The Evolution of Media

On the 2nd of May, television broadcaster Al-Jazeera will make history with the broadcast of “The Stream”, a 30-minute talk show like no other. With “no script, no tape and no satellite hookups”, the Doha-based news broadcaster is “bringing the social media experience inside your TV”.

Via Robin Good

Eric Byler interviews Prof. Robert Proctor
 about the

Pioneers of Science Denial and the
Human Cost of Misinformation

Thursday, Mar 15, 2012 - 5:30 pm Eastern Time (2:30 pm PT)

CLICK HERE to listen live | Call (646) 929-2495 to join the conversation

____________
 

by ERIC YAO, Coffee Party USA

 

A recent exposé of the corporate funded Heartland Institute's secret documents revealed an elaborate plan to purposefully manipulate K-12 curriculum, with efforts to inject doubt about climate change into young students and ensure that paralysis on clean energy technology and climate change legislation continues for another generation. This exemplifies how far some international profiteering interests will go to systematically misinform the American public.

 

The strategy of misinformation includes:

 

Assert there are many other causes of the problemClaim there is no consensus among scientistsDownplay the validity of the science in any caseSetup lobbying organizations that masquerade as a research institutesInject polarization and misinformation into the national discourse using friends in elected office and in the One Percent Media

 

People fighting the One Percent agenda today may not realize this, but these tactics were pioneered by the tobacco industry. Sixty years ago, the tobacco industry began protecting its profits by penetrated academia, and undermining science in the very same way. Our guest on Thursday's special presentation of Coffee Party Radio will be Robert Proctor, Professor of History at Stanford University.  [MORE]

Via Eric Byler

When I departed for my three-week honeymoon, I informed all my colleagues that I would be off the grid: unavailable, unreachable, without access, etc. In truth, I was in airplane mode scanning for WiFi networks several times a day, checking in on East Coast friends dealing with Hurricane Sandy.

 

Side note: I was doing so from poolside chairs while the new wife was asleep and not about to be annoyed by my digital addictions, so that made it OK, and stuff.

 

Hotel WiFi has been around a long, long time. In fact, I reported on the top five hotel chains that served up free WiFi more than eight years ago.

 

Eight years is a long time. In internet years, it's an eternity. And in those eight years, from what I can tell, hotel WiFi has not improved one bit. Some might even say that as hotels look for new ways to monetize customers, WiFi has not only become more expensive, its performance has also been hijacked by unnecessary security practices.

 

Let's gain some perspective here to really understand how long ago 2004 was. According to Time, the top websites of that year included Friendster, Yoox and some blog called Engadget. Those of us with smartphones were happy to be downloading at 3G speeds when infrastructure allowed. We didn't dare watch video on our phones let alone even bother replying to emails. That was for the fancy folks with Nokia E60s.

 

WiFi, at the time, was the stuff of pros. We'd spend hundreds on wireless cards and patiently hunt for open networks just to get online. We envisioned a future when our cable and wireless companies would grant us hotspots virtually everywhere, when WiFi would blanket the planet and talk of wireless radio protocols would be the stuff of history.

 

And yet here we are, eight years later, and the majority of us are still on 3G while WiFi remains an expensive luxury at the world's top hotels.

 

Click headline to read more and access hot link--

Via Chuck Sherwood, Senior Associate, TeleDimensions, Inc

On World Radio Day, 13 February 2012, UNESCO will remind the world that there is a medium which reaches parts that other media can't reach.

 

Radio is still a vital form of communication because a radio station can be set up much faster, and at much lower cost, than a terrestrial or satellite TV station. Radio is especially useful for reaching remote communities and vulnerable people such as the illiterate, the disabled and the poor. It also provides a platform for such groups to take part in the wider public debate.

 

Radio also plays a vital role in emergency communication and disaster relief, which was illustrated following the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004. RNW was able to help several partner stations in Indonesia by sending out “radio stations in a box” – self-contained mobile FM stations providing a temporary studio and transmitter ready to be used by broadcasters whose own facilities had been destroyed.

 

One billion people do not have access to radio, let alone technically more complex media like the internet

 

On 3 November, 2011, the 36th General Conference of UNESCO approved the creation of an annual World Radio Day. The initial idea came from the Spanish Academy of Radio four years earlier. The date chosen was 13 February, which corresponds to the birth of United Nations radio in 1946.

 

World Radio Day seeks to raise awareness about the importance of radio, facilitate access to information through radio, and enhance networking among broadcasters.

 

Website: http://www.worldradioday.org

Via Community Media Database

Effective social media content is a lot like a great cup of coffee. People read great content or drink the cup of coffee and go “mmmmmm”.

There are two colliding factors that are slowly killing your marketing strategy. Here is a plan to fight back.

 

...In the physical world, this is what happens when you try to push too much stuff though a finite pipeline — catastrophic failure. A flood. Wires bursting into flame. Server crashes.

So this presents the fundamental dilemma for you and me. How do we get our marketing message to cut through the infinite information and make it through to a consumer brain — without going broke or having a catastrophic strategic failure?

 

We’ve never faced this before

This is a relatively new problem. Even in the early days of mass broadcasting, getting your message through was easy. You simply bought advertisements on the most popular radio and television programs. Those days are coming to an end. Nielsen reported that in 2011, the number of hours that Americans viewed TV declined for the first time in the history of television. Newspaper advertising, adjusted for inflation, is down to 1950s levels. Even website visitors are down. In the past two years, 68% of the Fortune 500 companies had a drop in unique visitors to their company websites.

 

So we have no choice. Day by day, every single company in the world is realizing that it must join this social media battle for consumer mindshare. And that war is raging though web-based content....

 

[Valuable read from @MarkWSchaefer - JD]

Via Jeff Domansky

Amy Jo Martin: "Throughout the succinct two-year history of social television, successes and failures have taught practitioners three valuable lessons. In fact, these lessons apply to practitioners in any major medium (radio, film, television, journalism)" ...

Via The Digital Rocking Chair