Beyond-broadcast-participatory-democracy
Beyond Broadcast session on enabling participatory democracy
11:30-12:30 Panel II: Participatory Democracy
MODERATOR:
Drew Clark, Center for Public Integrity
PANELISTS: Jennifer Harris, Center for Digital Democracy Chuck DeFeo, Salem Communications and Townhall.com Tad Hirsch, MIT Media Lab
Here are Bill Densmore's rough notes of the Saturday morning panel at the Beyond Broadcast conference at MIT on Saturday, Feb. 24.
Tad Hirsch: Talks about what he is doing in Boston and overseas. he gives a sense of what is possible in terms of onging distributed conversations.
Chuck DeFeo: He things Beyond Broadcast was one of the most appropriate names for a conference he had heard. Broadcast is declining; it's just a question of how long it will take. He used to work for political candidates. How do we use talk radio and interactive media to pull people into the process? "When is it going to be the 1960 election." That was when TV became the dominant media for political candidates. Everyone thought it was a good thing. But he thinks now it was a bad thing. Before that grassroots were the norm.
"Today it is an amazing, new thing." The last half of the 20th century was dominated by broadcast. He talks about Tom Patterson's book, "Vanishing Voter." He hopes there will be a new version.
it was the electorate driven by the notion of an audience to be talked to -- a one to many model. Now candiates are engaging "in how do you use a many to many model to bring people back into the process?"
Jennifer Harris: The notion of how we serve the public interest is going to have to change. "Our theory of public participation is going to have to change in terms of how we act." Will have to look at levels of measurement. The number of people turning out to vote doesn't get at it. So the definition of public interest overall is going to have to change. New technologies are giving new outlets.
Q: How could that work? Would could a public agency do to understand better what the public wants?
Harris: It would have to be listening a lot more. Government has to participate.
Some questions asked by the physical and online audience
Some questions asked by the audience:
Amanda: We talk a lot about the responsibility of media organizations and institutions. Given the changing media ecosystem, do we, as citizens, have new responsibilities?
Shava Nerad/Shava Suntzu (SL): Does the concept of "public interest" change as media changes? Is our concept of "public interest" the same as it was some decades ago? Should it be?
Drew Clark asks: Is the blogging world going to eat up the traditional norms of journalism.
DeFao: Of course bloggers are journalists. There are bloggers holding traditional journalists accountable. "And I think
that's a good thing."
Tad Hirsch: Just think of it as wierd hybrids, not as anyone competing with anyone else.
Audience member asks: What is the impact of the net on local politics?
Hirsch says local activism on local issues such as in Boston is definitely replacing activism in federal elections.
Audience member talks about Peter Barnes' new book: Capitalism 3.0. He wants help figuring out a financial model for these
types of media organizations, for campaigns, for whoever wants to use it, that would actually create instead of tepees, but
bricks that would not go away at the end of the year. people would contribute, the money woudl e distributed in high interest
areas. An example would be the parent-teacher organizations.
Ted Hirsch: "What you are talking about, I think ... is that there is essentially a model of funding work for hire projects.
The thing gets built or not and then the money goes away. The other appraoch to funding and that is what the right has been
really good at for the last few decades is supporting capacity rather than specific projects." Funding think tanks, etc.
Chuck Defeo: He and Zephyr Teachout are going to work on this on a more organized way. On a national level there is more passion. Things more like MoveOn.org, which started as a tepee and became a brick.
Jennifer North: Locally, people still are passionate about what goes on at the national level. But locally, people feel like they have more access to their government. Need to get more people in at the local level.
Moderator: How can politicians who want to do something different with the Internet, how can they stand out?
Jennifer North: America has kind of a crush on Obama because he has embraced the fan culture.
Chuck DeFao -- he has advised an organization -- people involve themselves in a cause they believe in and a man/woman they trust to move it forward. There is a blending what you choose to identify with.
COMMENTS FROM AUDIENCE: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/list.php
Steven Clift: I track "wired election officials" ... there actually are some - http://dowire.org - Here is one: http://www.readmyday.co.uk/maryreid
Moderator question: Can politics ever be anything more than a sports contest?
Jennifer North: Politicians are still nervous about the who participatory piece. "Right now they are just covering their ears and not trying to do that."
Ted Hirsch: "It is clearly not a technical questions. I think we need to get really, really clever about funding altnerative fuding schemes for elections."
Chuck DeFeo: There just isn't evidence of more participation. People are more interested in getting dinner and getting to the soccer match. "I've dedicated my career to how do we use this web to pull people into the political process." .... "it's probably a good thing that a majority of Americans are more concerned with [those things.]"
Jennifer North: "I would have to disagree with that."
Chuck DeFeo: But my final point is the internet is allowing people to do both.
Moderator: But the fact the Internet has eased that has caused politicians to devalue it.
