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Research Conversation: 'Network Places' Speaker: Fred Johnson

ABSTRACT
What local media cultural institutions need to be adapted or evolved in order to create a democratic network society? In the context of the emergence of a networked society and media culture, local public, community and alternative media institutions are often portrayed in binary oppositional ways: either as early forerunners of the participatory, social network media -- resting on a continuum with the social web -- or as the moribund remnant of broadcasting, receding into the past along with the “old media” system. Like all media institutions, local public and community media are struggling to find their path into the networked future. But they are also vital institutions in our communities now, supporting democratic development through community collaboration, adopting and leveraging new media technologies to engage underserved populations, and undertaking community and economic development. Despite inconsistent government policies and regulations these media continue to grow and develop. Where? -- The question, “where are public and community media?”, is often answered in two ways: one, as a geographic “place”, a neighborhood, town, city, county, or, region, and the second, as a “virtual” community, a social network or community of common interest that is not particularly associated with a geographic place.


BIO
Fred Johnson is a communication policy activist and researcher, documentary maker, and teacher. He is a former Director of the Community Media program at UMass Boston. Much of his work has been focused on social issues, media politics and relationships of geography, constructed social space, communications and culture. Johnson's documentary work has been broadcast on the Learning and Discovery Channels, WNET- New York, Kentucky Educational Television, BBC 2 and BBC's World Service. He has been a practitioner of citizen engaged media and community media for over 30 years in numerous settings. As a recipient of a Television Arts Fellowship from the Fulbright Commission he produced and directed documentaries for the BBC in London in the 90s that were cutting-edge experiments in participatory media. As a researcher and writer Johnson has frequently explored the convergence of citizen media and networked communications. Notably with the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture’s Digital Directions project, a national planning process funded by the Ford Foundation exploring the impact of digital media on the world of non-commercial media arts; and with the Benton Foundation in a 2006 survey of US community media practices in the digital era, “What’s Going on in Community Media.” He is a co-founder of Media Working Group Inc.


Link to CV [it downloads immediately]
http://mwg.org/docstore/FJOHNSONP2CV09.pdf