My paper at Media140

I’m speaking at the Sydney Media140 conference on the 6th of November. Media140 is an international conference asking “What is the future of journalism in the Social Media Age?”

This is what I’ll be talking about:

Social media has had a powerful impact in Asia Pacific, from reporting on natural disasters to building support for action on climate change, sharing information about political conflict to documenting human rights abuses.

However, the differences in internet connectivity, access, technology and rural isolation necessitates a different approach to supporting social media projects. ‘Edge of the web’ approaches that utilise low-end technology, locally deployed networks and free software can go some way to activating existing communities and furthering their reach. They can also provide a useful way of documenting histories of independent journalism and activism, bringing these histories to a new audience.

This approach allows videomakers – who have long relied on a VCD samizdat distribution system to share their videos – to engage with a distribution system that brings their content to other locals more easily, and to feed that content to a global audience. By overcoming this powerful bottleneck, it allows local activists to make better use of low-bandwidth social media.