Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Media Center (IMC). Established by a number of independent and alternative media
organizations and activists in 1999 to provide grass-roots coverage of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, the IMC is a network of collectively
run media outlets with the common purpose of creating and disseminating radical
but accurate reportage. It acted as an Internet clearinghouse of information for
journalists, offering the latest reports, photos and audio and video footage. The IMC
produced a series of five documentaries, uplinked daily to satellite and distributed
to public-access TV stations throughout the US. In the year following the Seattle
protests, decentralized and autonomous networks of media activists established other
independent media centres in London, Canada, Mexico City, Prague, Belgium, France
and Italy. For Pickard (2006) and Downey (2007), Indymedia activists have succeeded
in actualizing radical democratic practices in unprecedented ways, although in the
long term the corporate colonization and state censorship of the Internet may not
only lead to a greater fragmentation of the public sphere and a real erosion of its
democratic potential. For the moment, though, sites such as PR Watch, Corp Watch,
Indymedia UK,
EcoFirms.org
and
Alternativemedia.org
seem to be surviving if not
thriving. Bowman and Willis (2003) suggest voice and personality are also key
hallmarks of participatory media.
However, some journalists and academics have questioned the quality and therefore
the effectiveness and credibility of vlogs, blogs and various other components of the
indymedia/citizen journalism phenomenon (Grubisich, 2005, 2006). Many see the
Internet as undermining established, high-quality editorial control and trusted
investigative journalism. Similarly, public-access television such as Deep Dish TV in
the US and community media, including television, video, radio and the Internet
also aim at empowering non-professionals through engaging interest, and developing
skills through constructing reports, news items, artworks and entertainments that
would not be transmitted by mainstream media (Halleck, 2002). Accompanying
websites and production activities are always subject to the constraints and restrictions
of uncertain funding, but links with education institutions, particularly media schools,
often provide access to facilities, important contacts and influential networks. There
has also been a considerable growth of, particularly, Internet TV, with NGOs,
corporations and government departments establishing their own sites and an increas-
ing number of small enterprises such as GreenTV assiduously working to raise
awareness of environmental, social and other issues - and not just climate change.
Big Picture TV streams free video clips of leading experts, thinkers and activists in
environmental and social sustainability, and Al Gore's ambitious cable and Internet-
based Current TV project that aimed to screen mainly viewer-generated contact was
brilliant in conception but failed to develop into the major media player Gore had
hoped for it. It was sold to Al Jazeera in January 2013, which closed the channel
seven months later.
However, it is to the fast expanding world of digital gaming, particularly what is
known as serious games and the use of apps for mobile devices such as the smart
phone or tablet, that much informal learning, communication and value-based
behaviour change may be initiated and reinforced. The visual rhetoric, narrative
force and immersive qualities of many games render them powerfully persuasive as
well as highly enjoyable. Their value in and for education is now rarely disputed
(De Freitus and Maharg, 2011), although some critics correctly pointed to the violent,
sexist and hyper commercial import of some of the most successful and popular
