Center for Social Media

The Diversifying Participation conference held at the University of California, San Diego on Feb. 18-20 and headed by USC’s Henry Jenkins, marked the consolidation of a research field, digital learning. Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and showcasing many MacArthur-funded projects, the conference featured creative overlaps between educators, youth media practitioners, digital designers, gamers, nonprofit institutions and funders. The overcrowded space—this was one hot ticket—was crammed with panels, so I can’t claim to have even sampled the best, but there was a lot to learn. Our panel on fair use for digital education was alive with questions about negotiating students’ desires to sample the world of copyrighted expression for their remixes and commentaries. Sasha Constanza-Chock (who…

This article was co-authored by Katie Donnelly. Over the past few months, we've been presenting MediaShift readers with a picture of a more dynamic, engaged, public media future. But how are Public Media 2.0 projects measuring their success in informing and engaging publics? Embracing Digital: A Review of Public Media Efforts Across the United States, a report by Gupta Consulting, gives us an idea of the scope of the challenge: Very few stations define success with concrete metrics. Most examples are anecdotal. ("I just have a sense.") What they consider to be "successful" is very subjective. Those that do have an idea of what success means to them include metrics such as page views, unique users, and calls into station…

Currently on NPR you can listen to Weekend Edition's report on Fair Use Day. Center's Director Pat Aufderheide is interviewed as well as other experts such as Gigi Sohn and Johnathan McIntosh. The piece originally aired Saturday, February 13. Listen to it now! When Fair Use Isn't Fair To some in Hollywood and the music industry, there's a fine line between using movie and audio clips to create new works and flat-out copyright infringement. Joel Rose reports on the some of the intricacies in fair-use law.

Where is Your Line?, a project that will be demoed at the soon-to-be-rescheduled Making Your Media Matter conference, has partnered with MTV to have an open conversation about the recognition of abuse and sexuality among teenagers. Nancy Schwartzman, who heads up this project, wrote the following on the project's website: Since its launch, our team has been watching MTV’s “A Thin Line,” a campaign, dedicated to raising awareness of “Digital Abuse,” and helping teens untangle normal versus unhealthy relationship dynamics. They focus on how cell phones can amplify and exacerbate abusive behaviors. Some of my favorite slogans are: It’s a thin line between attentive/obsessive, curious/controlling, love/abuse. I was thinking that we over here at The Line Campaign, have a lot…

The Students for a Free Culture conference, hashtag #fcx, drew participants from throughout the U.S., who negotiated filthy weather on their way to Washington, D.C. Organizer Ben Moskowitz congratulated them not only for making their way through the snow, but also for recognizing the importance of Washington, D.C. for people who care about copyright and creativity. Students for a Free Culture started out in 2003 when a couple of Swarthmore students hacked into Diebold company emails showing how shaky and riggable electronic voting machines were. The organization now has dozens of chapters all over the country and internationally, and it focuses on making information in the higher educational environment as open and accessible as possible. Saturday was full of great…

On Monday night, I'm cohosting the first of what we hope will become a weekly chat about public media 2.0. Karen Everhart of Current explains: Public media advocates are experimenting with a new kind of forum: holding a live simultaneous chat using Twitter, the microblogging social network. The first chat is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 15, 2010, at 8 p.m. Eastern. To prepare, organizers are soliciting ideas for discussion via Twitter. Interested people can tweet their suggestions using the hashtag #pubmedia (and read others’ ideas by searching for #pubmedia). To participate, follow @pubmedia for regular updates and to join the Feb. 15 chat. For the Twitter-averse, there are alternative channels: the blog PubMediaChat.org has a feed of the Twitter posts,…

In DC and sick of sitting around your house watching the snow blow? Join us on Thursday night, 6:30 at Busboys and Poets (14th and V) for the launch of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media! Hope to see you there.

We apologize for the inconvenience that canceling the Making Your Media Matter conference might have caused some attendees, but given the current weather conditions in the area, we are assured this decision was for the best. We have not yet decided on a rescheduled date for the conference, but it will likely be later this spring. All registrations will be honored for the rescheduled date. If you are unable to come to the new date when it is announced, we will begin processing refunds on registration. We will be back in touch soon with more details regarding the rescheduled conference.

Making Your Media Matter is postponed. It was a tough decision, and we thought until today that we could still hold the event. But the combination of more snow, American University closings (and the possibility of more), airport closings (and the possibility of more), and transportation chaos all around the DC area convinced us that postponement would be the wiser choice. We don’t think even a wonderful event is worth taking crazy risks to get here. And we really don’t want you coming here to find out that we can’t open the doors! I’m really sorry about inconveniencing you. I’m also sorry I won’t be spending Thursday and Friday getting inspired by the amazing people who come to the conference…

Due to the inclement weather, New America Foundation is closed today and they are not able to host in-person attendees. The previously scheduled conference, "Making Media Work" will not be held. This event, however, is proceeding as scheduled in a webcast-only format. You can tune in on this page at 12:15 ET / 9:15 PT today. Please join in the conversation via Twitter -- use the hashtags of #beyondecho and #mpinaf. The economics of media have been turned upside down in recent years, and many organizations are still struggling to make sense of the new landscape. Authors Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke focus on the rise of a new progressive media in their just-published book, Beyond the Echo Chamber,…