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A project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program
Social media applications for government are becoming more popular, but significant numbers of federal employees and agencies are not making use of those tools, according to a new Market Connections Inc. research survey of government social media use.
For the sake of our children, and for the competitiveness of the nation, America ought to be aggressively developing a new category of educational content, delivered using high-speed Internet access.
A deep libertarian streak might be the only bridge uniting the perpetually feuding tribes of journalists and bloggers. So it’s actually not surprising that outlets as different as the Los Angeles Times and Buzzmachine blogger Jeff Jarvis expressed disdain toward the FTC “staff discussion draft” on “potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism.”
“Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy & Citizen Participation in the Digital Age” was the opening workshop at the June 11-15 League of Women Voters National Convention in Atlanta Georgia attended by three members of the LWV of Montgomery County.
The journalism industry is in turmoil. The digital revolution has hit content providers of all kinds, changing their business models and in some cases altering the nature of the underlying content itself. Music has seen this most starkly. But print content, most particularly newspapers, have also faced significant disruption. Digitization and the communications revolution have placed in the consumer/user the tools to access the content they want, when they want it, at little or no cost.
“Media literacy” concepts are generally part of a major effort to push adoption of voluntary “Common Core State Standards” for English and literacy in history, social, studies, science and technical subjects, an initial line-by-line comparison of drafts shows. But do the standards go far enough?
The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: “Draw the picture.” (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it’s often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can’t draw a picture of what you’re trying to explain, you probably don’t understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems also helps everyone understand where the knowledge gaps are, or where unsolved problems are buried, or where contradictions exist.
Last week FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski presented “The Third Way: A Narrowly Tailored Broadband Framework,” an approach that would reclassify broadband services in order to preserve the consensus on the FCC’s role in protecting Net Neutrality. In the wake of the Comcast ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the third way approach would distinguish broadband transmissions from broadband “computing functionality”, and tailor Title II’s requirements to “the internet age”.
KnightComm is pleased to provide an advance download of the Aspen Institute Communication and Society Program’s publication, Of the Press: Models for Transforming American Journalism. The report addresses a critical aspect of the Knight Commission’s deliberations: the need to develop innovative business models for “sustainable, meaningful, local journalism”. It is written by Michael R. Fancher, [...]
The Federal Communications Commission’s release last month of the National Broadband Plan holds profound implications for all of us who are working to expand opportunity in America. As the Internet becomes a gateway to democratic participation, economic opportunity, and human expression, it is critical to the future of our country—and our philanthropic missions—to ensure that everyone has high-speed, or “broadband,” access to an open Internet. That is a central goal of the federal government’s new plan, which, among other things, also seeks to expand the wireless spectrum for mobile devices and create a digital literacy corps to help more people use online tools.
The time has come for new thinking and aggressive action to ensure the information opportunities of America’s people, the information health of its communities, and the information vitality of our democracy. Information technology is changing our lives in ways that we cannot easily foresee.
Whatever the future of print, the main future of the media will be digital. Anyone who cares about the future of our democratic society, let alone the future of print in general and magazines and/or iPads in particular, should take up the challenge of debating and discussing — and, we would add, codifying — the values, standards and practices that ought to prevail online.
One key recommendation in the National Broadband Plan was that the government support a scheme to wire hundreds of thousands of “anchor institutions” with 1Gbps fiber. The move would mean that schools, libraries, colleges, and community centers in every town in the country could eventually have a fat pipe and a future-proof fiber connection.
The Aspen Institute will advance the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, including universal broadband access, thanks to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Institute, awarded a two-year, $800,000 grant, will commission policy papers and convene follow-up activities to move many of the Knight Commission’s 15 recommendations to actionable steps.
Every day, the federal government releases vast amounts of useful information about every aspect of our nation and how government works. This public information has a deep impact on almost every aspect of American life. Some of it can be used to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, or have a profound effect on health, economic development and commerce. The problem is, much of this government information is too often hard to find, difficult to understand, expensive to obtain in useful formats, and available in only a few locations. There is a solution to this problem: the Internet.
