[Air-l] this looks cool

[david silver]

Call for Fellowship Applications:  Strategy Workshop on Political tools for the Web in Media Reform, Media Justice, and Communications Rights

Dates of Workshop: November 10-14, 2003
Application Deadline: September 2, 2003
Location:  de Balie, Amsterdam
Opening date for applications:  August  1 , 2003
Deadline for applications: September 2, 2003
Fellowship grant award notice: September 19, 2003                              
Workshop website: http://www.issuenetwork.org

Who should apply/who's eligible:

U.S.-based activists, public interest advocates, and researchers in media reform/media justice/communications rights. The workshop will host a total of 15 participants. Five fellowship awards are available for U.S.-based applicants. Grant awards will cover costs of transportation and accommodations for the workshop.  (Note that this call is intended for U.S.-based Media Activists and Researchers.  Please see issuenetwork.org for the international call for participation, and further information on the workshop.)
 
Send email application to (see application details below):

fellowship at issuenetwork.org (Subject line should read: Application for November Workshop)
          
Background

Media reform and media justice advocacy in the U.S. is fragmented into several competing arenas for mainstream media, policy maker, and funding attention, for example: community technology, community radio, public access cable television, low power FM radio, and public interest media production, distribution, and exhibition.  One of the tendencies of the organizations working in these areas is to rely upon measuring the value of their activities by tallying the number of times their organizations are featured in the mainstream news media.  For many, presence in the media has become a proxy for effectiveness in those arenas where issue advocates are attempting to influence decision makers, funders, and public opinion about a wide array of important public policy concerns.  In the case of media reform and media justice, however, efforts to get media reform messages into the mainstream press have been difficult because the very entities that are the targets for change are  the !
 gatekeepers for progressive information about advocates' desired reforms. The relative isolation of advocates in media reform/justice advocacy requires that new approaches to expanding networks be explored.  

About the Workshop
The Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, together with de Balie Center for Politics and Culture, are organizing a one-week workshop for researchers, advocates, and grassroots organizers in media rights, media reform, and media justice. This is the 1st of 2  workshops to be provided by the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam. (The other will be held in March 2004.) The overall goal is to provide workshop participants with new ways of assessing the value of their work as it relates to other networks with similar, related, or competing issues.  

Over a five-day period, the workshop will provide an immersion experience in Govcom.org's work in a media laboratory, where all participants will be invited to use state of the art information tools created by govcom.org and its collaborators. During the workshop, participants will be invited to present and share their own tools and knowledge.

The workshop will take up several questions and provide software tools for participating groups to use to answer these questions:  

--Where should one dedicate networking efforts most effectively? 

--Should efforts be concentrated in attracting press coverage, working behind the scenes in agenda-setting governmental, inter-governmental as well as donor arenas, and/or spreading messages across networks of organizations dedicated to similar issues?

--When is attracting press coverage a viable networking strategy? 

With an understanding of the networks and the role of press coverage within them, participants will examine the extent to which networks, the press, intergovernmental organizations or donors are driving agenda-setting in their issues areas.  

Grant Application Details
To apply for a workshop fellowship, please send a biographical sketch, a one-page description of the questions and themes you would like to address at the workshop, as well as the answers to the questionnaire below. Send all 3 items to fellowship at issuenetwork.org by September 2, 2003. Grants will be awarded on the basis of a mutual fit between your interests and expectations, and the capacities of the analysts on hand at the workshop. 

All workshop participants must submit answers to the following questions.

1. Name your issue/research area(s), e.g., media concentration, spectrum reform, intellectual property, low power FM, etc.
2. Name the 5-10 most significant organizations in that issue area(s) along with their web address (URLs).
3. List the 3-5 most important conferences in that issue area, for the past year,
the current year and next year, along with the web location/address (URLs).
4. List the 3-5 most significant web-accessible documents in the issue area(s). Provide the exact web addresses for each document.
5. List (no more than 10) the organizations in that issue area(s) that you have had the most direct email contact with in the past 6-12 months. 
6. List the 3-5 most significant news sources for your work and the web locations for these sources.

About the Workshop Organizers and Sponsor
De Balie Center for Politics and Culture is a high-profile venue for public debate on critical social issues. De Balie also co-hosts the Next Five Minutes Tactial Media Festival. 

The Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, is dedicated to creating and hosting political tools for the Web, at http://www.govcom.org. Its director is Richard Rogers (rogers at hum.uva.nl), also of the University of Amsterdam. The workshop is co-organised by Noortje Marres (marres at dds.nl), University of Amsterdam. Govcom.org workshop producer is Catherine Somzé (catherine at issuenetwork.org). The designers are Marieke van Dijk and Auke Touwslager of anderemedia.nl. Principal affiliates and analysts are Andrei Mogoutov (Ecole des Mines/aguidel.com), Andres Zelman (Thinkamalinks), Greg Elmer (Florida State) and Astrid Mager (University of Vienna). 

The Workshop is part of the Social Life of Issues Series, number 8, http://www.govcom.org/workshops.html.  

For viewing and navigating, the maps from previous workshops may require an svg plug-in, available, for example, at http://www.adobe.com/svg.

Govcom.org also has developed the Web Issue Index of Civil Society, previewed at http://www.infoid.org. It is a downloadable quicklaunch application and interactive screensaver that shows the rise and fall of attention to important social issues by select civil society actors.

Workshop fellowships for U.S.-based applicants are funded by the Ford Foundation's Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom Program.