Aaaaand we're sold out! 75+ amazing people will be joining us on May 3! :)
Meet #M4SC attendees & connect with the ones you feel you've got shared interests with!
We're setting up a livestream and will be live tweeting the whole event, follow #M4SC or email us on <connect@arabcitizenmedia.org> for questions or inquiries. Look forward to a great day together!
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Join us for a full day of exciting talks and discussions at the Media for Social Change Unconference event at the Birmingham City University, organised by the Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research and Meedan.
This Unconference will take our work in the MENA (Middle East and North African) region as its starting point to discuss how ideas, methodologies and practices emerging from our research can be applied elsewhere. If you want to know more about the Unconference format and how to prepare for your attendance ahead of your registration, click here.
Here are the four main themes we will be exploring together:
Citizen Reporting & Social Change
How can we begin to re-think the relationship between new information and communication technologies and social change? Case studies taken from the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings in the Arab region will be discussed, provoking discussions into how the knowledge and experiences gained from our studies may help inform your own.
Language Mediation
Our research has led us to a number of questions: How can we enhance the creation of better Arabic content online? What are the main technical barriers facing Arab activists in terms of access to online tools and media literacy skills? Practitioners and activists operating with marginalised groups of any description are invited to contribute their experience here.
Media in times of conflict
Here we will be reflecting on the use of new media tools by activists to organise humanitarian aid in situations of political unrest. In an open forum that could look at anything, from the rise of Food Banks in the UK, to the humanitarian effort in the Philippines, to the organisation of field hospitals during the #Jan25 revolution in Egypt on Twitter accounts & hashtags like @TahrirSupplies and #TahrirNeeds, we hope to explore with you new ways of operation for media activists in times and areas of crisis or conflict.
Video for social change
The increasingly democratised nature of video production and distribution in the digital age make it a potentially powerful tool for social change. Our Unconference will be attended by a number of renowned activist-filmmakers, and this is an opportunity to work through ideas and problems together with them.
Places for the Unconference are free but extremely limited, so register today to ensure you are able to join us.
There are a number of ways you can register for this event. You can sign up on Eventbrite, or you can suggest a session on this wiki, you automatically become registered for the event.
In the meantime, please help us spread the word amongst your networks of activists, media practitioners, students and lecturers. In order to make all postings related to this event searchable, please tag everything with: #M4SC
We look forward to working with you and hope to see you on 3rd May!
Agenda
9:00 - 09:30 | Registration
9:30 - 10:00 | Welcome note
10:00 - 12:00 | Opening Panel and Q&A session (moderated by Dr. Dima Saber)
• Prof. Tim Wall, Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research
• Ed Bice, Meedan.org
• Raja Al-Thaibani, Witness.org
• Dr. Michele Aaron, University of Birmingham
• Signe Byrge & Rami Farah, producer & director of the film documentary The Street of Death. A tale of the Syrian revolution
12:00 - 13:00 | Lunch
13:00 - 16:00 | Unconference sessions
14.30 - 15:00 | Coffee break
16:00 - 17:00 | Group discussion & wrap-up
Who should come?
This event is an opportunity to informally exchange ideas and information with leading academics, research students, political activists and media practitioners, and is aimed at anyone interested in the role of media in building communities, supporting development or bringing about political change.
Meet #M4SC attendees & connect with the ones you feel you've got shared interests with!
You can RSVP on Eventbrite or add session suggestions to this wiki.
Team
Session Suggestions
Make your interests known by suggesting discussion sessions you would like to have or voting for existing suggestions. To do so, edit this page and modify the table below. (You can suggest sessions for things you know about, or for questions you have, or just for people interested in a certain topic to discuss, etc...)
| Suggested sessions |
Description |
Suggested by |
What do we mean by 'social change' in UK community media?
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What would a British Spring look like? If Britain doesn't fight for democracy, revolution, etc from it's social media, what other 'social change' is found from participatory media in the UK? Or maybe it does fight for those things? Discuss.
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Jerome Turner
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What can UK community media learn from evolved, learned and systematic practices of parallel Arab region media?
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Are there lessons to be learned that could be deployed and taught in the UK? What are the fails and successes of social media in the Arab region / conflict areas? What is true of all media of this kind, whether in a conflict zone or otherwise? A discussion session, hopefully with first hand insight from an Arab region blogger/tweeter(?) |
Jerome Turner
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With more and more moving image footage being uploaded to sites like You Tube what is the role of contemporary documentary filmmakers and how do they ensure their work reaches an audience?
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With an abundance of tools, software and platforms such as You Tube and Vimeo that allow individuals to capture and upload moments of struggle, uprising and revolution, how do traditional documentary filmmakers respond to this changing media landscape?What opportunities and threats are posed for documentary makers in creating and making balanced, intelligent and time relevant films. And how do filmmakers reach an audience for their works?
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Jez Collins
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| Can social media drive transformations and incite revolutions? |
Social media tools have been widely used during the Arab Spring. With insights from human rights advocacy campaigns in Egypt, I argue that social media is not enough to create change and drive revolutions. There are isolation problems where activists sometimes think they are addressing all the people in their country through social media, while in fact, they fail to reach out to many who don't have social media access. Social media does play a role, is that role enough to create a transformation in the society? How can we fairly assess the role of social media? And as activists, how can we understand the limitations and opportunities posed by social media tools?
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Evronia Azer |
| Developing and supporting digital media literacy and citizen reporting in MENA - what are the challenges and opportunities?
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In conversation with BCU and Meedan's regional partners on the Checkdesk project, what lessons can we take from working to build digital media literacy and support citizen reporting over the past 18 months? What should future projects focus on to achieve maximum impact?
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Tom Trewinnard
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How to effectively monitor and evaluate citizen journalism content?
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With the increase in citizen journalism content on the web, how do we effectively monitor and evaluate them? What tools exist that help do this already? How can technology help us monitor and evaluate the impact of citizen journalism stories and connect stories alike online?
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Bethel Tsegaye and Dina Zbeidy |
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