair of tickets to this year’s festival, all the entrants have to do is upload their own air guitar video onto http://www.myspace.com/bollockstopoverty. (The closing date is the 15th August) We have already created a series of videos to get people in the spirit of things and we would be most grateful if could mention it in your blog!

If you're interested in seeing how charities can explore engaging with the norms of many online video sites – then Action Aid's experiment is well worth taking a look at (and, if you're up for playing some Air Guitar in the next few days, joining in with…).

Roaming wild with web cams: video camera consultation

I was down in Devon last Friday at the county's fantastic Kongomana youth festival. Alas, however, I wasn't there to chill out and enjoy two days of activities and socialising. I was there along with Carl and Russel to find out what young people thought of Devon County Council using social network sites for youth participation (all part of the Youth Work and Social Networking project, and building on work I've been doing over here).

I'll share more later on about how we used magnets, the side of a bus, and little cut up bits of Bebo on cardboard to ask young people about the sorts of policies, rules and safety guidelines the council should use. For now, I just wanted to share a few quick reflections on using cheap video cameras for consultation.

What we did:
Devon County Council got hold of 5 Busbi Video cameras (£29.99) each which we could hand out to young people throughout the day.

The cameras are very simple to use, with an on/off switch, and big red button to start and stop recording. Even more useful, they've got a space where the battery compartment is (they run off AA batteries) where you can stick a question onto each camera so that the camera operator can read it.

We used questions such as 'What three words do you think of when I say Bebo?' and 'How could councils use Social Network Sites to help you get your voice heard?'.

During the chaos of running our paper-based consultation on social network site policy we were handing out the cameras to groups of young people to borrow for 5 to 10 minutes to go and interview their friends with the question on the back of the particular camera they had borrowed.

That way, so the theory went, we could get in views from a far wider range of young people. And the responses would be young people talking to young people – without the usual young person <–> strange adult dynamic that can occur during quick consultation exercises.

What happened:
Kongomana - Video Camera ConsultationThe cameras were borrowed and the cameras came back. Throughout the day groups of young people were taking the cameras to go and record things.

We had to help one or two groups get started using the cameras – and had to keep turning them off as they almost always came back still turned on and draining the batteries (although the batteries all lasted).

We didn't get chance to watch any of the video coming back in until we were packing up – and the first few clips I watched were not very promising. Mostly video clips of the grass as people were running places with the cameras.

However, as I watched through the rest of the clips I found a lot of really good content. Simple questions like 'What three words do you think of when I say Bebo?' had gathered a lot more responses that 'How could councils use Social Network Sites…' – but between the five cameras there was a lot of content, and, importantly, content that we hadn't been hearing from standing around and talking to young people in our more static consultation activity.

Unfortunately, because we were at a festival event, and because I wanted to keep the video interview activity as quick for participants as possible, we didn't ask each young person if they would be happy for their video clip to go online – so I can't share the actual clips with you. However, I did write up responses to the question 'What three words do you think of when I say Bebo?' and then ran them through Wordle.net to give this tag cloud (the larger the world, the more often it was said):

What did we learn about the method?

  • Young people talking to young people offers real insights: a lot of things came across in the video clips that didn't come across in our other conversations. Young people talking to their peers often do so in a more relaxed way. There is a lot of joking around in the clips that came back – but also a lot of really good comments and remarks that provide great insights.

  • Keep the questions simple: test out your questions first on the young people you expect to take the cameras round and interview people. If you need to provide any clarification of the question – then it won't work in this method.
  • Even point-and-shoot needs some guidance: I had hoped that the video clips we captured might be usable to edit together into a video report of the consultation. However, whilst the audio on most of them was usable – the video clips were rarely framed well (and often were super-close-ups or cut people's heads off). In the future I'll try to add some sort of guide onto the screen of the cameras to show how to frame a show (a circle showing where someones face should be in shot for example).


  • Bring spare batteries and memory cards – we were only running the consultation for a couple of hours – so managed to just use one set of batteries and memory cards per camera. But if you were running for longer – be ready with spare batteries and ready to swap out the memory cards (The Busbi Video cameras record onto cheap SD cards) so that the cameras can stay in use.
  • The cameras may not come back – we had one camera that took a long time to get back to us (we had almost given up on getting it back). Loosing the camera would have been a disappointment – but we would have also lost all the clips recored on there. Thats why for some events you may want to have memory cards in rotation so that whenever a camera gets swapped over you change the memory card and save a copy of the footage captured up to that point onto a laptop etc.

How could the idea be developed?
I'm keen to try using the same method again – but also to explore other ways of putting recording equipment into young people's hands with simple prompts – and then seeing what comes back.

I could imagine recording a short 'introduction to an issue' clip on the memory cards of the Busbi Video camera (the camera has a play button which plays back the last clip) and then sending the cameras in the post to young people across and area with a spare memory card. Young people would be invited by the video introduction to create a clip in response to the issue in question – and would be asked to send back that memory card.

I'd love to hear ideas from others about how to develop this peer-to-peer recording for consultation sort of model. What have you done in the past? Or what sort of thing would you like to do?

(Disclaimed: I have used an affiliate code on links to the Busbi Video on Amazon. There are other cheap digital video cameras on the market – and if you've got access to more durable kit already – the this method could work with that also. I just happen to have used the Busbi and found it to do the job for what I wanted).

The 2007 Digital Media Literacy Summit in review…

Digital Media Literacy SummitGiven it's Open Space flavour the Digital Media Literacy Summit on Thursday (8th Nov) at the Channel 4 building in London didn't exactly come up with a set of clear action points for building digital media literacy, but it did offer some key insights that can help us on the way.

That said, if the event was a Summit, then participants had climbed to it from many different directions, and I suspect in fact all we have done so far is to move towards a basecamp where we need to consolidate, take stock, and then climp the real peak.

Building the basecamp

Confluencia camp by Stafatty http://flickr.com/photos/stefatty/I was tasked with capturing interviews with the key speakers at the event, and young reporters from MediaSnackers were roaming the event capturing vox pop interviews with delegates. All the videos are available on the Policy Unplugged website, but below I've tried to weave together a summary of the voices I heard and the threads of conversation that ran throughout the day.

Links in Bold point to the short ( < 3 mins) video interviews with speakers from the Summit that I was tasked to capture on the day.

Paragraphs/sentences in italics show where I'm adding my own commentary or analysis to this summary rather than reflecting on the words of others.

The Digital Media Literacy Summit 2007

Peter Packer, a strategy adviser to the UK Film Council and Media Literacy Task Force, and involved in the convening of the event offered an overview of the media literacy taskforce and it's role in the the debate over digital media literacy in the UK – explaining the importance of building a media literacy that allows individuals to:

  • Analyse media, understanding its context and the reasons for which it was created.
    and
  • Create media, and understand the creation process.

The charter for media literacy goes some way to expanding upon that. The theme of allowing individual to develop media literacy through creating media was one picked up by Dick Penny from the Watershed in Bristol, who emphasised that digital media literacy is no different from other forms of literacy, and that there have been cultural organisations engaging citizens 'from the edges' in media creation for a long time.

Yemesi interviewed at DMLSIn this mediasnackers Vox Pop Joven and Tom captured a range of definitions of media literacy from around the floor of the conference. Katie and Shadeeka also captured a range of defintions from delegates. For some, digital media literacy isn't about technology – but for others, understanding the devices and the tools is crucial. To an extent, individuals definitions of digital media literacy may appear to map onto whether they are concerned with the analysis of media by the consumer, or the creation of media by the citizen.

Both 20 year old student Yemesi Blake and Silver Surfer of the Year 2007 Joan Barker made it clear that the key to gaining digital media literacy is just getting started and getting engaged, particularly in Yememi's view in creating the media through blogging. Matt Locke, a Commissioning Editor with Channel 4, picked up the theme of enabling people to just get started with a call for more 'cheats and hacks and walk-throughs' to enable citizens to gain digital media literacy from the bottom up, rather than through top-down charter-driven debates.

The importance of access was a key concern. This arose both in terms of accessing the equipment to connect to the digital media world (as this interview with delegates by MediaSnackers Yaz and Clare shows), and in terms of being able to access social media and digital media spaces in schools and learning environments without being subject to locked-down internet access with blocks on anything interactive.

Ewan McIntosh, picked up this reflection, and outlined the amazingly positive ways social media can contribute to education and collaboration if we avoid the route of locking everything down and don't "try to teach people to swim without any water".

James Purnell and DMLSIn his keynote speech (and interview afterwards) James Purnell MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, touched upon the loss of controls that digital media has brought, and the way government does not want to re-introduce new forms of censorship to regain that control – but also spoke in his keynote of new forms of blocking software to allow parents and institutions to limit young peoples access to content. James Purnell also emphasised the role of government in setting frameworks but not in legislating on digital media literacy.

Controlling content access continued to crop up as a theme – without, it seemed, a clear argument during the day to analyse the role 'intelligent blocking' software has to play in building media literacy. (Without that argument, it might seem blocking just puts off the need for certain 'tough' forms of digital media literacy). It may be that a connected, but arguably separate, debate about internet safety was finding itself tangled up in the day's proceedings.

On that theme of safety Dr Tanya Byron was present at the Summit and provided this short introduction to her review on young peoples online safety and how digital media literacy fits with the Byron Review. Tanya also spoke on the platform later in the day to confirm her support for a code of conduct and some res

Whereas Ewan identifies schools as the key location for building digital media literacy, I spoke to Raemmel and Furqan in this vox-pop interview to highlight the role of Youth Work in supporting young people to develop the skills to safely navigate the social aspects of digital media in a world of social networks.

As the event moved from presentations to an open space format, it was clear that there were a lot of questions still to answer. Including:

Jelly EllieIs digital media literacy really a new cannon? How much does the technology change things?

17 year old Jelly Ellie certainly saw there being a gulf between young people and their parents with respect to their media worlds, and Jon Gisby offered a look at how the media landscape has changed and the way in which that brings new demands and new challenges.

The accessiblity of the digital realm to those with learning disabilities was the subject of one open space group, and others tackled the question of digital media literacy for older people. The need for an inclusive digital media literacy agenda was certainly felt.

An ongoing conversation

The ongoing conversationAs I said in opening, this wasn't a summit that lead to a shared conclusion. It launched conversations threads that now need to be tracked forward and woven together.

The inputs were not only in the open space discussions and in speeches from the platform, but were being shared through the blogosphere as live blogs and have been shared in blog posts since (this one amongst them). A quick blog search today turns up a great live-blogged sumamry from Ewan, addressing questions of age and access, and a reflective summary of the day from social media strategist Katie Lips. I'm sure there is more to come…


Update

The Policy Unplugged site where these videos are hosted has been a little intermittent. You can find all of the videos on this youtube channel or using the player below