Everyone's Voices, Nobody's Noise: Help choose what your community – and the world – needs to know.
As submitted to the Knight News Challenge. (See this proposal on their submission site.)
Describe your project: *
Everyone's Voices, Nobody's Noise (EVNN) will enable multidirectional mass communication. Open forums hit practical limits on participation, leaving media that reaches the general population one-to-many broadcasts. EVNN will allow for mass-mediated mass media by combining equal access for all with delivery of information based on democratic principles. While EVNN can scale horizontal communication global levels, the main uses will be local.
A radiation therapist in Lowell, Massachusetts, wants to tell people about a patient choosing between paying a mortgage or utilities. The Natick Bulletin editor has a story of interest to many in town outside the 20 percent that read his weekly newspaper. A housing activist in Boston wants to reach as many people as possible about a pending eviction.
With EVNN, they can each reach beyond their own networks, beyond communication channels they control. EVNN is, fundamentally, about sharing control. People sign up to receive news and information their neighbors and colleagues think are important.
The radiation therapist, with no network of her own except being signed up with EVNN, can submit an appeal on behalf of her patient to go to everyone in the local EVNN network. A sample of these potential recipients would be asked to serve jury duty: is this message important enough to share with the whole town? If 75% click yes, off it goes by e-mail, RSS, twitter, and onto public access television and local radio once agreements are made to air democratically moderated news.
People following the newspaper editor's stories, whether promoted by the jury or not, are potential funders for spot.us articles in partnership with the paper.
The housing activist is part of a group on EVNN that uses the democratic filtering internally.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities? *
EVNN improves delivery of news and information to geographic communities through its turning over control to the recipients of the news and information. It makes both the receipt of messages and their filtering sustainable. By making producing news one step from having it distributed, EVNN can change the production too, which is critical as the search for resources to support local journalism often turns up little aside from ourselves.
A precondition: why will anyone use this? Because social change is largely about control–including, vitally, control of communication–the first promoters will be activists cooperating in getting the word out without the work controlled ultimately by one person's Google Group or Constant Contact account.
How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists) *
EVNN stakes its reason for being on giving all control to the community and its growth and effectiveness on its unique filter on what content is shared most widely.
It is also unique in the way it combines tools for focused communication on specific topics with broad reach on matters of general concern. "What if a hate group uses EVNN to organize?" represents a common critique. First, censoring beyond juries' consignment to marginal relevancy would destroy openness and shared control. The bigger answer, though, is that at least a hate group will be talking in an environment where they will see other ideas. A racists' bulletin board echo chamber may seem less fulfilling alongside a message to all about saving a neighbor from eviction.
What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project? *
People Who Give a Damn itself is a new organization founded to develop and be a trusted implementor of open source community communication systems such as EVNN.
Our team for this project has the technical skills, proven open source teamwork, and experience as news consumers, producers, and users (taking action in response to news), to push EVNN to success.
Stefan Freudenberg of Wilhelmshaven, Germany, is lead technical volunteer for this project. He is proficient in various programming and markup languages (C++, PHP, XHTML, CSS), Linux system administration, web design and print layout, problem solving, and German, English, and Spanish.
Nathaniel Catchpole has been a key contributor to Drupal core since early 2007, and is the reviewer and author of numerous core patches. He participated in formal usability testing at the University of Minnesota earlier this year, and attended the EOL taxonomy sprint in Chicago in September. Nathaniel has been working as the primary developer on the political and news sites since 2005, and also consults for non-profits and workers organizations in addition to his Drupal freelance work.
Benjamin Melançon is co-founder of Agaric Design Collective, a full service web development and branding. He is a programmer and web applications developer specializing in Drupal, the open source free software content management system. He is also a founding elected director of the Amazing Things Arts Center in Framingham, Massachusetts and is a founder of People Who Give a Damn, Inc.
The full board can be found at http://pwgd.org/board
How did you learn about this contest?
Past participant; originally Gary Kebbel at an Media Giraffe conference (hosted by Bill Densmore)
Confirmation
Thank you for your submission. We will review it and will respond to you at the email address you provided.
Comments
The original, longer description may be better:
Everyone's Voices, Nobody's Noise (EVNN) will enable multidirectional mass communication. Attention limits participation in discussion groups and forums, leaving media that reaches a more general population a single source broadcasts to everyone else. EVNN will allow for mass-mediated mass media by combining equal access for all with delivery of information based on democratic principles. While EVNN can scale horizontal communication global levels, the main use for this GPL software will be local.
A radiation therapist in Lowell, Massachusetts, wants to tell people about a patient choosing between paying a mortgage and paying utilities. The Natick Bulletin & TAB editor has a story he knows should interest many in town outside the 20 percent that read his weekly newspaper. A housing activist in Jamaica Plain (Boston) wants to reach as many people as possible about a pending eviction.
With EVNN, they can each reach beyond their own networks, beyond communication channels they control. EVNN is, fundamentally, about sharing control. People sign up to receive news and information their neighbors and colleagues think are important.
The radiation therapist, with no network of her own except being signed up with EVNN, can submit an appeal on behalf of her patient to go to everyone in the EVNN network in Lowell. A small random sample of these potential recipients would be asked to serve jury duty: is this message important enough to share with the whole town? If 75% click yes, off it goes by e-mail, RSS, twitter, and onto public access television and local radio once agreements to air this democratically moderated news are made.
People will have signed up to follow stories the newspaper editor chooses to promote, whether or not they make it through the jury. This may not help the paper side of the business, but it does give him access to interested people he can ask to go in with the newsapaper on funding a spot.us article, which would help the news side of the business.
The housing activist would herself have found people who care about everyone in the community having a roof over their heads. EVNN opens up the possibility that she need not start her own private list, nor do the legwork for an existing organization with its own communication priorities. Instead, she could ask people to sign up for a housing issue group on EVNN. Here, the democratic filtering process is also used for the loose group's internal communication.
unique in the way it combines tools for focused communication on specific topics with broad reach on matters of general concern.
"What if a hate group uses this network to organize?" represents a common critique of this proposal. Radical nondiscrimination, like in open source free software itself, is needed – mechanisms for censoring beyond juries' consignment to marginal relevancy would destroy the open nature of the network. The bigger answer, though, is that at least a hate group will be talking in an environment where they will receive other messages.
The echo chamber of a racists' bulletin board may seem less fulfilling alongside a message to the general community about helping save a neighbor from eviction. And if the broadcast flows the other way – a racist diatribe gets approved to the town, so it ends up in the mailboxes of housing activists, that's fine too. Denying that unpleasant sentiments are not the opinion of some of the people some of the time does not make them disappear, and the greatest promise of PWGD / EVNN is that a learning process – currently short-circuited by establishment media's sensationalism, drive for profits, and devotion to the status quo – will make people's content decisions more informed over time, as they see whose descriptions and solutions fit with reality.
See also the post-submission development discussion
Everyone's Voices, Nobody's Noise post-submission strategy session with Nathaniel Catchpole
Post new comment