I'm sitting next to Dan Gillmor, Craig Newmark, and Marcus Xiang, who runs a Chinese mobile blogging service. We're listening to the opening session of the We Media conference.
One of the conference organizers, Andrew Nachison, is talking about the incredible diversity of voices increasingly available online through blogs, wikis and other forms of online participatory media.
Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network is talking about citizens' media surrounding the Katrina disaster. Last night he wrote a blog post summarizing a talk he gave about an issue that has concerned me for a while: the danger that unless more members of the citizenry have easy access to technology and the ability to use it, "We Media" is in danger of becoming "Elite Media." Andy writes:
I spoke for about an hour about the the digital divide and its relationship with participatory media, or "We Media" as it's sometimes known. I made the argument that the participatory media phenomenon will remain skewed to well-off, well-educated populations as long as disenfranchised groups, such as low-income populations, people of color and people with disabilities, don't have equal access or the skills to participate. Unless we do more to bridge the digital divide, particularly in terms of 21st century skills and media literacy, marginalized groups will find it harder and harder to engage in civic participation effectively.
This is a serious problem. Until a lot more is done to address this problem, we are never going to hear the true spectrum of Global Voices, let alone American Voices.
UPDATE: Farai Chideya is pointing out that a lot of the biggest news stories happen among populations who are "at the caboose of the digital train". This means that media companies wanting to collaborate with citizens and facilitate real conversations about what's happening on the ground have real incentive to help bridge the digital divide.
During Q&A for the first "We News" panel, Watts Wacker pointed out that the panelists were from the BBC, CBS, AP, and NPR. He asks, are you the wrong people to be talking about this subject?
I asked whether U.S. media companies are doing anything to help bridge the digital divide in this country. It was pretty clear from the answers that AP and CBS are definitely not. NPR appears to be doing more to try and bring people into the conversation from communities that haven't been online before.
technorati tag: We Media
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