By Jonathan Arkin
Student Writer
The first full day of presentations at Beyond Broadcast 2009 informed conference attendees about public service media, entertainment-education, new media's impact and a host of other topics at USC Annenberg. Live Webcasts of the entire conference and archived video of the opening speeches are available at the BB09 site. Check back soon for more video coverage.
That’s Entertainment! Or Is It?
That’s Entertainment! Or Is It? examined the increasing use of entertainment-education and its impact on public awareness of medical, safety and health issues.
Panelists Neal Baer, executive producer of NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit;” Sandra de Castro Buffington, director of the Norman Lear Center's Hollywood, Health & Society project at USC Annenberg; and Zoanne Clack, executive producer and writer of “Grey’s Anatomy,” discussed ways in which difficult issues such as pediatric AIDS, bipolar disorder, surgical procedure and balancing relationships are all balanced in popular shows that contain enormous amounts of professional-sounding information.
Buffington described an impact evaluation of a recent episode of the hit medical series “Grey’s Anatomy,” a study that resulted in a turnaround in HIV/AIDS awareness.
According to Buffington, health information in entertainment – with repeated exposure to specific facts – results in extremely effective education.
“Hollywood, Health and Society contracted with a research firm and found an increased awareness of HIV knowledge, and AIDS deniers,” de Castro Buffington said. “We’re very interested in seeing whether this growing knowledge will increase prioritization of health issues.”
Baer, who has produced shows on teen pregnancy, abuse and other social hot topics, said that it is sometimes problematic not to become too didactic while attempting to take a felicitous approach to broadcasting such issues.
“When I started on ER I drew from my own experiences as a medical student at Harvard,” said Baer, who use Twitter ‘bubbles’ to show behind-the-scenes footage to viewers. “I felt that that wasn’t enough, in terms of health issues. I thought – what can we do, using new media, to augment what has been shown? I can impart information about the show in various ways. It’s a link between me and the viewer. It’s opened up a wealth of options for me.”
Clack said that “making it bigger than life” while keeping the basic quality of the story is key to achieving that felicitous approach in shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy.”
“There are so many wonderful programs out there and so many wonderful ideas, but sometimes it is difficult not to sound too preachy,” said Clack. “To make them learn things without them knowing that they’re learning something. What kind of public health messages do you want to get out there? If you can do it seamlessly…built on the truth of the emotional experience. It’s all based on storytelling. You want the rhythms of life to be there.”
De Castro Buffington pointed to the simple result: effective E-E achieves.
“We know that E-E connects us globally, and it can save lives,” she said.
Measuring New Media’s Impact
“Measuring New Media’s Impact” examined the techniques and metrics for measuring audiences and was moderated by Jessica Clark, who directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University’s Center for Social Media. One method by which the measuring of new media occurs, Clark said, is by comparing discussions in the contexts of their respective quality levels.
“We need to perform qualitative analyses of links, Internet chatter and offline chatter and see if it generates different opinions,” said Clark, who added that the level of online discussions are often drastically different – a disparity that might be controlled. “A lot of high-quality projects will generate high-quality discussions.”
Kate Coyer, a post-doctoral research fellow at USC Annenberg, the University of Pennsylvania, and Central European University, said that while numbers are useful to gain understanding of audience reach, she stressed the importance of social currency and how it can be used to achieve positive results with viewers, readers and listeners of various media.
“There are ways to measure impact,” Coyer said, who linked the empirical question of funding with the less measurable outcome of audience satisfaction. “It makes people feel good about where they live. There are tangible resources at stake. Money is dependent on it.”
Other panelists stressed the importance of constantly finding new and more effective ways of measuring the impact of partnership ventures in new media.
“The work we are doing is inherently collaborative,” said Ellen Schneider, the executive director at social change incubator Active Voice. “A lot of it is developing relationships. And it is emotion and empathy…walking in the shoes of the people you’re dealing with. That’s the currency we’re using. If you can go and begin to build bridges, like we have with the Brookings Institute…it’s with those collaboratives and we really have to be listening.”
Mark Fuerst, executive director of the Integrated Media Association, a pan-broadcasting collaborative, identified two measurables: various forms of journalism on one hand, and social action operations on the other.
“Those two things often meet, people will often migrate from one to another,” Fuerst said. “There’s a fair number of people who feel you need to separate them if you’re dealing with journalism. There’s a great deal of hesitance in combining those two things. Plenty of filmmakers want to be popular, and (if) their work provoked dialogue. In my experience, most of the time when you see big impact, that impact is measurable. But we are not the best ones at measuring our performances.”
Virillion, Inc. founder and TruthyPR blogger Shabbir Safdar agreed.
“If it was so obvious to measure, then it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out a business model for it,” said Safdar. “But just because it is immeasurable, that doesn’t mean people won’t try.”
The panelists also questioned where to put content – and how accessible media should be to users.
“The best journalism in the world, if it’s not in a spot that will reach an audience, will not be seen,” said Fuerst, who drew disagreement from Safdar on the methodology of distributing content. “If you look at how traffic flows around the system, you want to put it in front of people before they know where to look for it.”
Although opinions differed, the panelists all agreed that an accepted – if not unified – approach to measuring impact would benefit the changing world of new media.
“Local Perspectives”
Thursday’s opening panel of Beyond Broadcast 2009 at USC Annenberg featured international stories of digital media startups that often defied logic – and bullets – to bring stories from disparate points of the globe.
The panelists — from places such as South Korea, Madagascar and Kenya — brought a global perspective on how to connect local citizens to local and global media networks and how digital media is created, distributed and promoted.
Moderated by Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at UC San Diego, the panel on “Local Perspectives” highlighted programs and projects that may have started below the radar but are becoming a force.
Myoungjoon Kim, a political activist in South Korea, spoke of his struggles against privatization of public communications resources.
“We target several communities to provide tools and perspectives so that they can organize themselves,” said Kim, the creator of MediACT, a Seoul-based center for public-access production training, media literacy education and organizing for media democracy. “We always target migrant workers, displaced people and even the military, the most bureaucratic power structure.”
Lova Rakotommalala, co-founder of Foko-Madagascar and the author of Global Authors Online, said his native Madagascar is primarily known in the West as the locale of an animated film and as a host of several endangered species. Rakotomalala said, however, that an enormous and violent political crisis in his country went largely unnoticed abroad because of the dearth of media outlets and digital literacy, a situation he said is slowly being ameliorated.
“The absence of coverage in the mainstream media was regrettable,” he said, adding that the political situation and accompanying violence prevented the world media from adequately reporting on the two deadly cyclones that hit the country last year, leading to the creation of an army of citizen bloggers ready to embrace new technologies. “Media was used as a propaganda machine rather than a source of information. There were a few times when violence would happen faster than anyone could predict, so we trained our bloggers to go on Twitter. Internet has a better reach internationally. But we need to find a way to protect journalists and bloggers from the government forces…and military harassment.”
Juana Ponce de Leon, the executive director of the New York Community Media Alliance, said her project serves as a connector between outlets, Diaspora communities, in-language publications and English-speaking readers.
Ponce de Leon said close to 1.8 million people in New York have “little to no English language skills,” keeping them from effectively taking part in a greater mass media movement. She said that NYCMA seeks to level that playing field by addressing the need for this media sector via repositories for articles such as Voices That Must Be Heard – set up following the events of September 11, 2001 and which extends coverage into many more communities.
“It is a tip-sheet for connecting…it is the base and the footprint that will give local media a national relevance,” Ponce de Leon said. “The New York Media Alliance is a facilitator. It serves as a place where info from the communities is translated into English, connecting the communities so that they can read each other. That coalition building is key. It is a forum for the people who make the media happen. The digital technology situation is not that great. There is a real question as to what will happen.”
Digital strategist Daudi Were,who created mentalacrobatics.com, described the situation in Kenyan prisons and spoke of the importance of expanding the digital community in Africa, how digital tools are used and the growth of blogging in the communication-rich African continent.
“Many of us believe that blogs and grassroots movements are so important in Africa,” Were said. “The problem is, we haven’t defined democracy very well. I’d like to define it as ‘democracy by discussion,’ implying that the other person has something relevant to say that is worth listening to and that you have something to say that is worth listening to. Discussion was at the heart of traditional decision making in Africa. The Internet has provided the space in which this discussion can take place…blogging is probably the most African thing you can do online. Content and community is king. If you’re blogging…it’s illogical to do it in isolation. It’s important to be part of a community.”
Anthony Ian M. Cruz, president of TXTPower, told the audience that in the Philippines, mobile phone users number more than 70 million, but are resistant to new media tactics and new media forms. His organization, founded to protest a plan by providers to cut unlimited free texting, took inspiration from a Time magazine cover declaring a “Texters’ Revolution” and in a mass-distributed petition demanded cheaper texting rates, countering attempts by communication monopolies to apply unfair broadband, texting and mobile multimedia rates and value-added taxes.
“They say it was the first political ring tone used in history,” said Cruz, referring to a mobile phone ring tone featuring a recorded catchphrase used by a presidential candidate under investigation for wrongdoing – a quote that became a cultural sensation. “Some of the most popular deejays in the country came to us with remixes (of the well-publicized quote making fun of the president). We look forward to more battles ahead. We know that fighting for consumer welfare will always strike a chord with our people. We always try to become members of the media ourselves, to protect the so-called legacy media…our activism has not stopped.”
Dorothy Kidd, the chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, gave practical advice in creating more effective participatory communications.
“One never just works in the local," said Kidd, an activist with several years experience of advocacy in feminist and community causes. “You always have to situate yourself and to protect your back, to know what’s going on at the policy level and with your colleagues. The problem is not that people are voiceless. Far from it. Those who do not have equal political power are not being heard. The space in local commercial media from community groups is shrinking disproportionably for those who have less power. They have not stopped communication; they have just had to become more sophisticated…making their own communications…Let’s move past what we already know. Digital inclusion is not about what’s already there.”
