metablog

This conference takes place on Feb. 24th and deal with participatory media. What IS participatory media? Read on!

Direct from the site: http://www.beyondbroadcast.net/blog/

On February 24th, MIT Comparative Media Studies will host a conference in collaboration with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The one-day event will be held at MIT, and is entitled “Beyond Broadcast: From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy.” It will bring together industry experts, academic leaders, and political activists for panel discussions and focused working groups.

Attendees will explore the means, the message, and the meaning of the post-midterm, pre-presidential YouTube moment. Broadcast media have long played a powerful role in shaping political culture and mediating citizen engagement in the democratic process, and the conference will examine how participatory culture is putting the tools of media creation and critique in the hands of citizens themselves.

The plenary sessions will take place in Kirsch Auditorium in the Stata Center, followed by breakout groups. There will also be an evening reception in the Wiesner Building, called “Demos and Drinks,” showcasing groups that are doing exciting work related to conference themes.

Beyond Broadcast 2007 builds on the overwhelming success of last year’s sold-out event, “Beyond Broadcast 2006: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture” held at Harvard Law School. Over 350 people took part in-person and online through the virtual world Second Life. Attendees used several unique online tools, including a web-based “question tool” to probe panelists, a collaborative wiki, live blogging, flickr photo sharing, del.icio.us tagging, and YouTube video production. These tools enabled the conference to practice what it preached, turning the event into a two-way participatory interaction in contrast with many conferences. The tools have been expanded upon this year, already spurring an active conversation on the conference web site, weeks before the event.

Henry Jenkins will give the Keynote Address, followed by panel discussions from media makers and policy commentators. Details of these panels are being updated on the conference web site.

In the second-half of the day, the conference turns its focus to working groups that attendees will help organize. Building on themes coming from the plenary sessions, participants will target specific issues or questions and join efforts with the diverse crowd of others. In the past, these groups have been facilitated by thought leaders in technology, policy, and academia. Many attendees last year expressed their appreciation for this hybrid conference approach in which they had a chance to “do something before heading home.”