Greetings from Kuala Lumpur! This week I’m at the third World Electronic Media Forum, hosted by the Asia-Pacific Broadcast Union. The forum brings together policy makers, broadcast executives, academics, and journalists from around the world together to discuss the effects new technology has on information dissemination, with the hope being to form “a new vision for broadcasting in the information society.” The topics for the first day included user generated content, archival, and journalist safety – I’ll briefly summarize each session and then offer some analysis:
User Generated Content – This section was actually called The new challenges in broadcasting – Technology, content, regulation, but after the second presentation it was pure user generated content (UGC). UGC’s protagonist was played by Lieven Vermaele, Technical Director of the European Broadcasting Union. After a cogent discussion of the differences between institutionally controlled media (e.g. major news networks) and socially controlled media (e.g. blogs), Vermaele advocated for a merging of the two systems. UGC’s antagonist, Richard Porter, head of news at the BBC, argued that content from users should be held at arm’s length for lack of journalistic integrity and low quality – for Porter, UGC is only an accessory.
Archival – FIAT/AFTA is an organization devoted to rescuing the rapidly decaying video archives of the world. They were formed at the second World Electronic Media Forum in Tunis two years ago, and have been hard at work determining new digital archive standards, defining which physical archives are at risk and offering training programs to assist. Their work seemed pretty Euro-centric (and extremely committee-like) but they’d clearly put in a lot of work over the last few years.
Journalist Safety – Journalist deaths have increased yearly since 2002, and while reporters and cameramen were once considered neutral in conflict situations, they are now targeted in areas like Iraq and Afghanistan. There were some pretty vile stories told, including one about an Al Jazeera cameraman who has been locked in Guantanamo for the last 6 years without trial. Scary, sad stuff.
The UGC session that opened the forum was by far the most interesting. It seemed to me that the two main characters were advocating for similar things, but as always failed to see the new content inside any type of business model other than the one they were in currently. Vermaele described a future where institutional and social media blur (a future which Porter wholly rejected). My money’s on Porter, if solely for the hubris of traditional media sources – while you can currently see institutional groups like Minnesota Public Radio and (oddly enough) the BBC cherrypick the most advantageous parts of social media, those traditional media organizations would never slum it with social media (at least until a few more lean decades pass for newspapers).
All in all, a great day. Tomorrow will focus on accessibility, any-place media, ‘the fracturing of the public sphere’ an the links between politics and media. More then!
The second day of the WEMF focused on accessibility, ‘any-place’ media, the fracturing of the public sphere, and interactions between governments and media groups. As with yesterday, first a brief summary of the day’s activities, then a short analysis.