New Media Ecology+ Organizing Ground Game=Change
Posted By Sidney on May 28, 2009
Photography by Steve Rhodes
My daydream post titled “Current Media as Mainstream News Source” was a glimpse into what is fast becoming an personal obsession – thoughts about the emerging news ecosystem and its utility in creating sustainable social change for the people and by the people. From Remix/Mashups that go viral to Current TV’s viewer created content (VC²), new media creativity is exploding the boundaries of what is traditionally understood as journalism. Media innovators like Jonathan McIntosh, Martin “Xavi” Macias, J.D. Lasica,and Ben Relles, to name a few, are becoming household names as they produce riveting, insightful, compelling and sometimes cleverly humorous work that immediately attracts viral buzz.
In Journalism that Matters: An Emerging Cultural Narrative, an article in the Spring-Summer 2009 Kosmos Journal,Peggy Homan noted that this new media ecosystem moves news from:
- Deadline driven to continually unfolding;
- News organization-driven to people-driven from many different places and points of view;
- Media-specific to multi-purpose formats including print, broadcast, podcast, web, mobile, etc.;
- Publisher created and owned to people created and owned;
- High cost production to low cost production and distribution;
- Just informative to informative and inspiring, connecting people and ideas; and
- Profit-driven to mission-driven.
However, proof that this can alone can create sustainable change is sparse at best or at worst non-existent.
A community organizing ground game is needed to complement the use of new media, inform the people, and help them remain steadfast and balanced through the hills and valleys that are inherent in sustainable social change. The ground game places strategic-minded, level-headed, sparkplug-like ground leaders that can manage the message without dictating the self-expression. Does this sound familiar? The words “ground game” came very close to reaching buzzword status in 2008 with the brilliantly orchestrated presidential campaign of then Senator Barack Obama. This transformative bid was fueled by the the tactics, strategies, infrastructure, and personnel needed on the ground to create sustainable social change.
Imagine the masses empowered by:
- Awareness of the new media ecology and skilled in participation;
- A passionate and committed nodal leadership network;
- Tools such as flip video, application-driven phones (e.g., Apple iPhone, Blackberry Storm, Nokia Ovi, and Google Android-based phones) complete with grassroots apps that manage information and connect the organizers (similar to the 2008 Obama app for iPhone).
My BHAP (Big Hairy Audacious Prediction) is this will happen in the not-so-distant future. It is not a question of “if” but “how soon” we’ll experience a day when human rights and civil rights violations will be exposed, confronted, and conquered before a choir leader can ignite a mere verse of “We shall Overcome.”
[...] In the hands of community organizers and activists, social media renders the static, above-the-fold headline obsolete by engaging ours senses, calling upon our human nature, and moving our feet, hands, and/or voices to act by blogging, joining the movement, raising funds, or simply spreading the word. [...]