La Buena Vida is a great look at our nation’s practices and policies from another pair of eyes. I do enjoy hearing the way media outlets in other countries feel about the United States (such as Russia Today) because however biased their media is toward their own country’s interests, it’s still an entirely new perspective on issues that often aren’t even addressed here in the states.
In viewing video interviews on the La Buena Vida site, I was stuck by how similar the Latin American interviewees views were to ours regarding many of our major issues as a nation. A 30-year-old mother from Columbia pointed out that her idea of democracy would be policy that focuses more on prenatal care as well as better education and health opportunities for children, an opinion that most forward thinking people in the United States would share. A man from Mexico City, Mexico pointed out how, as a powerful country, the U.S. exerts its influence over less powerful countries and often interferes with business policy in other countries. Many people in America do not know this, and projects such as La Buena Vida that allow us to delve into the views and observations of others outside our own culture is extremely valuable in forming different opinions about the policy, propaganda, and concentration of media we are faced with every day in our own country. The more the globalization of participatory media hurtles forward, the more important projects such as these will be in shaping policy that is not only best for our own country, but the world.
The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank had some fascinating first hand account details of some of our nation’s worst storms. In Coming Home And Facing the Aftermath, the author mentions never seeing so many M16 assault rifles. How terrifying! Another author, Shelby, mentioned that during Hurricane Andrew, “people had come down from Orlando and Tallahassee and were selling bags of ice for 100 dollars a bag.” That is so awful! All of these little detail stories from people who experienced these events are valuable assets to logging data in order to remember what can happen during storms such as these, how negative situations such as this can affect people, and what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen next time.
I posted a lot about Post Secret last week since I didn’t know we would be covering it! It’s a wonderful project, everyone should send in a postcard. Free your secrets!
Through exploring these databases I had some questions to toss out to the class:
For the purpose of databases such as this, should we be encouraging citizen journalism to a certain extent, due to how valuable much of this information can be in remembering significant events?
In encouraging citizen journalism, how to we separate or decipher who is exaggerating the situations or scenarios and who isn’t? Is there currently even a way to do this?
Could digital database projects with interview formats featuring similar questions across the board such as La Buena Vida, work as a way to solve many of the problems currently facing the U.S.? If we asked American citizens all over the country about how to solve issues in the healthcare system, education reform, and the corrupt nature of Washington D.C., could we form a data base with viable answers and solutions to propel more action from our own government?
Really interesting question there at the end. I think everyday citizens can often have some of the best insight into social issues. What it would look like if there were database projects addressing every major social issue in the world. What genius would come out of it?! Increasingly politicians are so far removed from the realities for the majority of the population, perhaps this would be a way to help them better understand what they really need to do to create a better world for the people that they represent. It’s a nice thought at least.
What could be really beneficial if there was ultimately an aggregated summary of ideas and lessons learned that could be created out of these databases. I know this would diminish the artistic component of the projects, I just wonder how we could end up gleaning the most important chunks in order to make them usable for the future.
Hey Lauren: My private post raised questions similar to yours about reliability of citizen journalism, particularly as it relates to blogs. When is a blogger credible? Is his/her information reliable? To who is it attributed?
I find myself less concerned about these questions, however, when viewing a digital archive such as The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. There are so many voices, viewpoints and stories. Memories and stories collected around a central situation or event like this somehow seem to validate each other. That’s probably not true in reality, but the sense of digital community these stories create lends it the perception of authenticity. The collection is an expression of personal experience and emotion – and while there are certainly political statements that may or many not be accurate within these expressions, overall the collection “feels” credible.
I apologize for a less-than-concrete explanation.
I agree Lindsey, I think politicians are really out of touch with the people and I am always inspired by my bus or MAX conversations with strangers in Portland. I talked to a couple on the MAX from Utah and one of them said that every bill in Congress should be required to fit on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper, saying that they should be able to explain what the bill is and does in that amount of space, which I did think was genius! There are so many great ideas floating around and the American people really seem to get it, I just wish there was a way to capture all of those great thoughts in one digital space to really continue a conversation.
I agree with you about the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank – there are SO many responses and first hand accounts that I think the overall collection does feel credible. That’s a great observation that I hadn’t thought about, so I’m glad you pointed it out!
Lauren I think you bring up an interesing question of how much citizen journalism should we really be relying on. With citizen journalists we can get deeper into some topics as there will be people who are more invested, have more experence, or can get access that regular journalists can get. But I think we need to be careful with how much we come to rely on citizen journalists, inevitably they will most likely be filled with bias or a poor story crafting that professional journalists have.
I would toss out this question to you all in this thread and in Grace’s — Could I have programmed WITNESS and ENGAGE MEDIA in the Database Week…or HDMB in “User-Generated Media?”
How might the lenses have changed or not? Is WITNESS or ENGAGE a database available to journalists for sourcing?
I definitely think Witness and Engage could be excellent sources for journalists, because as Brett so rightly pointed out, citizen journalists are often able to get closer to issues that are personally affecting them. Although we had trouble with the quality of some of our citizen journalist multimedia projects, perhaps that means it’s our job as professionals in the field to filter through and find the story that needs to be told, allowing us to then contact the citizen journalists to come in and create a more professional, well rounded media piece. Perhaps the future of professional journalism involves teamwork between citizens who are close to the action and those of us in the professional media arena willing to listen.