I am sitting in the Munich airport - tired, yes, but incredibly energized as I reflect on your remarkable dedication to our DOTCOM program these past many months.
We have laughed, cried, debated, collaborated, eaten, traveled with and worked hard with one another - and it is hard to believe our official time together is drawing to a close.
Your last assignment, as you know, is to finish and post to our 123...REEL ACTION PHDOTCOM2010 YouTube page your final video reflection. Please do so by Monday, April 19, so you can receive your official DOTCOM certificates and bring some closure to the program, for you.
Here are a few examples to help you.
Every final DOTCOM video is different, with its own power.
Enjoy, and remember - keep the SOCIAL in "social media" - do great work in your communities and countries!
A big SHOUT OUT to all of our DOTCOM students for FLIPping our conference - we are working feverishly to edit and upload as much of the conference as we can during the next 18 hours. You can access all of the keynotes at our PHDOTCOM 2010 YouTube page:
Here are my brief remarks on the DOTCOM program (we started late and the Internet wasn't working, so I delivered a very abbreviated talk):
And here is Kevin Anderson, formerly of THE GUARDIAN newspaper:
After a day of planning and exploring in greater Tbilisi, Georgia, the SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SOCIAL CHANGE conference kicks off tomorrow, and runs through Saturday.
Every one of our DOTCOM students has a role to play in making this conference a success, and we hope to bring you as much of the conference as we can via our Flip cameras, expertise, and the power of social media.
If you are using Twitter and Tweetdeck, follow the conference stream at #tbilisitalk.
And stay tuned for YouTube conference videos in the next 48 hours.
Photo of Dr. Rob Williams and "Yak" - Downtown Yerevan, Armenia; April 2010.
As part of the International SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SOCIAL CHANGE Conference. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OVERVIEW: PH International's DOTCOM program stands for "Developing Online Tools for Civic Outreach and Mobilization." DOTCOM promotes media education, an essential set of life skills for the 21st century that teach students how better to access, analyze, evaluate and produce their own media. Second, DOTCOM encourages young people to dive into the world of multimedia production, producing and presenting films through the medium of digital video that tackle current issues of global significance in a personal and powerful way. Finally, DOTCOM supports cross-cultural understandings and emerging leadership for global youth, connecting bright and talented young people in countries around the world and providing ways for them to work together on projects that matter in their communities.
Introduction: At this conference, we are posing a question that is enormous, complex, and deeply important:
In what CONCRETE and MEASURABLE WAYS might 21st century social media tools support SUSTAINABLE and REPLICABLE SOCIAL CHANGE?
After several years of using social media tools in my own work, as a media educator, college professor, journalist, and citizen - the jury is still out for me.
Idea #1: Humans possess the most complex living things in the known universe: the brain.
Idea #2: With our brains, humans have created the most powerful media culture the world has ever seen, and turned over most of its MOJO to very powerful players, including: GOVERNMENTS INTERESTED IN SELF-PRESERVATION and FOR-PROFIT CORPORATIONS with "nothing to tell but everything to sell" (George Gerbner).
Here's a simple example of what can happen when our brains interface with the most powerful media culture in world history.
Idea #3: New 21st century "social media" tools - Blogging, Facebook, Twitter,YouTube, et. al. - are touted as a powerful solution to the problems created by concentrated corporate and governmental media ownership.
Here's Michael Wesch's well-known "The Machine is Us/ing Us" video exploring the power of Web 2.0.
And here's DOTCOM "green screen" phenom Jacob's pro-social media film.
"There is no recipe for the successful use of social media tools. Instead, every working system is a mix of social and technological factors." - Clay Shirky
It is important that we do not lose sight of the SOCIAL, especially when trying to use social media tools to foster social change across cultures, and even try to collectively engage in conflict resolution.
In other words, "Face to Face" (F2F) interactions across cultures are vital, if often difficult.
Idea #5: Our 2 year DOTCOM pilot program with high school students from 3 different countries - the United States, Azerbaijan, and Armenia - offers some useful lessons about how we might use social media to support social change.
DOTCOM's goals included:
1. TEACH students how to deepen their understanding of media's power using 21st century media literacy education pedagogy;
2. BRING TOGETHER students from three different countries - in both Web 2.0 social media online and F2F formats - to engage in cross-cultural conversations;
3. FACILITATE collaborative digital video production projects in an immersive F2F setting;
4. PROMOTE cross-cultural and educational visits to all three countries using PH International's "host family" approach.
Step #1 (Summer/Fall 2008): PH International DOTCOM project director Elizabeth Metraux secured U.S. State Department funding through a competitive grant application process, and our DOTCOM team - Elizabeth in the U.S., program manager Kanan Jafarli in Azerbaijan, and program manager Aya Zakarian in Armenia, recruited 90 students - 30 each from our 3 countries.
NOTE: All 90 students created and started working on their own BLOGGER blogs right away - a way of helping determine our 30 final DOTCOM project participants. You gotta be in it to win it.
Step #3 (Spring 2009): We selected our thirty final DOTCOM participants and asked them to introduce themselves to us using the power of digital video, YouTube, and a "90 second elevator pitch." Here's the simple pilot I shared, using photos of all of our DOTCOM participants.
Step #5 (Summer 2010): We gathered in the United States (Washington, D.C. and Vermont) for our first of two cross-cultural exchanges, complete with host family stays, and completed our three week digital video REEL ACTION three-country collaborative film projects, FLIPpin' amazing!
1,2,3...REEL ACTION!
And remember, stay with your REEL ACTION film groups. Please. Don't abandon them.
Here's a final REEL ACTION film.
Step #6 (Fall 2009): After early fall blog reflections on our intense DOTCOM summer together, and continued Web 2.0 dialogue, we launched a second digital video project within each of our three countries, called MOBILE EYES, designed to leverage the emerging media mojo of "smart phone" technology, AND to test our DOTCOM students to see if they could plan and produce Web 2.0 projects on their own in their own communities.
Here's a quick overview of the project.
Each of you, working on your own and/or with friends, family and community members, will design a funny, educational and/or provocative 20-30 second film that focuses on a SPECIFIC health issue and publicizes ONE resource/organization to go to for more information. (For example, you might choose to make a 20-30 second film about poor water quality in your city, then tell the viewer about one organization to go to to find out more information and to help SOLVE the problem.)
And here's Armenian DOTCOMers' Niko and Lilit's MOBILE EYES video.
Step #7 (Winter/Spring 2010): After the holidays, prior to our second of two cross-cultural exchanges, we launched a final digital video project asking DOTCOM students to reflect on a question similar to the one we are exploring at this conference. Here it is:
"Drawing on all of your DOTCOM experiences online and face-to-face during the past 12 months, explain how the power of social media has changed your life and your perspective on the world. Be as specific as possible, in a 1-2 minute short YouTube'able film."
I am waiting on the results, and in the meantime, have had some remarkable F2F conversations and debates with DOTCOM'ers during the past 2 weeks of trans-Caucasus travel about the promise and peril of using social media for social change.
Step #8: Now What?
THE BIG QUESTION: How do we measure the success of social media for social change?
1. AGGREGATED TRAFFIC DATA? (Google's answer): For example, do we at DOTCOM count the number of visits to our web sites? DOTCOM's YouTube page alone has had close to 10,000 total upload views. Factor in our Facebook, Twitter, Netvibes, and Blogger visits for all 91 blogs, and we may be on to something. Or not.
2. ASSESSABLE SKILLS/MEASURABLE KNOWLEDGE? (Champlain College's answer): All thirty of our DOTCOM high school students are now adept at blogging, tweeting, and producing and distributing digital videos. They can now go and teach these skills in their communities, and indeed, our Armenian DOTCOM'ers are already doing this, going above and beyond the expectations of this DOTCOM pilot program. And certainly, all of our DOTCOM students have a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the power of media to shape their understandings of their world. Nare writes: "Some weeks ago Armenian DOTCOM'ers decided to organize trainings about Web 2.0 tools for sharing our knowladge with Armenian studens. As we all were very busy we made our presentations by the help of online tools. As a result of it we succeeded, because most of them realized that social media can be useful for them."
3. SPECIFIC CITIZEN ACTION CAMPAIGNS? (Citizen Activists' Answer): Do we expect our DOTCOM'ers to go out and start campaigns like this one by concerned Yerevan citizens? The goal is to try and convince the Armenian government not to destroy the beloved Moscow Cinema Open-Air Hall in downtown Yerevan and replace it with yet another church, a campaign driven in no small measure by Facebook and flash mobs, with close to 3,000 citizens petitioning the government with FB signatures alone in just a few weeks' time.
A sign reading "No Destroy" (literally translated from Armenian); downtown Yerevan; April 2010.
4. CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUE?: Indeed, if there is to be greater understanding and potential peace between the citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia (or any two nations or groups currently at odds), then social media, properly applied, can support this. But be warned, like all media experiences, the use of social media and a program like this is a double-edged sword. Some in our DOTCOM group pointed out that meeting the "Other" face-to-face demonstrated the humanity, the fragility, the flesh-and-blood nature of said "Other." We sometimes assume that this is a uniformly positive outcome, until we realize that such a process also demonstrates how fallible, how fragile, we can be as human beings, as well, as other DOTCOM'ers explained.
But I am an optimist, so I will leave you with some wisdom from our DOTCOM'ers about the use of social media for social change, thoughts shared at their own DOTCOM blogs during the past 24 hours.
Gunka writes: "Presently, there are groups on Facebook and other platforms for instance which connects people around generic issues. I think such generic approaches make it difficult to translate the ideas into tangible realities."
Medine echoes this "reality check": "I partly agree with the idea that social media impacts social change. I think it is too early for expecting large scale positive changes brought about by social media. Another issue is that social media is not always used for POSITIVE social change.. For instance, use of social media by private interest groups or lobbyists to disadvantage of vulnurable population groups. Yet another problem with use of social media is dependent on internet access, which is not equally accessable over the globe in terms of number of users, internet speed, and acceptance of the changes by broader communities and more importantly by decision makers."
David writes: "I pray that my involvement in DOTCOM and the work that we have done with social media have inspired my peers to become the next generation of free speech activists. I have seen concrete evidence of a change in the DOTCOM group mentality, and I hope that this change is evident to all as we prepare to express ourselves through social media at the Social Media for Social Change Conference."
Lusine writes: I found a Facebook group that helps young and talented artists to organize their first exhibitions and it helps them to develop for future.S o we can do helpful and interesting works by media. Let's chnage the world by media."
Marine points to the work of Mariam Sukhudyan: "Who is a young activist, after visiting one of special schools in Armenia, reported child abuse cases at the school. So she decided to turn to court to help the children. But soon everybody thought that she was to blame and everything got so serious that she was about to be arrested. She shared the information in social networks, helped children to put their stories in those networks and it raised awareness about existing problems in the school. In the result thousands of people joined her and stood up for justice."
Ergun notes: "Social media itself is in a process of evolution. It certainly enables people to join around common causes."
Jacob writes: "I was on my Student Government, and we were making a push for donating money to UNICEF. In the olden days, we would just post pamphlets around the school, pamphlets that no one would look at. However, we were able to send notices out on Facebook reminding people to donate, and the next day, we recieved a record amount in the annual UNICEF drive. If used correctly, Web 2.0 can be a powerful factor in making change happen."
May we all find ways to cross borders and to make change happen, using social media, in the months ahead.
Remember our question for our conference:
In what CONCRETE and MEASURABLE WAYS might 21st century social media tools support SUSTAINABLE and REPLICABLE SOCIAL CHANGE?
And don't forget to dance!
Photo of Qobustan petroglyphs; outside of Baku, Azerbaijan; April 2010.
