Contemporary media debate & issues

Making linking work for radical web projects

2012-02-23T13:27:57Z

To update this initial survey: We have started a project to allow sites to easily link to current projects http://openworlds.info This is a open cooperative run database of lefty/radical projects.

We have been testing it on our front page on visionontv for the last 5 month - works fine. Maybe it is time to roll this out to other sites.

RE: How to find a bad video ?

2011-09-12T15:57:51Z

Most videos produced on youtube are "bad" but what do we mean by this?

Has it the what, were, who, why of journalism
Is it a good length to tell the story - most videos are to long
dose it keep your interest
is the sound good?
do they hold the camera steady?

So good for news is:
short, to the point, engaging
the what, were,who, why in the video
good meta-data.

How to find a bad video ?

2011-09-12T15:53:44Z

What all factors make a video bad ? Suggestions please.
-Help in identifying a bad video which can help in building a better and efficient channel

Thank you

RE: Let's make live streaming without ads happen!

2011-06-17T07:28:24Z

There are open source solutions out there.

And there are ways to do this for FREE. And by this I mean @ the cost of hosting your own stand alone server where you can do your own installations on. There are open source software available to do live broadcasting. But to be honest you will have to have the know how, if you want to set it up properly.

SoulProductions provide such a service. If you require open source - live streaming software installated on your server just let them know. They will be able to help. They also have their own live broadcasting service available. It costs as little as £75 per month and this connection won't have any restrictions on bandwidth or content.

RE: Lets move off Facebook?

2011-03-31T11:01:03Z

yes like the idea of making it easy for people to leave by using Facebook connect ect... we are planing to go a step further and move all of visionontv inside facebook as apps - this is supported by our CMS liferay (bugss...) so that you are outside facebook while still being inside it...

Otto Von Dasdang - are you auto posting with RSS?

Hamish Campbell: Activists who rely on social networking to organise are in denile of there ability to change society – and are actually recreating in the digital world the very thing they are fighting agenst in the physical world. And the digital world currently is much more free than the physical world so if they cannot/donot build alternatives there then they deferentially cannot/are uninterested in build them in the real world. As I started this conversation they are building alternatives inside the social media hamster cage's http://bit.ly/eUD9Yp

hamishcampbell: Social media and activism, a hamster rattling its cage is not going to scare the state... to really change things we need to "be the change" and in the digital world that means living and working outside the hamster cage http://visionon.tv/forum/-/message_boards/view_message/40431 am serious guys, think about this.

RE: Lets move off Facebook?

2011-03-30T21:31:25Z

the thing is, people become their profile on facebook

it is one ID/username/profile pic/ one password and people are lazy that way.

all the tec (software and hardware) we need is there, but people need time to get used to it and need to learn how to use it.

I am sure we can use the "network affect" to our advantage, I had facebook auth working on a wordpress / buddypress site ages ago (which just looked like a facebook clone) but it got attacked with spam so I closed it.

have you sussed what Otto Von Dasdang on facebook is ?

Lets move off Facebook?

2011-03-30T19:44:11Z

Hamish Campbell The digital world for now is a free space, the current activist addiction to social media is helping to close this commons #visionontv

Hamish Campbell Who is up for organizing some social media addiction workshops? who is up for helping to build an alternative? #visionontv #indymedia

Jade McClune likes this.

Denny de la Haye Are you encouraging or discouraging said addiction?

Hamish Campbell Its to do with activist's building an alternative to capitalism in hamster cages http://bit.ly/fMilRL most of our links from inside the cage are to outside the cage.

Denny de la Haye So your problem isn't with 'social media' per se, it's with the currently-popular walled gardens, i.e. Facebook and Twitter? Diaspora would be okay? (Not that there's much of it yet, but in principle.)

Denny de la Haye And identi.ca is already a fairly functional alternative to Twitter, it just lacks the network effect of popular usage.

Hamish Campbell As you say the "network affect" is a problem more than the tec, as tec gets better the more people use it... the problem with activist tec such as #visionontv and #indymedia is that not many people use them so they don't tend to get better. This will apply to identi.ca and Diaspora too... Thus the need for social media (as in FB/twitter) addiction workshops - its political/psychological rather than technical problem.

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-10T11:06:49Z

alan Lodge:

For me thats a non-argument, but I am a video maker

alan Lodge:

I think [but don't know] that this is what mir was originally designed to do. Anyway, years went by and eventually, a few of us have hopped the fence and started using the hyperactive CMS to use a much wider variety of media. I still think this was important to do, since many folks were used to youtube, blogs twitters etc .... and found indymedia were so lacking in all this, so, simply put stuff all elsewhere.

None of us up here understand or can maintain it. we have to cry to others for the occasional maintenance. Glad we did though, 'cos there is now a huge political fuss about ip addresses and stuff. None of which apply to our system. Because of much infighting and outside prevocotuering [i guess] UK are blowing up, and reliant on regional aggregations.

How do you feel about the aggregates?

alan Lodge:

In short, i consider this application to be a 'media', useful to add to the above mix. Progressively more important with the accelerating spread of mobile devices. If it could be progressed .... i don't see why it would need to be 'applied' to particular gigs. What if is was more routinely integrated in to indymedia type services, and tied up with the events diary. This, anyone with a wish to attend events, anywhere, might find this useful.

Thinking out loud and on the hoof, but that wot you're supposed to here .... innit

As for rss and stuff, well since we've moved, it might be sorted now. cheers

Tash xx

I see the spiky/fluff debate has hit Sukey hard on twitter - do you know of any good old right-ups to help resolve this, diversity of startergy and non-condemnation and all that stuff?

http://www.blowe.org.uk/2011/02/curious-case-of-sukey-and-bizarre-press.html

Hamish

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-07T14:21:11Z

hi hamish
nottm indymedia has got 5 years in now. After a uk network meeting here in nottingham, i proposed that i want the project to be much more multi-media in content. hence video, riseup radio, photography etc. Others didn't want this to happen, 'cos of serving to the lowest common denominator, viz text.

I think [but don't know] that this is what mir was originally designed to do. Anyway, years went by and eventually, a few of us have hopped the fence and started using the hyperactive CMS to use a much wider variety of media. I still think this was important to do, since many folks were used to youtube, blogs twitters etc .... and found indymedia were so lacking in all this, so, simply put stuff all elsewhere.

None of us up here understand or can maintain it. we have to cry to others for the occasional maintenance. Glad we did though, 'cos there is now a huge political fuss about ip addresses and stuff. None of which apply to our system. Because of much infighting and outside prevocotuering [i guess] UK are blowing up, and reliant on regional aggregations.

In short, i consider this application to be a 'media', useful to add to the above mix. Progressively more important with the accelerating spread of mobile devices. If it could be progressed .... i don't see why it would need to be 'applied' to particular gigs. What if is was more routinely integrated in to indymedia type services, and tied up with the events diary. This, anyone with a wish to attend events, anywhere, might find this useful.

Thinking out loud and on the hoof, but that wot you're supposed to here .... innit

As for rss and stuff, well since we've moved, it might be sorted now. cheers

Tash xx

The neutral voice - Objectivity in journalism

2011-02-07T16:51:21Z

The View from Nowhere: Questions and Answers

“American journalism is dumber than most journalists, who often share my sense of absurdity about these practices. A major reason we have a practice less intelligent than its practitioners is the prestige that the View from Nowhere still claims…”

http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/

What do you think - The neutral voice - Objectivity in journalism?

Are you pro or polemically agenst? or is it a useful tool? if it is then this raises the question useful for who?

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-06T21:31:06Z

Nice to see you both on the site

visionontv is one node in a yet to be built wider media network - full info here http://visionon.tv/mission

We rely on radical openness as the security model so all interaction on the site should appear here http://visionon.tv/whosdoingwhat (still a work in progress).

Bernie - Looking forward to trying out Sukey at the next big demo, have an android phone with unlimited text so happy to try the text re-laying

Q. will it impact phone battery life as its bad anufe all ready

Tash - Would be good to work with Nottingham IMC video wise. we already aggregate all your feature storeys to our grassroots news page here http://visionon.tv/web/grassroots/news and I hope we are aggregating the video into the video channel (but we had some problems with IMC RSS feeds so not completely shore its working). In all cases we directly link back to the source story.

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-05T17:55:11Z

alan Lodge:

hi each.

And Tash - Hi back :-)

alan Lodge:

Reply was that its is too complicated [since still being developed] for us non-geeks to apply in other situations, until more user-friendly work need to be done.

This is where most of the work is being focussed at the moment - what we have would be meaningless to most without a decent and easy to use front end.

alan Lodge:

After the 26th and more work, i hope to bother them again. I was / am impressed with this application, seen similar in geocashing etc. Still not a majority of folks with smart phones out ther, but it is changing is so rapidly. I'm looking for 'models' that will give many infomation on how to get about, not just the few. I know that there will be those concerned at the police following such info.

We look forward to you bothering us again - we're working on a model at the moment that will give smartphone users (Android only at the moment) the option of 'buddying' to relay and cascade our messages onwards by SMS to their own friends and contacts who are also at the protest and who don't have smartphones. You'll be able to set a limit on how many texts your phone sends out so you can keep within your 'free texts' allowance. It'll save us a packet too!

I expect there'll be a debate over whether or not you can trust our app to not abuse your SMS service - and I'm not sure at this stage whether we'll say: "just trust us - if you don't want it don't use it", or if we'll take techies off of development and testing to get into never ending conversations to satisfy idle curiosities.

We're here for the long term. We value our reputation and credibility and wouldn't want Sukey's future destroyed for the sake of sending a couple of rogue SMS messages. So it may be that we choose to build our users' trust through building a history of trustworthyness rather than by getting dragged into an interminable series of internet flamewars.

It's a tough call, but it's one we'll need to make.

Sukey B

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-05T17:20:00Z

hi each.
part from 18 other things .... am also part of nottingham indymedia. I wrote to the sukey folks last week asking if it was configurable for other application, actions, and locations...... viz Nottingham. Reply was that its is too complicated [since still being developed] for us non-geeks to apply in other situations, until more user-friendly work need to be done. After the 26th and more work, i hope to bother them again. I was / am impressed with this application, seen similar in geocashing etc. Still not a majority of folks with smart phones out ther, but it is changing is so rapidly. I'm looking for 'models' that will give many infomation on how to get about, not just the few. I know that there will be those concerned at the police following such info. But the police already have such info with many lacal reports via the airwave radio.. It's us wot don't! Might help to redress balance.I look forward to this getting developed. I want one.
Very best all. Tash xx

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-05T17:11:38Z

Hamish Campbell:

Good you added that page as it makes the issues clear - though the language is a bit aggressive as this dose need to be a friendly dialog if it is to be useful

That page has been up a few days. It would have gone up earlier but we held back a few hours after emailing the content to spyblog at 6.30am for their comments or amendment prior to publication - the page went live at 4pm the same day. I'm sure we'd have had comment by now if the spyblog guys were unhappy with its content.

Sukey is designed to be predominantly mainstream - regular users with nothing to hide. There are, of course, benefits accruing to regular activists from its use - they too have nothing to hide. And if the crazies find a way to benefit from the app without compromising their own security - then that's up to them. But they certainly don't need us to tell them how or where to hide.

Hamish Campbell:

Thats a good point, the issue I was bring in was to do with the initial publicity on the lines of "just trust us, its secure" type thing.

I think we have a difference in perception between our target audiences/readers.

Mainstream protesters are not full time activists.

They're just normal people who go about their normal lives but want to know that if they attend a protest march they can return afterwards to their regular lives and not be bundled in with those they see as crazies as a result of having attended the protest.

They're not marching in the hope of getting the chance to set fire to something or have a dust up with some cops. They just want to show their support for the ideals of the protest. They have nothing to hide. In general they don't want, need or care about the technical details of how we anonymise their data- but if they do then the information is all there on the web site.

Hamish Campbell:

I think this project has a lot of possibility and it is becoming clear it is an "open project" rather than a "closed project" in terms of security.

When it is released as open-source - its then open for the community to build it in any direction, a diversity of strategies is the building block of all successful social change projects. Good to keep this in mind when answering mainstream friends/critics.

Not just open source, but libre (ie FLOSS under GPL) has been our goal from the outset. Thank you for your positive comments.

B

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-05T16:35:25Z

Bernie Gaus:

Good you added that page as it makes the issues clear - though the language is a bit aggressive as this dose need to be a friendly dialog if it is to be useful

Bernie Gaus:

i believe that people who criticise Sukey from a security perspective really don't understand what we're trying to do.

Sukey is about keeping peaceful protesters safe, informed, and mobile. We're not part of the anarchists toolkit - and nor do we want to be.

Thats a good point, the issue I was bring in was to do with the initial publicity on the lines of "just trust us, its secure" type thing.

Bernie Gaus:

We've had very encouraging feedback from people who used Sukey on the 29th and from people planning to come to the TUC protests on the 26th of March - which will be our next big supported protest.

Here's one example of many that exemplify all that Sukey is trying to achieve:

2/3/2011 9:06:03 xxxxxx@xxxxx.demon.co.uk "Hello. We are planning to be at the 26th March TUC demo. We would like to know how to avoid trouble and violence, from any quarter. We are both 60+ and there are health reasons for not being kettled or near violent people. Good luck with your work xxxxx & xxxxx xxxxxxx"

We've had similar messages from protesters who are scared about attending protests and feel that Sukey will help them.

Take a look at this blog: http://allbranwen.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/sukey-new-media-for-todays-protestors/ to see another example of who we're trying to help. The blogger's mum(!) has since been in touch and told us her very moving story, and has also offered her help for the future.

The data stored on Sukey is considerably less sensitive than that already held by the telcos and on twitter. Yet we store it more securely.

Go figure.

RE: Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-05T16:09:11Z

Disagree.

I'm involved with Sukey and we are not hiding from this argument. Indeed, we link to the spyblog entry twice from our website (http://sukey.org) - once on the Articles page, and once from Idiots warning page.

i believe that people who criticise Sukey from a security perspective really don't understand what we're trying to do.

Sukey is about keeping peaceful protesters safe, informed, and mobile. We're not part of the anarchists toolkit - and nor do we want to be.

We've had very encouraging feedback from people who used Sukey on the 29th and from people planning to come to the TUC protests on the 26th of March - which will be our next big supported protest.

Here's one example of many that exemplify all that Sukey is trying to achieve:

2/3/2011 9:06:03 xxxxxx@xxxxx.demon.co.uk "Hello. We are planning to be at the 26th March TUC demo. We would like to know how to avoid trouble and violence, from any quarter. We are both 60+ and there are health reasons for not being kettled or near violent people. Good luck with your work xxxxx & xxxxx xxxxxxx"

We've had similar messages from protesters who are scared about attending protests and feel that Sukey will help them.

The Guardian photographer who took pictures at HQ on Saturday said she was planning on coming on the 26th March with her children but was worried about the prospect of violence - did we think the demo would be family safe?

Take a look at this blog: http://allbranwen.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/sukey-new-media-for-todays-protestors/ to see another example of who we're trying to help. The blogger's mum(!) has since been in touch and told us her very moving story, and has also offered her help for the future.

Sukey helps to address a very real fear that keeps potential voices off of the street when they're needed the most. Why don't you support this? The data stored on Sukey is considerably less sensitive than that already held by the telcos and on twitter. Despite this we store the data more securely - and still you guys sit on your backsides, whingeing and lobbing in bricks.

Go figure.

ps Why don't one of you visionOnTv guys join us in a design session? Oh, wait a sec ..... ;-)

Issues around Sukey the protest app

2011-02-05T17:06:34Z

Many of the issues that face the Sukey project are shared by the project we are doing http://visionon.tv, as we are an " open project" and very much want to avoid a lot of the usability issues involved in "closed projects". Being open has huge advantages and being closed has advantages too - as activists we have to tread the path of most effect without being dogmatically pushed down one “true path”.

As the article's point out Sukey is presenting itself as secure where it isn’t, as its gateways are corporations that it has no control over. As all the input/output data goes through these corporations, Sukey is actually inherently on the "open project" side of the camp because of this. The developers face a choice, say this up-front and try and use the activist/public backlash to widen the adoption of openness, or refocus on alt-tec and accept the probably crippling effect of moving into the shadow world of limited usability/effectiveness this brings with it.

Is there a middle path? Maybe trying to weather the storm of public backlash through making visible the corporate/police state we actually live in, and at the same time try to challenge it? Ideas? Think there needs to be some truly open discussion on this.

Background
[url=https://p10.secure.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/spyblog/2011/01/29/sukey--protest-app-without-any-mobile-communications-data-anonymity.html
]http://spyblog.org.uk/
[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/02/inside-anti-kettling-hq
]Guardian
http://www.sukey.org

RE: Linking is currently a real failure in radical media sites

2011-08-12T15:09:56Z

http://www.counterfire.org/ is a progressive blog, it has no links to other radical media sites anywhere on its front page. Everything is a link back to there sight this is clearly a problem. It has about 176 results linking to it.

OK znet http://www.zcommunications.org/znet Richard loves them so do they link to anybody but them selves on the front page. Sadly not a single external link on there front page and no links to other radical media projects. This is clearly a sad failing of "mutual aid" am shore the are some essays on this subject inside the portal. On a postative note when they aggregated mainstream news storeys on internal pages these prominently link back to the sources, on the surfaces this is a good thing. BUT the currency of the web is the link so they are spending there link dollars propping up the mainstream they criticise... sad and bad.

Am starting to doubt these googal link URL's as About 272 results is what it says. maybe this is a new URL and the links are to an older one that possibly re-directs? OK after looking at DN! it is clear they have changed there page names with out thinking about this. Bad and sad...

Lets look at a prominent US news site http://www.democracynow.org/
NO LINKS TO ANY SITE BUT THERE'S not a single link to a story or project that isn't them on there front page. Now this is more like it for goggle links about 245,000 results well done DN! we need more like this but sadly this is a one way linking traffic.

Both sites highlight the issues of 20th century silo thinking that is holding back the building of a 21st century alternative to ailing traditional media outlets. It seams to me that linking is a useful issue to address to move radical projects froward.

RE: Linking is currently a real failure in radical media sites

2011-01-26T21:08:09Z

Lets look at some radical blogs

http://politicaldynamite.com/ a spin off from climatecamp?

They have no links to external sites above the fold, a twitter box give's a single latest update (not shore if search or there account?) they have a blog list after the fold. The are about 88 results that link to the site according to goggle.

http://brightgreenscotland.org/ is billed as the biggest green blog in Scotland

The have no links to external sites above the fold, the is a link list after the fold. The are about 224 results that link to the site according to goggle.

http://thethirdestate.net/ seams to be a general political blog?

There are no links to external sites above the fold, under the fold the is what looks like an aggregater called the buzz not shore if this is human moderated? it links to external storeys. It has about 142 links according to google

Lets finish off by looking at one of the granddaddy's of radical media http://www.schnews.org.uk

They don’t have any links to external sites above the fold. The nearest thing they have to external links is a calender after the fold. According to goggle about 521 link results.

This limited survey illustrates how the right-wing and mainstream are prominently and effectively linking to each other and all benefiting from it were the progressive/left are not. This is fascinating as the ideology of the right is selfishness and individualism and the left is supposedly co-operation. It would be hilarious if it didn’t make me won't to cry.

We should widen this very unscientific survey, please add your thoughts and some links of sites to look at to add to this discussion.

Let's make live streaming without ads happen!

2011-01-25T14:25:28Z

In recent months, visionOntv has embedded live streams of video covering important developing activist stories.

These streams have also come with very invasive adverts, both overlaid and inserts interrupting the action, added by this commercial streaming service.

Normally, of course, you will not find such ad content on visionOtv's site.

So is there a better way of covering grassroots news as it happens?......Serving video content costs money, but there are free servers out there with a commitment to free speech and the bandwidth to cope, There is also funding available to buy bandwidth without ads.

The main problem is that is NO OPEN SOURCE APPLICATION which is actually usable by non-techies to embed into their sites. NONE. The available are all too geeky to be used except by a very small group.

So is there anyone out there creating software which can be used by everyone, and embedded easily into anyone's site or blog?