media and citizen power: open africa summit
DESCRIPTION
A presentation for the 2012 Open Africa Summit in Zanzibar.TRANSCRIPT
@digiphile
radar.oreilly.com/alexh
Media & Citizen Power
We spread the knowledge of innovators around the world.
Technology publishing
Integrated media and conferences
Online publishing at Radar
Open source software
Makers and open source hardware
2012: a networked public sphere
Natural disasters
Open Journalism
#Sidibouzid
#Jan25
How did we get here?
In the 1990s, governments and civil society spread the Internet globally
In the 2000s, mobile phones and social networking connected us ever more
In the 2010s, big data will change everything again.
Open data enables citizens and media to be generative in new ways
Open Innovation
Platforms for citizens to self-organize
Image Credit: ITO World
Open Mapping
How do you measure success?
230 apps now use or are based on open health data
100 million iPads sold. Why?
Mistake: Focus only on “apps”
First Principles
Data platforms, not portals
Web services, not websites
Build open in from the start, as the default
Convene around open standards
Show your work
Keeping citizens safe
“Traffic on the NYC Health Department’s restaurant inspection site has gone from 10,000 hits per month to 124,000”
- New York Times
Make data find the people.
“Data-driven journalism is the future”
Source: Tim Berners-Lee in the Guardian
“Trendy but not new”-Simon Rogers, Guardian
“We used to call it CAR”-DeBarros
Bob Woodward, via Cliff1066
Now it’s “Hacks and Hackers”
Photo by Dennis Crowley, from “Hack to Hacker: Rise of the Journalist-Programmer”
Provisioning Data Journalism
“Make small things faster, make big things possible.”-Derek Willis, NYT
TimesMachine.nytimes.com cost a few hundred dollars. Hosted on Amazon EC2.
Robo-journalism?
Storytelling still matters.
“We use these tools to find and tell stories. We use them like we use a telephone. The story is still the thing.”
- Anthony DeBarros USA Today
Source: Data Journalism and the Big Picture
More than 36 interactive databases published Data sets account for 75% of overall traffic
[Source: CJR]
How can we get smarter?
Open by design. Beyond fellows.
Build on open standards
Listen
What does Open Journalism look like?
“A man dies at the heart of a protest: a reporter wants to discover the truth.
A journalist is seeking to contact anyone who can explain how another victim died while being restrained on a plane.
A newsroom has to digest 400,000 official documents released simultaneously.”
-Alan Rusbridger
Go real-time
Connect at the Right Time
Make the Web matter
Iterative feedback loops
Citizen-centric
Citizensourcing
Citizens as Sensors: Andhra Pradesh
Networked accountability
Personal data ownership
Need: Bridge analog and digital
Privacy challenges
Helps citizens who need it most
Bridge the data divide
Digital signage on the cheap
Government of the people, for the people, by the
people, with the people.